Culture Critic- Like us, Ancient Rome had a birth rate crisis.
In 300 AD, Rome was a city of ~1 million people. 200 years later, hardly enough people lived there to fill the Colosseum. And their story feels alarmingly familiar…
Culture Critic- Like us, Ancient Rome had a birth rate crisis.
In 300 AD, Rome was a city of ~1 million people. 200 years later, hardly enough people lived there to fill the Colosseum. And their story feels alarmingly familiar…
Rome fell because it consumed its capital, wasting it on grandiose, money losing coliseums instead of financing productive businesses. We’re doing exactly the same thing, only we call it green energy.
And the Egyptians at Karnak and elsewhere, It’s what they all do. Think Dubai et fooking cetera.
Meanwhile, I am trying to repair my fooking eavestroughs in my humble abode.
There was an experiment conducted with mice some years ago, where the mice were given what amounted to a mouse utopia. Abundance of food and living space, no predators, simply put, no survival pressure.
Within four generations the mice went extinct. By the second they were experiencing serious social problems, and by the third IIRC most of the male mice in particular had zero interest in mating. They’d tuck themselves into corners and groom themselves all the time but never bother with the females. I can’t recall if the researchers ever settled on a definite explanation.
It may well be that homo sapiens living in environments with minimal survival pressures such as are found in many developed countries will also drive themselves to extinction or very near to it.
So you’re saying God created Justin Trudeau so that Canadians would have the hard times needed to ensure their survival?
Too late, look around.
Too many errors to take this seriously.
“Rome fell not in a day, but over several generations — although not as many as you think.”
No, it fell in one year. The city had been recaptured by the army of the East Roman Empire in the early 530s. However, it was unable to withstand the Gothic counterattack in 537. During that siege lasting over a year, the Goths broke every one of the city’s acqueducts. Up to that point, the city had well over one million population. But terminating its water supply forced an immediate abandonment after the siege by most of the population. The depopulation had everything to do with destruction of the city’s water supply and nothing to do with declining population. During the 4th century AD, the city’s population had been growing because of rural people swarming into the city in the wake of assorted barbarian invasions.
The cause was simple, obvious and military. And no, it had nothing to do with BS like diversion of capital. The notion of absence of survival pressure is also complete BS. The Western Empire was under enormous pressure from repeated invasions of assorted Germans and Huns.
The reason they were unable to resist the invaders was the exponentially rising cost of their welfare state, not to mention punitive taxation and draconian price controls. The depletion of their capital base became chronic making them ripe for invasion
Umm, no. The Roman army in total numbers in the 4th century was far larger, at least double, the number it was in the 1st century. Its military problem was the waves of invaders coming out of central Asia. Primarily these were the Huns, pushing along in front of them large numbers of Germans.
Its second problem was techological. For the first time, Roman armies were confronted with cavalry armies that because of technology, the stirrup, could defeat the Romans. The central defining moment when the Roman armies were defeated irreversibly was at the battle of Adrianople in 378 AD. In that one battle, three Roman field armies were destroyed entirely.
The Empire never recovered.
None of this is surprising. Lots of times in history, nations and empires have been irreversibly destroyed by losing the one big battle which truly mattered. It’s happened at least twice in the 20th century.
Africans are the most successful people on the planet. Will they rule the world?
I’m pretty sure Zimbabwe couldn’t manage an invasion of anyone. It’s doubtful the rest of the continent could do any better
I wonder of any Romans ever said the same about Goths?
The Romans were very worried about what the Germans could do after Teutobergerwald in 9 A.D. They were far more worried about what the Goths could do after the massive disasters the empire suffered in the 3rd Century A.D. during the reigns of Philip the Arab and Decius. The panic about the Goths would go on for another 20 years until Diocletian drove them out and reorganized the Empire.
Population dynamics are complex, chaotic, in fact.
Urinalists when population goes up: Malthusian catastrophe is coming!
Urinalists when population goes down: Demographic collapse is coming!
The idea that “we as a society can learn from history” is progressive claptrap.
People are people, and our behaviors don’t really change.
Not to worry. That’s why Western, capitalist nations are importing so many Muslims and Amigos … they breed like rabbits. They have Roman era replacement baby litters … at least 6 kids per family. We’ll be fine … so long as you bow the knee to Islam
Most of the Muslims invading Europe the last few years are military age men or younger; the womenfolk are left behind.
So there won’t be much breeding like rabbits in the near term for them. There will be a lot of raping of the native gals however.
“History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.”
George Santayana
rome has been a capital city three times . doubt there is another example. the middle one was entirely brought on by the popes. nothing like tithing the known world.
Did Rome have enough booze to be a societal problem or was being a drunk simply too danderous for long term survival? Today, drug use/abuse is so enticing with safety nets everywhere, yet the biggest focus appears to be on the spply, not the demand. Is today’s society being voluntarily hollowed out?
Drinking wine was a principal defense against polluted water throughout history up to the 20th century. Vinegar was used the same way by the Roman army – mixing it in water to kill the microbes.
Yes, you’re right about that!
There’s little point worrying about long term health problems when microbes in the water will kill you tomorrow. Lots of medical “experts” had observed the antiseptic effects of alcohol without having anything resembling a germ theory of disease. All societies before the 20th century were repeatedly ravaged by a host of water-borne diseases such as cholera, diptheria, typhoid, polio, botulism, hepatitus. (and that’s just the short list.) All these things will kill someone in a matter of days or weeks (or hours in the case of cholera.) I myself have been alive long enough to have observed personally the ravages of polio among young children.
Drinking cheap alcohol will blunt all of these by killing the microbes in the water. To a certain extent, the history of the human race IS the history of disease.
It tended to solubilize lead in drinking vessels. Lead acetate was used to sweeten wine.
The Roman army didn’t drink sweet wine. It was issued with a daily ration of sour wine (vinegar).
People’s current fascination with being gay, trans, and gleefully having abortions doesn’t help.
Maybe, but more to the point Rome had a series of plagues (likely smallpox) which scythed the population several times. The single event that led to the Western Empire’s fall was the admission of Goth’s en masse (refugees from Attila) across the Danube in 376. Two years later they destroyed the Roman Army at Adrianople and began marauding within the Empire. Rome never recovered, and lost the ability to defend its borders.
Absolutely true. There were a number of very serious plagues sweeping the Empire: the Antonine Plague starting in 160; Cyprian’s Plague starting in 249. Each of these had profound military, social, economic impacts of the worst kind when they went through.
Of these plagues, at least one as you suggest was smallpox. Another was Red Measles.
But nothing was as bad as 536. That was the year of a massive volcanic eruption in Iceland that killed agriculture around the world for about two years. It was followed in 541 by an outbreak of bubonic plague that killed about 1/3rd of the Empire’s population. It brought to a sudden, immediate end Justinian’s attempt to regain by conquest the Western Empire from the Goths.