The Western Roman Empire falls

The causes are still debated: military overextension, currency debasement, plague, climate deterioration, civil wars and migrations triggered by Hunnic pressure from the east. The eastern half, Byzantium, lasted almost another thousand years. In the west civilisation did not disappear, but its scale did: long-distance trade, cities, literacy and monumental building all contracted sharply. The Church and the monasteries took over much of the cultural infrastructure. The idea of "the fall of Rome" as a sudden catastrophe is largely a later, moralised narrative.