[llukas]

> This all slowly degraded and eventually disappeared with the fall of the empire.

BULLSHIT. How on earth you can present blatantly false presumptions as information?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Romanesque_art_and_archite...

"In most of western Europe, the Roman architectural tradition survived the collapse of the empire. The Merovingians (Franks) continued to build large stone buildings like monastery churches and palaces."

BTW we still have Roman aqueducts, roads and bridges all over Europe.

[ardit33]

Read my comment. I specifically mentioned Britannia. The Franks (i.e. Merovingian), had less than 20% of the former Roman Empire in control. About 18%. The rest of Europe was extremely fragmented, and territories changing hands often (and always through war).

Mentioning that there were plenty of building and construction happening in some part, doesn't negate that the rest (80%) was being ravaged and in continuous decline to the point of whole populations being displaced.

Only the Eastern Roman Empire (aka. Byzantine empire), had a unified government structure, yet it was struggling with the Slavic invasions/incursions from the north, and the wars with the Sassanid empire and the succeeding caliphates.

They did attempt to re-unify the empire with the Justinian Restoration (with Belisarious being the main general re-conquering vast territories), but that didn't last long either. As the economy was lagging the region was ravaged by the Black Plague, where it is estimated that 25–50 million people in two centuries of recurrence died, equivalent to 13–26% of the world's population at the time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian

To me, late Antiquity end, and the true dark ages begin after the death Justinian, and the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire to the point that it couldn't defend or keep its territories from the Slavic invasions.

[jschwartzi]

Yeah, I mean it's not as if people haven't learned new things from their conquerors throughout the ages. For a modern example look at Japanese society now versus Japanese society pre-WWII. The US completely remodeled their society. While we have long since handed over control of their government to the Japanese people they continue to have strong Western influences in their buildings, fashion, and culture. It has a distinctly "Japanese" tint to it but if you visit Japan you'll observe largely the same social mores around commerce as exist in the US.

Within that context it's hard to believe that the European tribes simply forgot how to build roads or monuments or architecture after Rome ceased to influence them.