A new study has launched a new hypothesis about what was the key event that caused the fall of the Roman Empire 1,500 years ago, and which disproves some of the pre-existing theories.
The authors, Lev Cosijns from the University of Oxford and Haggai Olshanetsky, from the University of Warsaw, have drawn on a comprehensive analysis of Roman shipwrecks across the Mediterranean at multiple sites, including Marseille, Naples, Carthage, eastern Spain and Alexandria, to better understand what caused the crash.
They identified a timeline for when Roman ships, which lined the coasts by the hundreds at their peak, began to disappear and were reduced to just a few dozen in the second half of the 7th century.
They also analyzed Roman assets from the same period at tens of thousands of sites in numerous regions, including Israel, Tunisia, Jordan, Cyprus, Türkiye, Egypt and Greece, suggesting that the group was still in full business 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. C. 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 543 AD. C. or a climate change that It reached its peak in the middle of the 6th century.
But the new study has found that the civilization was at the height of its power, economic production and population. “So it seems that the year 536 AD. It was not the worst year to live“says Cosijns. ‘At least not for most people who lived at that time,’ he says.
The experts extracted information from the shipwreck database of Harvard University and the database of the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP) to identify a chronology of when Roman ships flourished in the Mediterranean.
These databases aggregated information on ancient shipwrecks, including their dates, name of the site/shipwreck, GPS location and charging.
“The use of this type of data implements a method that has been applied recently in different studies“wrote the lead researcher in the study published in the academic journal Klio.
“This method assumes that the number of shipwrecks has statistical significance and that greater maritime traffic is reflected in a greater number of shipwrecks in certain periods,” they say.
Researchers believe that during the 2nd century AD. C., 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 decrease 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 5th century. The fall of the West “It also symbolized the decline of the city of Rome and other Western commercial cities and its surroundings, and its 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, meaning that Their trade routes were cut off.
“This decline was probably result of the Persian war and the Islamic conquest shortly afterwhich deprived Constantinople of most of the territories that were previously under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire,” the researchers say.
The Roman and Persian empires fought to control territories to expand their influence by 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, which led to his disappearance.