71–80 of 208 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a bold claim, do you have a source to back that up?
No OP and I don't know about 1988, but lead pipes are still common in the US, either many states have them or all states do. Flint, MI has a plan to eliminate them this year, maybe. https://www.nrdc.org/lead-pipes-widespread-used-every-state
[1]: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/londinium-romans-blood-l...
What does the “Fall of Rome” actually mean? It’s not like everyone died or disappeared. They just stopped being ruled by a particular government.
It means "you should check Wikipedia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi...
> the fall of Rome was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vast territory was divided into several successor polities.
So it’s exactly what I said it was.
Quoted post unavailable.
* The split between the Eastern and western Roman empire caused the comparatively less wealthy Western empire to weaken considerably. Remember, the Eastern Roman Empire didn't collapse and lasted well into the medieval era.
* Lower crop yields due to changing climate patterns. Immigration is a symptom of this, lower yields prompting societies to migrate towards more productive areas.
What does the “Fall of Rome” actually mean? It’s not like everyone died or disappeared. They just stopped being ruled by a particular government.
Lots of people died and disappeared, whole cities were abandoned, those that weren’t often had a tenth of their previous populations, people receded to subsistence agriculture, and literacy went to almost zero. If you took an interest in a subject and read a few books, you could be the worlds foremost expert on it. This was most prevalent in the west. Rome was just a few sparks away from triggering an industrial revo…
That’s a pretty amazing idea.
One thing I really got out of the History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is if anyone tells you there was ONE cause of the fall of Rome, they're full of crap.
What I find recently is that the folks suggesting Rome fell because of ONE cause, that one cause tends to be some political fringe talking point. So there's some other clues in there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a great history teacher in school who would use every opportunity (and there were many, obviously) to drive home this point. Not just Rome: most, if not all, major historical events and developments are driven by multiple causes.
As one of the greatest history channels on Youtube once said: "History isn't hapoening in a vaccuum". And they are right.
So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at timespan. Which was either decades or centuries... If system survived previously with mostly same things in place there is really no reason why such thing as lead pipes would be the cause of downfall part. By any reasonable conclusion the culprit in such case should be some disruptive innovation. In the end gradual natural degradation of system is much mo…
What does the “Fall of Rome” actually mean? It’s not like everyone died or disappeared. They just stopped being ruled by a particular government.
[0] https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f...