From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   QUORA: WERE ROMANS MORE ADVANCED THAN MOST MEDIEVAL KINGDOMS?   
   answered by Enrico Toro [a Quora D-lister], Updated Apr 24   
   It depends on what terms you are defining as “advanced”. Could people in   
   middle ages Europe build a bridge over the Danube like the Romans did multiple   
   times? No they could not. Could they deliver clean water and sewage to their   
   small cities? Likely    
   not. Did they have an advanced bureaucracy and a fair tax system? Again not as   
   developed as the Romans until the very end of the middle ages. However they   
   had a more advanced agriculture, and their instruments of death, after the   
   year 1300, were    
   definitively more advanced than the Romans’.   
      
   The pantheon of Rome remained the largest concrete dome in the world until the   
   Belgrade Fair Hall was built in 1957 and it is still the largest non   
   reinforced concrete dome in the world. How many buildings keep a record for   
   over 2000 years?   
      
   Water management systems at the time of the Romans were far more advanced than   
   anything you see in the middle-ages, think about the drainage systems in the   
   Fens in England or Claudius Tunnel, in Lake Fucino in Italy, which remained   
   the longest tunnel in    
   the world for more than a millenium.   
      
   However, there is no doubt medieval people had some technical advances of   
   their own, better weaponry (but worse logistics and command and control   
   systems), better ability to use nature’s energy, far better agricultural   
   practices and, by the end of the    
   13th c. in Europe, tons of paper.   
      
   It also depends on where you lived. If you lived in Germany or the Baltic   
   states, your world was a dream world compared to antique times, but if you   
   were born in a place that was previously part of the Roman Empire you sure had   
   a lot to compare with.   
      
   The truth is that there is a good reasons why medieval people, especially the   
   ones in western Europe, saw the Roman times as an age of gold that they could   
   at best try to imitate.   
      
   If they lived in the lands previously occupied by the Roman Empire, they used   
   Roman roads to move around, they saw gigantic Roman ruins everywhere, they saw   
   the remains of city that were orders of magnitude larger than the ones they   
   lived in and    
   buildings they had no idea how to recreate.   
      
   Imagine a pilgrim from England, headed to Rome in the year 1000, traveling on   
   Roman roads, stopping at the remains of Roman cities, and finally making it to   
   the tomb of Saint Peter, and looking at buildings that were much larger than   
   anything they saw at    
   home and in a city that was 3 times larger than the bigger city of his country   
   still full of wonders of the past.   
      
   The idea that Rome’s economy was not based on trade, but on subjugation and   
   exploitation of other people was very common in northern Europe, primarily in   
   protestant historians in the 19th century, and strange bedfellows indeed, by   
   many 20th century    
   Marxist historians. Yet most of those theories have been widely debunked by   
   modern discoveries and by so many archaeological, and scientific finds of the   
   past century.   
      
   I suggest you to read books like Peter Temin’s, on Roman economics or Kyle   
   Harper’s “The fate of Rome”, or “The science of Roman history”, by   
   Walter Scheidel.   
      
   All of these books use the archeological and scientific discoveries of the   
   past 100 years to prove that the traditional idea of the slave economy, a   
   stagnant society that does not grow is a myth. It is mostly propaganda, anti   
   Roman (hence anti Catholic),    
   written to compare the fantastic progress of their country vs a fictional   
   stasis in the Mediterranean, you know those lazy bums sleeping in the sun with   
   all their superstitions. Of course an easy to understand lie spread more   
   easily than a complex and    
   nuanced truth.   
      
   The truth is that, in a world where land was the main form of capital, where   
   energy sources were mostly limited to human and animal labor, where   
   technological progress was incredibly slow compared to modern times, the Roman   
   world managed, to show growth    
   of economic output constantly for 200 years. Inside the empire growth rates   
   were higher in the periphery than in Italy itself. Provinces in Gaul, Spain,   
   Sicily, Northern Africa by the end of the second century AD had reached a   
   level of development that    
   was comparable to the center of the Empire. The most famous Latin grammar and   
   rethorics school at the time of Constantine was in Gaul, not in Rome.   
      
   To quote Yates “This growth was not only continued when the had Empire   
   reached its outer bounds, it now diffused throughout the conquered lands. The   
   Romans did not merely rule territory transferring some margin of surplus from   
   periphery to center. The    
   integration of the empire was catalytic. Slowly but steadily Roman rule   
   changed the face of societies under its dominion. Commerce, markets,   
   technology, urbanization: the empire and its many people seized the levers of   
   development. [...] the empire writ    
   large enjoyed both intensive and extensive growth”.   
      
   Constant output growth for over 150 years was driven by 3 main factors:   
   1.The roman climate optimum, a period that greatly benefitted crops and made   
   the agricultural output plenty almost every year.   
      
   2. Trade of large volumes of commodities across the different regions of the   
   empire to take advantage of Ricardian comparative advantages. Urbanization was   
   at a level that won’t be reached in Europe until the 19th c. And the cities   
   needed commerce. The    
   volume of bulk (non luxury) goods traded in Europe at the time won’t be   
   reached again until the 17th c., when Europe’s population was 2X the one of   
   the Roman Empire. The density of shipping traffic in trade lanes in the   
   Mediterranean in Roman times    
   would not be reached again until the 19th c. when a new great supervisor, the   
   British Empire, arrived.   
      
   3. Single currency, a single system of weight and measures and a single system   
   of laws to regulate commerce and industry across an area encompassing 70-80   
   million people. Compare that to your average middle age merchant forced to   
   deal with new borders,    
   and new sets of laws and regulations every 30 miles.   
      
   It is for these reasons that most countries in Western Europe did not reach   
   the GDP per capita they had under Rome until the 17th-18th century.   
      
      
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