To be pedantic, the Roman Empire did not fall in 472. It lived on in the eastern Mediterranean for another one thousand years. The Eastern Romans even took back a fair amount of western Roman holdings for a bit. The people who actually killed the Roman Empire were the Franks, permanently weakening it during the Latin occupation.

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thomassmith65 10 hours ago | parent [-]

The Catholic church is an institution of the Roman Empire, and it's still around. That puts things in perspective, I find, and makes me wonder if 100 thousand years from now, historians will just lump the Romans and us into the same bucket.

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hyperman1 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I've always thought of the USA as the east Roman Empire of the British Empire. The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK. Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

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nsavage 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a really interesting idea. I'd never put this together myself, but its really compelling. It really shows the value of the phrase "history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme".

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mathgeek 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

Which religion brings those thoughts to mind? As an American I often find myself combining a handful of the American denominations into one, but I’m interested to hear what an outsider sees projected.

	▲	hyperman1 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Basically, the whole protestant faction. A sibling comment mentions Lutheran (German) and Mennonites (Dutch). There is of course catholicism from the Irish, but the Anglicans are suspiciously small.

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alephnerd 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

This underestimates how Germanic, Irish, Italian, and Hispanic America is.

For example - Hot dogs, Hamburgers, Budweiser, Chrysler, Rockefeller, Disney, the New York Times, Christmas Trees, Lutheran congregations, Mennonite congregations, etc are all German.

And having stayed in the UK for extended periods for work, it is significantly different culturally speaking than much of the US.