Scientists have uncovered an unlikely event that led to the eastern Roman Empire’s collapse 1,500 years ago.
They discovered that the Romans miscalculated their Persian opponents which caused their downward spiral, leaving them weak and allowing Islam to rise in a manner that essentially wiped out the once-powerful civilization.
The two groups were at war from 54 BC to 628 for control of territories, but the Persians took over Roman trade routes that were critical to their victory.
Without access to trade, the economy quickly collapsed and forced people in the Roman Empire to flee to other regions like Constantinople, the researchers said.
The team analyzed shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean from multiple sites, such as Marseille, Naples, Carthage, eastern Spain and Alexandria, to better understand what caused the fall.
They identified a timeline for when Roman ships, which lined the shores by the hundreds at their peak, began to disappear and dwindled down to just dozens by the second half of the 7th century.
Roman goods from the same time period were also analyzed from tens of thousands of sites between numerous regions, including Israel, Tunisia, Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, and Greece, which suggested the group was still in the midst of trading.
Researchers said that rather than a decline, there was an increase in prosperity and demography in the second half of the 6th century CE.
The information ‘led us to conclude that the eastern Roman Empire started to decline … after a [disruption in trade] and military failures,’ authors Lev Cosijns from the University of Oxford and Haggai Olshanetsky told DailyMail.com.
Previous research had suggested that a plague decimated the Roman Empire in 543 AD or a climate shift that peaked in the mid-6th century.
But the new study found the civilization was at the height of its power, economic output and population.
‘So, it seems that 536 CE was not the worst year to be alive,’ said Cosijns. ‘At least, not for most people who lived during that time.
‘It was a terrible period for people living in Scandinavia, but for people who lived in the eastern Roman Empire, there were limited effects, and so life went on as usual.’
The researchers began their investigation by dating pottery uncovered at archaeology sites.
They discovered more than 16,000 pieces of pottery uncovered in Nessana – a city located in the southwest Negev desert in Israel, close to the Egyptian border.
The pottery was traded by the Roman Empire during the late 6th and early 7th centuries, confirming the civilization was still thriving.
The team found a ‘stark increase’ in the total number of pottery shards dating to after 550 AD, which they believed indicated ‘increase in the industrial capacity and prosperity of the region.’
‘This is especially noticeable in Nessana, which was dated to 550 to 700 AD, where a total of 16,148 sherds were found, a larger number than all the other areas and contexts from all the sites combined,’ they shared in the study.
The team then pulled from the shipwreck database of Harvard University and and the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP) database to identify a timeline for when Romans ships flourished in the Mediterranean.
These databases aggregated data on shipwrecks from antiquity, including their dates, site/shipwreck name, GPS location, and cargo.
‘The use of this type of data implements a method that has recently been applied in different studies,’ researcher wrote in the study published in the academic journal Klio.
‘This method assumes that the number of shipwrecks has statistical significance, and greater amounts of maritime traffic are reflected in higher numbers of shipwrecks in certain periods.’
The researchers said during the 2nd century AD, the number of Roman shipwrecks stayed consistent with between 200 and 300 occurring every 50 years.
‘Then, at the very end of the 5th century, there is a sharp decline of almost fifty percent in shipwreck numbers,’ the team shared.
‘The reason for such a severe reduction was most probably due to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century.
‘The fall of the west also symbolized the decline of the city of Rome and other western trade cities and their hinterlands, and their subsequent reduction in population.’
The data also showed the number of vessels dropped to just 67 by the second half of the 7th century, signifying that their trade routes were cut off.
‘This decline was most probably an outcome of the Persian war, and the Islamic conquest shortly after, which deprived Constantinople of most of the territories that were previously under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire,’ said the researchers.
The Roman and Persian Empires fought to control territories to expand their influence throughout Armenia, Mesopotamia and northern Syria.
These territories were strategically important because they offered more border protection and access to vital trade routes.
The Roman Empire won the war under the leadership of Emperor Heraclius who launched a counterattack deep into Persian territory, catching the army off guard and forcing them into a decisive battle near the ruins of Nineveh.
But the disrupted trade route slowly weakened the Roman Empire, leading to their demise.
The researchers said their findings go against other people who minimize the current climate crisis today by linking the mini ice age that occurred in the 6th century to the fall of the Roman Empire, claiming that it has always occurred and therefore is nothing to be concerned about.
‘We think that looking for climate change and plague as the cause for every significant change in history is problematic,’ Olshanetsky and Cosijns said.
‘This approach can especially harm the current climate change debate when claiming that past climate change caused catastrophic disruptions in society, in cases when there were none or limited effects,’ they continued.
‘Such claims may inadvertently support arguments that state since climate change has always occurred, the current man-made one is not a serious issue.’
