After800 years of dominating the Mediterranean region,Roman
rule collapsed in the5th century A.D.Since Edward Gibbon's classic 18th-century assessment,historians have offered as many as209 reasons for the Roman Empire's demise.Most theories about this period, called late antiquity,focus on broad historical patterns,like climate change,civil upheaval,and foreign invasions.In the 19th century, Social Darwinists argued that racial degeneration doomed Rome, while Marxists saw decline as the outcome of corrosive class con?let.
Recently,theories of economic inefficiency and an eroding tax
base have been in fashion.These perspectives blame Germanic tribes for devastating the Empire's richest provinces.Moreover,proponents say,the cost of maintaining a large army to defend against such attacks drained Roman revenues,making it difficult to rebuild.Finding clear proof of decline is difficult because most houses were built of perishable materials.However,archaeological evidence in the form of pottery pieces reveals that in the5th century,the acreage of land under cultivation dropped dramatically.Farming communities declined when Roman soldiers could no longer adequately protect the countryside from roaming warriors on horseback,and unarmed Roman citizens aed the countryside for the safety of cities.Zoo1ogists have recently corroborated a decline in agriculture during late antiquity by studying animal leg bones in different periods.They discovered that cattle and other domestic animals grew an average of 5 centimeters in height
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