The best thing the Romans did for Britain was leave

[Viggen]

Brits, Eurosceptics since 410AD

 

The Romans brought aqueducts, wealth, security and hot baths to Britain but the best thing they did for the population was to leave, a historian has suggested.

Studies of graves in cemeteries from the 400AD to 650AD show that Britons, on average, lived for around two years longer following the fall of the Roman Empire.

Robin Fleming, professor of history from Boston College in the US, said that once Britons were no longer forced to pay taxes they were able to eat more nutritious food which increased longevity....

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11415022/The-best-thing-the-Romans-did-for-Britain-was-leave-historian-claims.html

 

 

[GhostOfClayton]

Keep this under your hat.  There are a number of political parties that would peddle this as scientific proof that ordinary citizens thrive in a low tax economy, conveniently ignoring JK Galbraith's slightly more contemporary works.

[Pompieus]

I have a minor problem with these types of announcements (they seem to be popular just now).   Do they reflect current political or academic agendas? (whatever they may be? - I hesitate to even speculate on the current politics in Catholic Universities in the Northeastern US).

 

How can they have statistically significant data on diet or life expectancy in the 4th or 5th century? how many graves? How do they date them? how do they know how old the people were or what they ate?  Can the Britons really have had a longer life expectancy and higher standard of living when being ruled by dozens of petty warlords engaged in endemic warfare? Do people normally live longer in rural environments without urban centers?  How do they know what tax rates were under the Romans and Saxons, did Saxons even collect taxes or just steal whatever they wanted? If things were so swell under the Germanic invaders why did the Welsh and Cornish resist and the  Bretons emigrate?

 

In the 60's and 70s there was a revisionist trend that claimed that the Germanic invaders were not such bad guys (proto-hippies?) relative to the authoritarian Romans (the  "establishment"),  Is this a resurgence?

Edited March 5, 2015 by Pompieus

[Maty]

It's actually possible to date age at death pretty accurately. It has to do when certain bone structures are complete and when they start to decalcify. Think wisdom teeth for a very crude idea.

 

Apart from that, we need a link to the original article (I couldn't find it online). Firstly that should tell us some of the missing vital information such as the sample size, dating techniques and grave locations. Crucially, did the Roman era bones show significantly higher malnutrition? If the 'pay lower taxes, eat better' thesis has any merit they should. And the story should have reported this rather essential fact.

 

Of course, those villagers slaughtered by raiders were probably not buried neatly enough for their remains to be discovered later, nor those on the side that came second in a battle. So just as long-lived villa owners skewed the statistics in Roman times, those who lived long enough to die peacefully might skew the stats in the post-Roman era.

 

More probably, given the size of any feasible sample set, two years is well within the margin of stastical error.

[caldrail]

Forced to pay taxes? I wasn't aware there was that level of begrudgement in Roman Britain in the last century of provincial status. It is true that the Britons developed a frustration with the administration but that sort of official laziness was part of the late empire as a whole. Never mind that Theodosius had actually tried to sort out saxon piracy and had invested heavily in urban protection in the British Isles (Cunetio, just ten or so miles from where I live, was given a very formidable wall around that time. Not bad for a small market town whose only claim to fame was pottery).

 

I do think this sort of transference of modern attitude into historic situations really does nothing positive.

[Onasander]

Ummm... I want to see the data. I can't conceive how one arrives at a statistically reliable method. Was every grave marked with a date, or very distinctive, datable pottery in each grave? Did people north of the wall increase or maintain same life expectancy?

 

However, the mere fact were all asking this is a very good thing, so his potential absurdity may be a heaven sent gadfly.

 

And the only thing Catholic Universities in the North East are teaching are how to have abortions and how to hate america.... I wouldn't read too much into the word Catholic, they undoubtedly are like every other university with a confused mob of discontents a behavioral stone-throw away from ISIS. That's what universities essentially are these days, for the creed attached to their name is irrevelant unless you stumble into their campus chapel by accident.

[mrteetd]

Whether you agree or disagree if it was the best thing for the Romans to leave Britain or not, it wasn't until the middle of the 20th century, many in Europe did not have running water to each home. Fifteen Hundred years, give or take a few hundred, of no running water? I guess you could speak for all aspects of life we were deprived of because of the fall of Rome. Not taking sides, just saying. Talk about going backwards.

[caldrail]

However it's also true that running water was not universal to Romano-British homes, and indeed, many of the smaller villas wouldn't have had such an amenity.

[indianasmith]

I tend to agree with Pompieus - this reeks of modern political/academic agenda rather than hard science.

It would be very hard to get a large enough statistical sample to make such a negligible chronological difference valid.

If the age gap were, say, ten years in a broad sample pre and post Roman occupation, that might be more intriguing.

[GhostOfClayton]

The relationship between a society's health and its wealth are very complex.  We're all living longer, and it's widely believed this is due to improved standards of healthcare made possible by a wealthier society.  Is that the end of the story?  Of course not.  We also eat and drink more, making us far more overweight than previous generations.  If you look at the post WW2 populations, they were all very poor, with very little food about the place and loads of manual work to do.  Pre-NHS and very poor, yet very healthy (apart from too many ciggies).  Yet there are plenty of counter examples of populations where poverty is causing shortened lifespans.

 

The relationship between wealth and tax levels is also complex.  A higher nett income after tax is no indicator of what we usually think of as 'wealth'.  Availability of goods/housing/services, inflation, social infrastructure, crime, etc. all impact on how wealthy we feel, whether or not we have money in our pocket.

 

Lastly, we're all human beings, so we never feel 'wealthy'.  We percieve the world in relative terms, so we only ever feel 'wealthier' or 'less wealthy' than other individuals, other countries, or ourselves last year/next year.

 

I think we've now reached consensus that this study is b*ll*cks.

[Vercingetorix Dux]

Not taking into concideration the weather conditions of some certain years , particularly in the dark ages following the fall of Roman britain the weather was conciderably better than it is today, grapes were grown in britian, the climate acording to the experts who know the enviromental history of an area, state that the weather was 4 degrees warmer at this time, Hence producing better and more food. Also wine imports from britain to france were making the economy great. However having said that i am convinced that the fall of the Roman empire put the human race back 1000 years technology wise and the coming middle age disasterous replacement fueldal system along with lack of hygenic water and lots of descise could have been avoided if the emire had survived.