[Gibbon1]

> Stone building were replaced by mud huts, and I don't know about you, but not having running water in your town, or paved roads to the next town or port seem like huge drawbacks to life quality.

I read somewhere that skeletal remains show people got taller after the end of the Roman empire. And then started getting shorter through the Renaissance right up till the agricultural revolution in the early 20th century.

[Bayart]

That's the thing with urbanization : it's great for production and capital but it's terrible for your health. The industrial revolution was very much a low point in human welfare.

[_jahh]

they no longer paid their Roman taxes and could eat more of their own harvest

[ido]

Yet somehow the population still declined significantly[0]?

    The Early Middle Ages saw relatively little
    population growth with urbanization well below
    its Roman peak...Estimates of the total population
    of Europe are speculative, but at the time of
    Charlemagne it is thought to have been between 25
    and 30 million

Where as at its peak the Roman Empire alone had a population of 70 million.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography