Long Timelines

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Storn

An interesting theory on the "fall" of Rome. My very good friend and fellow gamer went to Harvard for history. HIs study was Papal politics. HIs good friend and fellow classmate was studying Rome and came up with this:. A interesting tidbit... the families the owned the land (and the records in Italy are pretty good, it was literate culture and survived) before the "fall", still owned the land and in many cases are still on the same land right up to today. The same families. They weren't killed or driven off. They didn't take on "Barbarian" surnames... in fact, it seems that many German tribes married into the italian families and took italian surnames.

 

The Harvard fellow's opinion was that there was NO fall of Rome. Sure, Rome changed. Rome absorbed and adapted and as a gov't structure it was decentralized and would stay decentralized til 1930s. But the people stayed. The power stayed where it has always been up to recent times, in the land. So if there is no Fall, then what do you predicate the beginning of the Dark Ages on? Now, I think the counter arguement is that Rome as an expansionistic power, fell. But I do wonder just how Dark those ages really were. I think a lot less dark than we think.

 

Just what I think is an interesting nugget.

Did the Harvard fellow discuss the massive decrease in population largely due to disease, decrease in urbanization, and massive disruption of commerce with the decline of Rome? Roman legions stopped garrisoning fortresses, patrols ceased and the countryside grew to depend upon the landed and the strongmen. I'm no fan of the term Dark Ages but I think his description of the changes wrought is understated just as the term Dark Ages is overstated.

[Markdoc]

I think the truth is in between the two things. Rome really did "fall" in that it went from being the capital of a huge empire to being a large city with significant burnt-out areas. Local power moved to Ravenna, imperialpower move dto Constantinople. The disappearance of the legions also made a differnce - though not as much as you might think. Even at its height Rome only fielded 35 legions. That's less than 200,000 men to hold down all of Europe, the middle east and North Africa - an area with a population in the range of 20-40 million. The myth of the legion was as important as the fact, and when Rome was sacked, that myth went "poof!"

 

But Storn's friends are also right - the local barbarians who moved in did not do so in huge numbers, in contrast to the population that were already there. They did however grab a lot of the best stuff (castles, grazing land, people's daughters). Many historians point to this as one of the underpinnings of the feudal system: the grafting of the Germanic system of blood oaths onto an existing system of civitas. I think it is one of the important reasons European civilisation developed as it did: it divorced the bulk of the nobility from the church - especially outside Italy. Previously the nobles provided the upper ranks of the church as well. The seperation between church and state did not arise in Williamsburg - it's a direct outgrowth of the battle between kings with Germanic roots and a papacy with largely Italian ones.

 

Some cities, such as Vence, flourished under the Romans, became briefly independent - and flourished, fell under the control of the Lombards - and flourished, became independant and kept on flourishing...until the focus of trade moved to northern France in the late middle ages, at which point it shrivelled away (It's still there, though as are many roman buildings)

 

So "Dark ages" probably is a myth. Some areas, primarily in Italy, suffered catastrophically - invasion, loss of income and food. The European population continued to grow - it wasn't until 1000 AD that deforestation started to definitively outstrip forest growth and it had never done that under the Romans.

 

But with the fall of Rome (which I don't think is a myth), the old western empire fragmented. That did not stop technological development or trading or lots of other things. But it did lead to increased internal war, slower transmission of goods and ideas, etc.

 

cheers, Mark

[Maelstrom]

Re: Long Timelines

 

If you still want a rationale for the lack of technology' date=' you may consider that technology is often driven by need. If you have access to healing magic, you probably lack the drive and dedication to pursue scientific medical research, for instance.[/quote']

 

 

This is an excellent point, and one that I often investigate in the course of the game. If you consider magic not anti-technology, but an alternate technology, you can see why the tech that we use and enjoy today would never develop. As I said (and later saw in a short story) any sufficiently developed magic is indistinguishable from technology.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Long Timelines

 

Well, for my world, I used a combination of the above ideas.

 

Now, lets look at this from another angle. Every now and then you'll hear some funky story which tosses our idea of history on its ear. I am no historian, but in high school Egypt was ranked as the oldest society at about 5500 BC as its "dawn." Then they find ruins somewhere that date to 6000 BC. Then someone claims this temple in Peru is actually 17,000 years old and still has accurate solar, lunar, or celestial calendars built into it or whatever. Then you hear about a battery, that should have worked to produce electricity, is found in some sumerian ruin.

 

So exactly how well do we know our own history? Was Noah's Ark a legend, a true story, or some part of both? I can pull up scientific evidence that the flood did or did not happen, and I can show you one expert who will say it covered all the earth and another who claims the whole story is folklore about when the Mediterranean overflowed into the Persian Gulf and took out many inhabitants of a once fertile valley, and that the great flood hardly covered the whole world.

 

 

This uncertainty is a great tool in thinking of Fantasy worlds. I make up history as it actually happened -- a general idea at least -- but only focus on recent history for the real details.

 

My world has three (now starting the fourth) "ages." The First Age was a span of time unknown, and was the time where the gods were creating the old races (Elves, Ogres, Gith/Lizarmen, Gnomes, Dwarves) and nobody knows much about this time -- this is the equivalent of cave man times. The Age of War was when the races began fighting their gods' jealous wars, and is a long story. During the age of war, the world did indeed have high tech -- energy weapons, nuclear devices, aircraft -- and the destruction they caused is one of the main reasons they will likely never be seen again. After the Age of War, Vau -- "GOD" -- did a number of things to ensure the Age of War would never repeat. The world took a LONG time to recover, still hasn't in places -- but the Age of Darkness lasted for god knows how long while the world recovered, and now the Age of Men has begun. Humans, too, advanced to almost industrial age technology before the Gith Wars gave them their own Dark Ages to deal with. Humans have a history of about 5500 years, a little longer if you include their legends and folklore concerning the earlier times. Elves have a written history of about 20,000 years -- from the day their new city, Solacia, was founded on Telos. They know of what happened prior to this, but not how long it took to transpire. The elves spent the dark ages wandering the wilderness, and in most places are still a nomadic and primitive people, only in Solacia have they reclaimed their former nobility. Most people, even most young elves, find anything further back than the Gith Wars as mere legend. Few landmarks remain to tell these tales -- there are some ruins and ancient writings that hint at things, and I even plan on introducing some very very ancient stuff to the players at some point.

 

Long histories mean tons of lost civilizations, ancient runes, and long-sought-after items of power. In short, long histories are easy to pull story ideas from. They don't make sense, and are impossible to justify to anyone who tries to throw real world logic at them.

 

Tech doesn't exist (much) on my world partially because magic makes it impractical, partially because everytime anyone gets close the world tries to blow up, and partially because the powers that be like to ensure that their creation does not wind up a smoking cinder again.