Copper production and the fall of empires

[nancylebov]

This is a chart which seems to show that empires decline well before they fall, as shown by a sharp drop-off in copper production before the end.

I am absolutely not qualified to judge whether this is based on plausible information. If you know some appropriate history, what do you think?

Comments

[twistedchick]

I would like to see this graph stretched out to its full length, not truncated. As it is, the timeline is misleading -- since we are at 0, and it's working backward, the most immediate 1000 years are so jammed that it's hard to tell what I'm looking at.

[mishalak]

Ditto and I would also like to know how in the world they are estimating copper production. I mean it is not like the Romans had a copper producers council that kept track of yearly production.

[siderea]

I mean it is not like the Romans had a copper producers council that kept track of yearly production.

Pliny's Naturalis Historia, books XXXIII through XXXVII. (Wikipedia.)

Romans were famous for the high standard of their bureaucracy. Maybe you know something I don't, but all things being equal, I wouldn't bet against them having a copper producers council that kept track of yearly production -- or more likely a copper production government office.

Also, simply googling roman copper production turns up a whole lot of hits which indicate in one way or another that Roman copper production was remarkable for its quantity; this seems to be a widely accepted fact.

As to anything else on that chart, I have no idea.

[mishalak]

The first thing that springs to mind when I think of Pliny is his inclusion of sciapods and dog headed people in his Natural History. He was brilliant in some ways, but he could also be rather like a random collection of 'facts' from the internet and without serious research it is hard to say which parts of his books are which.

There are plenty of estimate of Roman copper production, yes. Which set of estimates is the chart using? Is is Pliny, Greenland ice cores, department of political ax to grind? The chart is not sourced and so cannot be evaluated even if I were an expert in the history of cooper.