I’ve spent the last year researching the late Roman Empire and specifically its collapse and the emergence of Western civilization in the Early Middle Ages. As you can see in the video below, Europe has more or less become Europe by 1000 AD while the map was completely different in 476 AD.
The Romans didn’t civilize Western Europe. Rome itself had become ruins, a cow pasture and a religious city which attracted pilgrims to see the tombs of the dead by this period. When civilization began to flare up again, the Roman Empire was distant memory. Medieval cities didn’t look anything like Roman cities even when they were built on Roman sites.
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