> Never ceases to amaze me how advanced Romans were for their time.
What they did is impressive, but how do we define the norm for their time? Every time has some doing better, some doing worse.
Also I wonder how much we compare the Romans to what came after them in Europe, the long Middle Ages when technology went backward. If technology kept moving forward at the Classical pace (whatever that is), would we be as impressed with the Romans?
> the long Middle Ages when technology went backward
What do you mean by that? There was a decline but Europe had more or less rebounded by the 11th century or so. Yes extreme decentralization meant that urbanization levels remained low and funding for major project was usually limited but overall the level of technological advancement was higher in many (and probably most) areas compared to the Roman times.
Especially in fields like metallurgy where Romans were mostly surpassed even during the "dark ages".
Agriculture was generally more advanced, medieval societies were probably more industrialized as well (e.g. watermills became much more widespread and were used for processing wool, forging etc.).
Also when we imagine medieval Europe most people are probably mainly thinking about Britain, France & Germany which were backwater economic and social backwaters (besides Italy the core areas of the empire: Greece, Anatolia, Egypt were not part of Catholic Western Europe).
I mainly meant economically and demographically (though places like Germany and Northern Gaul probably surpassed their Roman period peak a bit earlier) and not necessarily technologically.
And it's also close to 400-500 years since the real decline started in the 530-550s (plague, outfall of the Gothic wars and climate change intensifying). Or in the 3rd century which would make it closer to 800.
I'm not sure how that impacts the question at hand, whether technology went backward in the Middle Ages.
> Technology mostly didn't go backward, societal organization did.
In Middle Ages Europe people did not develop or implement technology, or even employ existing Roman technology, at nearly the level of the Romans. Who built new aquaducts, for example?
They developed, implemented, and used worse technology than the Romans often did; that's what I mean by 'it went backward'.
> In Middle Ages Europe people did not develop or implement technology, or even employ existing Roman technology, at nearly the level of the Romans
Anything to substantiate this claim? Metallurgy and agriculture were more advanced, watermills much more widespread, windmills appeared by the 12th, overall medieval Europe was generally more industrialized than Ancient Rome and relied less on manual human labour.
Of course you're right about urban infrastructure, it had declined significantly, on the other hand there weren't as many cities and those that existed had relatively low populations outside of Constantinople and some Muslim cities (Rome itself was only able to sustain such a high population due to massive wealth transfers from the provinces without providing that much in return).
You're cherry-picking. It seems to me that the reactionary anti-liberalism now goes to the extent of defending the middle ages because the Enlightenment is a political threat.
Infrastructure, commerce, population, etc. I'm sure we can cherrypick a few things, but it's really not comparable.
Not everything people say had an ulterior motive and/or is driven by some ideological beliefs (quite a bit of projection going on here I assume?).
Also we were talking about technological progress. Demographics and economic activity were a different matter (the outfall of the plague and climate change in the 6th century was very severe and recovery quite slow, e.g. if the compare to the second pandemic during the middle ages especially). Also the Roman empire had been declining for hundreds of years by that point.
And again without talking about specific regions this discussion is somewhat pointless. Based on estimates Gaul and Germany had already surpassed their Roman population peak by a million or two by ~900-1000 and it was about double by the 1300s).
OTH Italy still had a lower population in the 1500s (of course it was significantly inflated during the Roman period because of massive transfer of wealth and people from other areas).
> commerce
What makes you say that the level of commerce and trade in the Roman empire were particularly higher (and not significantly lower) outside of the Mediterranean?
> Enlightenment
That didn't start 300 year or so until the middle ages were over so I'm not sure why are you even brining this up?
I'm pretty sure there are many many individual things that have been lost/forgotten, even very important ones as concrete.
There was indisputably a loss of tech and a regression in many fronts. But technology and progress is not a one-dimensional thing so you shouldn't just focus on the cases where the regression happened and extend that to imply that there was no progress anywhere.
Progress is tied to the socio-economics climate. Advances in agricultural efficiency continued and perhaps even surpassed the roman era.
You are the only one implying that; it's just a strawperson.
You may have things to add, valuable detail about the nuance. You don't need to shoot down the other person first.
> Advances in agricultural efficiency continued and perhaps even surpassed the roman era.
It's hard to reconcile the phrases in that sentence. If it continued to improve, then it would have surpassed Roman-era efficiency almost immediately and over the years would have left the Romans far behind. What is the truth here?
It didn't improve efficiency by much for a long time. In the end of the western roman empire there were epidemics and the population was greatly reduced.
Before the plague, great amounts of land were used for crops, even if the yield was low. After the plague, they started to have cows or sheeps instead, since they needed less food.
Source: avid listener of Alessandro Barbero's lectures :)
What they did is impressive, but how do we define the norm for their time? Every time has some doing better, some doing worse.
Also I wonder how much we compare the Romans to what came after them in Europe, the long Middle Ages when technology went backward. If technology kept moving forward at the Classical pace (whatever that is), would we be as impressed with the Romans?