alt Hacker NewsAfter the Bronze age collapse, the Roman Empire rose. Once that collapsed it also took a very long time before another big empire arose (with perhaps a brief exception under Charlemagne).
It seems instead that the process of building a bureaucracy that can support an empire is tough. And that the conditions left behind after an empire collapses are particularly tough to re-consolidate under another empire.
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chrismatic • today at 2:14 PM
That analysis skips quite a few empires both before and after the Roman empire. Also, at least for the Romans the bureaucracy arguably came after the empire was already well established.
the roman empire was a long time after the bronze age collapse. It succeeded a long list of empires (assyrian, persian, macedonian, hellenic etc), and it only collapsed in the west. also the arab empires preceded charlemagne's