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I'm going to Las Vegas this weekend to see Eddie Izzard. I might even get a history and Latin lesson (see below): guy also known as gaius

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.

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.

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?