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[Artoris]

Didn't they all wipe their asses communally with a shared sponge?

Personally, I think the loss of Atlantis was bigger blow for civilization.

"Didn't they all wipe their asses communally with a shared sponge?"

Yes, it belonged to the state

 

[NecrosaroIII]

There's no way of knowing, but chances are we'd all either speak Italian natively or at least know it as a second language.

What do you think happened anyway? Languages evolve

 

[BadBurger]

What do you think happened anyway? Languages evolve

Languages evolving has nothing to do with anything.

Why do you think so many people the world over speak English? Could it be because of the vast colonial empire England once held, followed by the numerous ways the United States has dominated commerce and mass media and entertainment the past sixty-plus years?

Imagine if Rome had actually held onto their empire.

 

[Cleared_Hot]

Whoever actually built the great pyramids... Just saying, I WANT to believe that theory

 

[Armorian]

Aside alternate timelines, there is always some interesting stuff on YT

 

[Fugitive Sex]

The short answer is a definitive "no". The Romans were not, generally, intellectual types who explored science or did art for its own sake or to understand the human condition of whatever.

If you study them, or really even give a cursory look at their character, you'll notice a barbaric and even sadistic streak that they took pleasure in channelling.

There is a reason that, despite their suffocating influence on them, the majority of intellectuals and writers etc., during the Roman period were still Greeks. These are the people that murdered Archimedes without a second thought.

They made some nice roads, though.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

Nations didn’t exist in a vacuum even back then. The Arab world and Europe intermingled well before the dark ages ended, I can guarantee you. You are stuck on a certain “anti-narrative” designed to paint western culture as the oppressor, and everyone else as a weak and oppressed people. The truth takes more emotional understanding to suss out from all the noise.

Haxan, what are you talking about?

The cultural transfers I mentioned are historically demonstrated I don't understand why you make a point about intermingling, when cultural transfers already mean undermingling happened.. There's no opressors or opressed in my post and the only false narrative is that the enlightment happened in a bubble.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

Languages evolving has nothing to do with anything.

Why do you think so many people the world over speak English? Could it be because of the vast colonial empire England once held, followed by the numerous ways the United States has dominated commerce and mass media and entertainment the past sixty-plus years?

Imagine if Rome had actually held onto their empire.

Latin evolved into other languages besides Italian. And last I checked those languages are spoken all over the world

 

[Shadowplay1979]

no, advancement comes from failure and learning from it. This is why you never blame the children for the sins of the father.....i would never go back in time and kill hitler or stop slavery because then we would likely still have both.

 

[IDKFA]

In short. Unknown

When people talk about the fall of the Roman Empire, they are normally refering to the fall of the Western Empire, which happened in around 476. However, the Eastern Empire morphed into the Byzantine Empire, which lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, so a lot of historians count that date as the end of the Roman empire.

If the Byzantine Empire somehow managed to fight off the might of the Ottoman Empire, then that really wouldn't make much of a difference to the world from a technology standpoint.

However, I assume the question is asking if the Roman Empire didn't split and remained at it's height as it was from the later half of the second century. The answer to that is a complete unknown. No Empire or massive world power has lasted that long. The saying all Empires fall is true.

If the Roman empire remained, then it's doubtful that we would have had the renaissance period,
the enlightenment and certainly no huge world wars that center over Europe, which is important because one of the few benefits of war is that it contributes to the development of new technologies (such as the V2 rocket in WW2 for example, which ultimately lead to the Space Race and humans landing on the moon).

But on the other side, it could lead to other major world events that generated even greater technology. It's frankly impossible to know for sure.

 

[AJUMP23]

We would have more forums, because Romans loved that stuff.

 

[SireSmogMurk]

It's hard to say. I do believe their scientific process would look different then ours to say the least. They may have flourished in areas we don't as they may have had a willingness to utilize slaves for experimentation. But they may have stifled areas of research that we flourish in today. They may have stagnated and stopped making meaningful advancements and their society focused on wars to expand the empire.

 

[BadBurger]

Latin evolved into other languages besides Italian. And last I checked those languages are spoken all over the world

Oh I get what you were saying.

But I was referring to how they were already speaking Italian at that point. The Romance Languages didn't spawn into existence immediately upon the fall of half of Rome. No reason why Italian wouldn't have spread if they remained in control.

 

[Durask]

The Roman Empire was actually quite stagnant technology wise.
What we call "the Dark Ages" was actually a time of significant technological progress.

 

[AJUMP23]

I bet our road construction would be better.

 

[Shai-Tan]

 

[MHubert]

Oh I get what you were saying.

But I was referring to how they were already speaking Italian at that point. The Romance Languages didn't spawn into existence immediately upon the fall of half of Rome. No reason why Italian wouldn't have spread if they remained in control.

Italian as we know it came to be during the middle ages. Before that, they generally spoke (popular) Latin in the region. Had Rome never fallen, it would be very unlikely that the Italian language would even exist today.

There are more people speaking romance languages today, than English.

 

[Epic Sax CEO]

not likely.
Eastern Roman Empire didn't collapse for a thousand years after that.
The dark ages are over exaggerated.

Yes, "progress" continued everywhere except that little backwards that was Western Europe.
You could flip this question asking what would be if the Mongols had not decimated half the islamic world during it's Golden Age. The destruction of Baghdad was a greater lost that the Alexandria Library (also a bit overrated).

As much as I hate the word, this is a flawed eurocentric view.

While Europe was going through the Dark Ages, the Califate was going through a golden era of cultural development. They developed a better number system and in fact the numbers as you know them, 0123456789 are arabic numerals, brought to europe by Fibonacci. They pioneered the scientific method and advanced in mathematics, astronomy and optics. The European Enlightement wouldn't have happend without the transference of arabic culture.

"INDO-arabic"
The Indians also contributed a lot.

I don't attribute the decline of the middle west to "fanaticism", other factors parallel or not related to religion contributed more to create an hostile environment to scientific research and it's applications. Be it death and destruction from foreign invaders (British in India) or simple ruler feeling that things were "good enough", for example happened plenty of times in China, I think. China retracted a few times voluntarily while they were at the top of their game, and I hear they had a vaccine for Smallpox almost 200 years before it reached Europe but the ruler at the time never bothered with innoculating more than his family?

Progress simply isn't linear, just look around and see all the destruction we are causing at the world right now.

 

[Yoboman]

How much did Romans really improve technology?

They were around for a thousand years but it seems like way more progress was made when they were rid of

 

[thegame983]

The Europeans that existed after the Roman Empire collapsed couldn't even repair the Aqueducts that the Romans had built because they were didn't have the wherewithal to do so.

It took a 1000 years for the standard of living and education levels to reach the level it did at the height of the empire.

 

[AeonGaidenRaiden]

Didn't they all wipe their asses communally with a shared sponge?

Personally, I think the loss of Atlantis was bigger blow for civilization.

Well they are the ones that invented modern sewage systems especially for toilet needs. If it wasn't for them we would still be shitting on the floor in front of our door.

 

[West Texas CEO]

If it wasn't for them we would still be shitting on the floor in front of our door.

I prefer to drop shits on my neighbors door, but whatever.

 

[Rentahamster]

 

[Kamina]

New report that confirms the discrepancy between vaccinated people and unvaccinated people.

SARS-CoV-2 Infections and Hospitalizations Among Persons...

COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, reinfection, and hospitalization in fully, partially, and unvaccinated people during the Delta variant in Los Angeles County, California.

www.cdc.gov

Wrong thread?

 

[Rentahamster]

Wrong thread?

lol yup

 

[Star-Lord]

The Romans invented the abacus.

Modern man invented Facebook and TikTok.

The Romans got it right.

 

[QuantumZebra]

We'd be more technologically advanced if an asteroid hadn't hit and melted the ice caps wiping out the ancient ones. They were more advanced than the Romans.

First off, this is a fire reply ^

On topic: we'd be more advanced if Caesar's dumb ass hadn't of burned down the most important library in human history. Essentially the internet before it existed.

 

[PleaseDontBanMe]

humans would be star trek next generation status right now if religion never existed

 

[lachesis]

Interesting that why Roman Empire...? Why not ancient Mesopotamia or other ancient civilization?
To be honest, never even thought about Roman Empire, as I think Roman Empire is actually too recent and we already know so much about it in detail, compared to other ancient ones.

I did think about ancient Egypt though. Just to find out how in the heck they were able to build such structures like Pyramid and see modern day Anck-Su-Namuuuun!

 

[West Texas CEO]

humans would be star trek next generation status right now if religion never existed

 

[nush]

Just to find out how in the heck they were able to build such structures like Pyramid

 

[Tams]

I doubt it. I mean, the Roman Empire collapsed due to decadence and greed. Furthermore, it did continue on via the Byzantine Empire. And then on top of that the Middle East saw lots of innovation and China went through periods of it too. And yet no one got to the Moon or anything like that.

So while some knowledge was lost, it really wasn't that much.

I mean, Japan is full of , relatively speaking, space age equivalent medieval technology (just look at their super high tech traditional cuisine full of superfoods and novel textures; look at their badass swords; look at their armor; look at their traditional construction methods) so i guess, yeah, if we hadn't gone through the middle ages we might be further along by now, if only because the middle ages kinda gave religion a boost as a method of domination... yuh i guess i can agree that something woulda happened differently

I'm going to jump in here and burst this romantic bubble view of Japan.

Japan is not more advanced than any other developed country. There are a few areas where they have led and a few of those where they still lead, but on the whole, it is just another prosperous (debt-ridden), developed country.

It isn't the 90s and early 00s anymore and hasn't been for over a decade. Yet Japan still rides off its past reputation.

 

[haxan7]

If it wasn't for them we would still be shitting on the floor in front of our door.

 

[haxan7]

humans would be star trek next generation status right now if religion never existed

 

[Tschumi]

I'm going to jump in here and burst this romantic bubble view of Japan.

Japan is not more advanced than any other developed country. There are a few areas where they have led and a few of those where they still lead, but on the whole, it is just another prosperous (debt-ridden), developed country.

It isn't the 90s and early 00s anymore and hasn't been for over a decade. Yet Japan still rides off its past reputation.

u picked the wrong post upon which to found your clearly long-since-formulated statements...

i live here, and i came here at short notice to live with my wife whom i had met in my home country, not because i'm a weeb... before i came here i never even considered living here because I thought it was an overly expensive country with big social problems (i was and remain in love with Beijing, ironically, where i lived from ages 15-20, though i don't plan to go there anymore) that's where my interpretation of this place comes from.

Nothing I mentioned in the post you quoted had anything to do with the bubble economy, or excesses of that period. I was exclusively listing off traditional, medieval things that came to a more advanced state because the Japanese 'medieval period' - while not clear cut or homogenous - extended far further towards the modern day than the European one. Basically, I hold up miso, natto, mochi, and a dozen other 'high tech' traditional foods (as I've interpreted them - having lived for a total of 20 years of my life in brussles, berlin, beijing, nagoya and now tokyo,, in addition to 10 or so in my home country of australia - against the traditional foods of other cultures) as examples of highly refined medieval technologies that only exist because they, as food technologies - were allowed to ferment - if you'll pardon the pun on foment - for so much longer.

So, yes, my point was that if the romans had also existed until the meiji restoration then, yes, perhaps italy would currently be providing us with their own take on miso, or some hyper advanced plumbing and public bathing system which had helped Europe fight off the black death with greater success - just spitballin' here.

NOTE: funnily enough they say that the Mediterranean diet is the closest the west has come to the japanese diet, i hear, so who knows what might have been with that added time for development

 

[Scotty W]

Pliny the Elder relates, via wikipedia:

“Purportedly, the unnamed inventor of flexible glass (vitrum flexile) brought a drinking bowl made of the material before Tiberius Caesar. The bowl was put through a test to break it, but it merely dented, rather than shattering. The inventor repaired the bowl easily with a small hammer, according to Petronius. After the inventor swore that he was the only man alive who knew the manufacturing technique, Tiberius had the man executed. He feared that the glass would devalue gold and silver, since the material might be more valuable.”

 

[Kazza]

Ah, a golden opportunity to stan for whatifalhist:




I've set the video up to begin at the part where he talks about the effect on technological progress, but the whole video is well worth watching (albeit at 1.5/2 times speed - he's a slow talker).

In contrast to most people here so far, he believes that the world would be a few centuries behind where we are right now. He said that Europe would be more similar to how China has been up until modern times. I've become less of a Rome fanboy since doing more reading about it, and now realise lots of our negative views of the "dark ages" originate in Enlightenment propaganda.

There was generally much more tech advancement during the middle ages than during the Roman period:

 

[nush]

 

[Kenpachii]

No, war advances technology drastically. without conflict there would be barely to no progress most likely.

The rise and fall of empires is what progresses us forwards.

 

[darrylgorn]

Interesting that why Roman Empire...? Why not ancient Mesopotamia or other ancient civilization?
To be honest, never even thought about Roman Empire, as I think Roman Empire is actually too recent and we already know so much about it in detail, compared to other ancient ones.

I did think about ancient Egypt though. Just to find out how in the heck they were able to build such structures like Pyramid and see modern day Anck-Su-Namuuuun!

Yup.

Egypt and Ancient Greece are AAA.

If Caesar's legacy had been quashed once and for all and Marc Antony had maintained the Roman Republic, you would see much better advancement of genuine human interest.