1600 years ago the apocalypse struck Britain

You live in a city, in your life you have always had plumbing, under floor heating and your days are spent at the shops buying the newest shiniest toy.   The world is your oyster, you travel the boundaries looking for interesting sites and you enjoy food and clothing from around the world.  Weapons are banned and you rely on the local police to enforce the peace.   On top of all that you follow your local sports with passion and follow all the local gossip about some starlet and her sports hero boyfriend.

No you do not live in New York, maybe London, or more accurately Londinium.  You are a Roman Britain living in a place in the future to be known as England.   And in 410, according to tradition, you are about to meet your end of days, welcome to your apocalypse.

At least that is the contention of this article published by BBC History Magazine.   The cold hard facts are not as simple as that but some where around 410 what we know as Roman Britain, with its colossal buildings, luxurious homes, massive industry and sporting lifestyle ends.   Our understanding of that period is as vacant as the dirt layer which is nearly 400 years deep covering the last age of mass industry and great luxury.  In some ways, as the article contends, we are more comfortable with the Roman Imperial life than we are with all that come after it until the later part of the 19th century.

The protection and easy lifestyle that most citizens in Britain lived under the sometimes brutal Roman Peace (Pax Romana) left them soft and unable to fight off the disease, destruction and warfare of the later dark ages.   In a way what happened to the British population may have been similar to what happened to native Americans who were ravaged by disease and internal strife as the Europeans started to arrive to the shores of America.

As strong men and enemy invaders took over much of what was civilization for nearly four hundred years vanished taking with it any recognition that the Romans had ever came.  In fact only two real artifacts remain in the English culture.

1. Christianity held out in the fringes and soon fought and conquered the invaders.

2. Latin remained thanks to the Christian priests who continued to keep the language alive long after those speaking it every day were dead.

All the other Roman innovations, dialect, ways of living were gone, like a ghost all that is left is shadows saying there was once others living here.  And suddenly like some sort of major apocalypse all that was left was a great gap between where you were and where the world progressed.

Tags: History, Roman, Roman Britain