Ancient shipwrecks have given scientists fresh insights into why the final remnants of the Roman Empire collapsed – nearly 1,000 years after the fall of Rome.
In 330AD, Emperor Constantine split the Roman Empire into two eastern and western halves. Rome remained the capital of the Western Roman Empire, while Constantinople – modern-day Istanbul – was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire.
Rome – and the Western Roman Empire – fell in 476 AD. The ‘eternal city’ was brought down by political corruption, the division of the empire – and, finally, an invasion by multiple Germanic tribes, including the Franks, Vandals, Visigoths, and Marcomanni.
However, the Eastern Roman Empire would last for another 1,000 years before it too fell. At its peak, the Byzantine Empire stretched from southern Spain to Syria, on to to modern-day Turkey and Greece – and included much of the land around the Mediterranean Sea.
It was thought that plagues and climate change in the 6th century started Constantinople’s long and gradual demise. This decline culminated in the Ottoman Turks’ conquering of Constantinople in 1453 AD.
However, a new study suggests the empire actually flourished through a mini-ice age and the Justinianic Plague. Its decline actually coincided with the Muslim conquest of Persia, in the 7th century.
The Roman Empires had fought a series of wars with pre-Islamic Persian dynasties from 92 BC to the 7th century AD – when the Muslim conquest of Persia caused the downfall of the Sasanian Empire.
Now, new research published in the journal Klio by researchers Haggai Olshanetsky and Lev Cosijns suggests Byzantine and Mediterranean trade was flourishing until this Islamic expansion. Olshanetsky and Cosijns analysed shipwreck data and concluded that, far from a trade decline in the 6th century, there was a boom in eastern Mediterranean trade routes.
They argue this increased commerce does not reflect an economic crisis caused by plagues or climate changes in the 6th century. Instead, they say shipwreck data shows a significant decline in trade in the 7th century – which coincides with the Islamic conquests and the end of the conflict with Persia.
In the summary to their study, the authors write: “Why do empires fall? This is one of the questions that fascinate many, both in academia and among the general public.
“In the search for an answer, emotions are high, and imagination can run wild. Human intervention, mostly in the form of war, is commonly attributed to the decline of empires. Up until 40 years ago, historical research was oriented to this line of thinking.
“However, in recent decades, new suggestions have emerged that attributed the rise and fall of empires to climate and disease.
“Some believe that the Roman-Persian war of 602–628 CE, including the 14 years of conquest of Judaea/Palaestina (modern-day Israel and the West Bank) and Egypt, and the Islamic conquest after the Battle of Yarmuk of 636 CE, should not be viewed as the sole causes for the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire.
“The same researchers tried to claim that the Empire was already weakened in the 6th c. CE due to climatic and epidemiological disasters that contributed to the occurrence and consequences of the said wars. These calamities were the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) and the Justinianic plague, whose initial occurrence transpired in 541 to 544 CE, and which allegedly had multiple occurrences in the 200 years that followed and supposedly caused a decline in the size of the population.”
“By visualising the data on a micro and a macro-scale, it can be seen that the LALIA and the Justinianic plague did not have long-lasting consequences in the Eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, the data collated on the micro and macro-scale definitively depict the settlement decline as occurring from the 7th c. CE and onwards.”
