A new study has launched a new hypothesis as to what was the key event that triggered the fall of the Roman Empire 1,500 years ago, and which disproves some of the pre-existing theories.
Authors, Lev Cosijns of Oxford University and Haggai Olshanetsky, of the University of Warsaw, have relied on a comprehensive analysis of Roman shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean at multiple sites, including Marseilles, Naples, Carthage, eastern Spain, and Alexandria, to better understand what caused the collapse.
They identified a timeline for when Roman ships, which lined the coasts by the hundreds in their heyday, began to disappear and were reduced to just a few dozen in the second half of the 7th century.
They also analyzed Roman goods from the same period at tens of thousands of sites in numerous regions, including. Israel, Tunisia, Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, and Greece, suggesting that the group was still in full commercial activity.
The researchers said that instead of a decline, there was an increase in prosperity and demographics in the second half of the 6th century AD. The information “led us to conclude that the Eastern Roman Empire began to decline… after a disruption in trade and military failures.”they say.
Previous research had suggested that a plague decimated the Roman Empire in A.D. 543 or a climate change that peaked in the mid-6th century.
But the new study has found that the civilization was at the height of its power, economic production and population. “Thus, it appears that the year 536 AD. was not the worst year to live“, Cosijns states. “At least, not for most people who lived at that time,” he says.
The experts extracted information from Harvard University’s shipwreck database and the database of the Oxford Roman Economics Project (OXREP). to identify a chronology of when Roman ships flourished in the Mediterranean.
These databases added information on shipwrecks of antiquity, including their dates, site name/shipwreck, GPS location and cargo.
“The use of this data type implements a method that has been applied. recently in different studies“, wrote the principal investigator in the study published in the academic journal Klio.
“This method assumes that the number of shipwrecks has statistical significance and that more maritime traffic is reflected in a higher number of shipwrecks in certain periods,” they say.
The researchers believe that during the 2nd century AD, the number of Roman shipwrecks remained constant, between 200 and 300 every 50 years.
“Then, at the end of the 5th century, there is a marked decline of almost fifty percent in the number of shipwrecks,” they continue.
“The reason for such a severe reduction was probably due to the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the end of the fifth century. The fall of the West also symbolized the decline of the city of Rome and other western commercial cities and their environs, and their consequent reduction in population,” the study adds.
The data also showed that the number of ships was reduced to only 67 in the second half of the 7th century, which means that their trade routes were cut off.
“This decline was probably a result of the Persian war and the Islamic conquest shortly thereafter.which deprived Constantinople of most of the territories previously under the dominion of the Eastern Roman Empire,” the researchers say.
The Roman and Persian empires struggled to control territories in order to expand their influence across Armenia, Mesopotamia, and northern Syria. These territories were strategically important because they offered greater 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, taking the army by surprise and forcing them into a decisive battle near the ruins of Nineveh. But the interruption of the trade route slowly weakened the Roman Empire, leading to its demise.