Are there any real life equivalents of Markarth...

Incas didn't build Cuzco

Tons. Rome after the western collapse would be the best example, with everyone living in crazy advanced ruins that are seemingly devoid of people.

elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Markarth
hmm, closest thing I can think of is Claudium Virunum and Magdalensburg

>everyone living
>devoid of people

Rome

...

>Rome got replaced by a different civilization
Are you retarded? It was just the state that collapsed, the people remained there.

Outside of the ebic replies in this thread, either the Maya and other central American cultures that died out before the Spanish conquest, or Great Zimbabwe are good contenders.

Constantinople was pretty much completely destroyed in the Fourth Crusade, the Greeks living in it after getting it back were pretty much living in ruins, and not even the Ottomans could restore it to anything matching its former glory until after centuries.

...

> Great Zimbabwe

lol

Only correct answer

...

"no"

Great argument brainlet.

>Great Zimbabwe
>civlization

go to bet benito you are no fucking latin

Reminder that the "Great Zimbabwe" was neither great, nor a zimbabwe

Stop overdosing on memes.

Well it was a quite a different civilisation

Did German civilization stop existing after Dresden?

It was a zimbabwe though (Great house of rock)

Well it was a proto civilization but it didn't produce much besides a few ruins that I can count on my hand

Yes

German Civilization never existed.

It had nothing to do with civilization, it was a collection of mud huts surrounded by a drystack.

t. Schlomo Schekelstein

It never existed to start with, it was cultural appropriation

>until after centuries.

They never restored it to its former glory.
People were writing about how filthy and shitty it was until the empire collapsed.

I like how you try to spin the nuhistorical yarn about the Crusaders destroying everything in the city, bearing in mind that they looted it for three days, which is the same time the Turks looted it, with a smaller army.

'Not even the Ottomans', as though they were great architects or city builders. Anyone besides the Ottomans could have restored Constantinople in that space of time, or built something equivalent.

Berlin, Paris, London, etc.

Berlin?

Built by Germans, now its inhabited by 'just people', like London and Paris.

Berlin started off as a Slavic swamp village.

pretty sure this thread - bait as it may be - focuses on cities which were already big fucking cities by the time other civilization settled them

Constantinople

>swamp village
>a city

No it didn't, it was a swamp village and then Germans built a city on it.
That said, 'just person' detected. Do you live on Germany?

Detroit

>on Germany
>on
Brazilian/Sudaca monkey detected. And no, I live in Russia.

They are actually mountain and coast people. The jungle ones are a minority IIRC.

>in Russia

How funny, I live with a race of tunnel dwelling mole men in Ukraine.

Really though, I said 'on Germany' because these people aren't Germans, they're 'just people'.
Inferior post-imperial afterbirth.

London, Paris, Berlin, Oslo, Stockholm, Cologne, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Istanbul, Toronto

Mountainniggers are Caucasians, so that's already taken.
Coastalniggers just sounds wrong.

Nagasaki
Hiroshima
Dresden

It's IN Germany not ON Germany you retarded jungle monkey.

Oslo is 80% white you retarded burger.

Germans live in Germany though. These people just live on it, and off of it.

Actually no , the Romans fled their civilization and left their structures unmanned for the locals to take over.

The Crusaders did more much to the city then the Ottomans ever did. The Crusaders stripped the city clean of everything it had, when it was one of the wealthiest and grandest cities in the world; the Ottomans got the pillage a husk. There may still have been a handful of gold nuggets within it, but a husk nonetheless, so devoid of life that there were small farms within the Theodosian Walls.

And I said "not even the Ottomans" in the sense that they were an extremely wealthy entity, they were well off even in 1453, so they could have done something, but didn't. Mehmet tried to repopulate the city after taking it but it was a long time before Constantinople was an actual metropolis again. Which is I meant by former glory, being a metropolis, a rich and important city. Your notion that anyone could have rebuilt and restored Constantinople in what it used to be at its peak is bullshit, Building houses and public buildings in the style of the Byzantines is one thing, but replacing all of the artwork, the statuary, the ancient adornments collected from all over the Roman Empire by Constantine to decorate the city, you can't replace that.

>backpedalling around the fact you're a Brazilian

Tenochitlan

>the locals
AKA Romans?

Detroit.

Yes, pre-white flight Detroit is a different civilization, even if it'st he same government.

>The Crusaders did more much to the city then the Ottomans ever did.
They did about equal damage desu

Salisbury/Harare

Lorenco Marquez/Maputo

Most of eastern Germany just after ww1 and 2

>It was just the state that collapsed, the people remained there.
But the culture and society has drastically changed; the economic and technology also collapsed, stagnated and declined for a period of time; people's mentality and virtues also changed, they're no longer share same spirits as their forefathers. The only organization which barely held them together was catholic church.

One of the few actually accurate posts in this thread.

No? Anglo Saxons were Germanic. I don't know if you know this but the Romans didn't particularly favor the Germans or locals wherever they went. Just asked the Gauls/Jews

>but replacing all of the artwork, the statuary, the ancient adornments collected from all over the Roman Empire by Constantine to decorate the city, you can't replace that.
You can't replace that stuff, but anyone that wants to be called a civilization worth a damn should be able to turn this geographical lottery winner into a rich bustling city much quicker and better than the Ottomans did.

>after WW1
uwotm8? They didn't lose that much territory and there was no population replacement, unlike WW2.

>Anglo Saxons lived in the city of Rome
Get a load of this brainlet.

They fled their civilization in British you brainlet . Lrn2 C O N T E X T

>British
*Britain

Read the OP faggot, we're talking about CITIES. When we say Rome we mean the city of Rome, not some backwater hamlet in shithole England.

Just saying eastern germany after ww2 would imply that the parts lost remained german.

No, this is just you being retarded.

>The Crusaders stripped the city clean of everything it had, when it was one of the wealthiest and grandest cities in the world

Considering that visitors were still drawing its monuments in the 15th century, that's hard to believe.
I'm by no means saying that the 4th crusade wasn't barbaric or rapacious, only that we cannot know the plunder taken or damage done by the Turks, because the crusader regime fell rather quickly and so could be hated in writing, while the Turkish one went on and on and on.
I can't believe they took everything, when the city was still producing thoroughly educated people like Plethon and great artists only years before the Turks took it.

>so devoid of life that there were small farms within the Theodosian Walls.

There were small farms inside the walls in the 9th century.

>they were an extremely wealthy entity, they were well off even in 1453, so they could have done something,

And I contradicted it because they didn't do things like this generally. They were better at breaking things than fixing them, still are.

> Mehmet tried to repopulate the city after taking it but it was a long time before Constantinople was an actual metropolis again. Which is I meant by former glory, being a metropolis, a rich and important city.

He repopulated it with bumpkins who lacked the knowledge and culture to rebuild it. Even the Greeks he brought in were bumpkins.
That said, Constantinople wasn't 'a' metropolis at its height, it was 'the' metropolis. Was the cosmopolis, 'the City' with a capital C.

Restore was an ill-chosen word, but it could have been built up as something else, it could have been Istanbul or Turcopolis or something, rather than the city formerly known as Constantinople.
They conquered it but couldn't do anything with it, hence why I regard the Turks as degenerate. They can end things but have serious problems starting them.

There were great Greek artists in the 15th century, they fled to Italy.

Replied to
Implying that London during the Roman rule was replaced by inferior Anglo Saxons
Lrn2 read faggots

That post doesn't imply that at all.

>when the city was still producing thoroughly educated people like Plethon
Not him, but what did Constantinople have to do with Plethon? All his education and life's work happened in Morea and Florence.

>Restore was an ill-chosen word, but it could have been built up as something else, it could have been Istanbul or Turcopolis or something, rather than the city formerly known as Constantinople.
>They conquered it but couldn't do anything with it, hence why I regard the Turks as degenerate. They can end things but have serious problems starting them.
Ironic considering you name drop Plethon who studied in Ottoman Adrianople. And it's not as if Constantine did anything different from Mehmet when building up the city into a Roman capital. The Turks also made clear attempts to build up the city into an imperial capital worth the name inviting more than just farmers. Even Da Vinci was once offered a job to build things for the Ottomans.

...

All of the cities
Listed we're parts of the Roman empire before they were either abandoned or taken from Rome. With that context, does it imply Rome the city or Rome the state?

Then I'm afraid I've lost credibility.
Apologies for the blunder, I only study the 8th-12th century empire with any thoroughness, I'd rather read about imperial regeneration than decline, which is a failing.

Basically every part of Africa following decolonization.

Honestly speaking then you should consider the other user's point. You seem to be speaking from that place of bias more than fact when you talk about Ottoman Constantinople. I think he's more right than wrong here, and if just anyone could turn that location into a megapolis then we'd have seen it happen outside of Constantine and Mehmet. The thing about Constantinople is that it's only 'geographically blessed' in the context of an imperial city. Without an empire to support it: regular grain shipments to feed its overpopulation, military support to defend it from much more geographically secure neighbors, or the diplomatic clout to make redirection of trade traffic to its ports economically viable, the city would never amount to anything more than the minor settlement it had been before Constantine showed up, or after the Fourth Crusade under the Latin/Greek successors. Hell, if not for centuries of Ottoman and international financial capital pouring in, modern Istanbul might have been no better than a sleepy tourist town by now.

What killed these resorts: mismanagement by blacks, or the lack of white tourism because these colonies were no longer ruled by whites?

Reality is more complex than black/white narratives about the superiority of white colonizers and black natives.

No one wants to visit a war zone, well normal people don't anyway

There's a tree growing on top of the building kek

Regarding Plethon, see where I apologise for my ignorance.
That said, the man did not teach in the city after the Ottomans took it, preferring to go to Italy.
The people who taught at Adrianople were Greeks, so I don't know how this is anything new on the Turks' part.
Note that the city did not have the same stature as a centre of learning for any great length of time.

>it's not as if Constantine did anything different from Mehmet when building up the city into a Roman capital.

Unless he simply stole entire buildings wholesale, then I would say that yes, he did something differently, besides the highly important fact that he did it well, well enough to make it more of a 'Rome' in its way than Rome had been for centuries.

They made attempts, but how successful were those attempts? They built an empire larger than the Eastern Roman one had ever been in its own right, and as wealthy, yet they failed to built anything matching what Justinian had constructed, and destroyed things which they so dramatically failed to match that little can distract you from their loss.

Where did the imperial palace go, for example? Why didn't the Turks rebuild the Hippodrome? They were still an equestrian people and it would have been a great symbol. All they did that is of any note is vandalise the Serpent Column because 'muh profound iconoclasm look how pious I am guis.'

Relax, lad. It's just an advanced civilization being replaced by a shitty one, like the OP asked for.

Mismanagement from blacks , same reason their crops failed and their medical industry collapsed.

Plethon never taught in Constantinople at all though, and the reason he learned in Adrianople was because it was the Ottoman capital at that time. If Constantinople was as great as you say it was then, why would a brilliant Greek mind go and study the Greeks in the Ottoman Greek capital and not the Byzantine Greek Constantinople? It's because the Ottomans successfully made the attempt to build and maintain centers of learning. It's quite telling that the city did not have a great stature as a center of learning except for when it was the Ottoman capital, and it did not last because the Ottomans moved their capital to Constantinople shortly afterwards.

Also, you're seriously discounting Ottoman construction efforts. There are several grand mosques, markets, bathhouses, and palaces in and around the city. By focusing entirely on reconstruction you miss and thus underrate completely new efforts. It's the equivalent of looking at Rome's Colosseum with St. Peter's Square behind you asking why Renaissance Italy so dramatically failed to match their forebears.

>you should consider the other user's point.

That's what I'm doing.

>You seem to be speaking from [...] bias

So is everyone, mate. I expect that you'd take his opinion more seriously, because I've acknowledged I made a mistake on Pletho's education and because I am being derogatory towards the Turks.

Mehmet did not turn the city back into the City, even by the standard of the time, nor did any of his successors. The attempts to restore failed, as the city became decrepit by the 19th century.

That said, I'll still ask you to consider my argument in light of a few facts.

>Constantinople is that it's only 'geographically blessed' in the context of an imperial city. Without an empire to support it: regular grain shipments to feed its overpopulation, military support to defend it from much more geographically secure neighbors,
> or the diplomatic clout to make redirection of trade traffic to its ports economically viable, the city would never amount to anything more than the minor settlement it had been before Constantine showed up, or after the Fourth Crusade under the Latin/Greek successors.

The Ottomans had an empire, though. It was a huge one, and larger than the Byzantine empire had been for centuries before the 4th crusade. If the city was so vulnerable then how did it last through the 7th and 8th centuries, often besieged?
As for the city's vulnerability, I strongly disagree. When Thomas the Slav besieged Constantinople in 821-2, he had the entire empire on his side, more or less, the only exceptions being the newly resettled provinces in Greece, Thrace and Macedonia.
He had a colossal fleet and an army of 80,000, with artillery and all the rest, and he still failed because the defences were too strong.
Constantinople didn't need military support during the 8th-10th centuries when its problems were most pressing and immediate, because it was the permanent base of I think two of the standing armies of the tagmata, the Numbers and the Walls.

cont

>Why didn't the Turks rebuild the Hippodrome? They were still an equestrian people and it would have been a great symbol.

Maybe in the 11th century. The Turks who took Constantinople were several centuries removed from their steppe ancestors, had spent an entire generation in the Balkans, were intermarried with local Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian aristocracy (who they counted among their ranks) fielded legions of disciplined infantry as the backbone of their imperial army, and whose sultan grew up on the Classics as much as the Quran, and fashioned himself a Roman emperor of old. Mehmet's construction works were single-mindedly obsessed with building a centralized administrative state overseeing a massive trade network and legitimized by an imperial faith.

>Baghdad
>Roman empire
You gigantic retard

>Hell, if not for centuries of Ottoman and international financial capital pouring in, modern Istanbul might have been no better than a sleepy tourist town by now.

They had wealth equal to or exceeding that of most Byzantine emperors, and hundreds of years, and you say that it should be considered notable that the city didn't decline into a little hamlet?

>If Constantinople was as great as you say it was then, why would a brilliant Greek mind go and study the Greeks in the Ottoman Greek capital and not the Byzantine Greek Constantinople?
> It's because the Ottomans successfully made the attempt to build and maintain centers of learning. It's quite telling that the city did not have a great stature as a center of learning except for when it was the Ottoman capital,
>and it did not last because the Ottomans moved their capital to Constantinople shortly afterwards.

So in what sense did they successfully maintain it as a centre of learning, if the centre vanished when the court moved to the new capital?

>you're seriously discounting Ottoman construction efforts

No, I'm not. I'm considering them and judging them to be inferior to what preceded them, something you may be able to tell from the fact that half of them are modeled on the same fucking building, which was build in the 6th century and so happens to be the one that appears on all the tourist crap.

The problem is that the Colosseum and the Vatican really are 'comparable' in gravity if nothing else. David exceeds anything you could find at Aphrodisias.
I am not underrating the new efforts, I am rating them exactly as they ought to be rated.
It is not impartial or even handed to artificially magnify the stature of the Ottomans' constructions beyond how I actually see them.

>Mehmet did not turn the city back into the City, even by the standard of the time, nor did any of his successors. The attempts to restore failed, as the city became decrepit by the 19th century.

Maybe you're expecting too much then, because when Constantinople was the City during Late Antiquity the Classical world was in severe decline and plagues and migrations had devastated all of Western Eurasia. It was literally king of the ashes.

But when the Ottomans made the city their capital, it was during the most rapid period of global growth and expansion by nearly all civilizations that for all intents and purposes has yet to stop. Ottoman Constantinople still dwarfed many major cities of its time, but unlike 5th century Constantinople which might be matched only by the likes of Alexandria or Ctesiphon, Renaissance Constantinople lived alongside several major capital cities each with their own cultural golden ages. You said it yourself, the Ottomans gained an empire larger than the Byzantines, and their city was massive and developed enough to reflect that, but Byzantine Constantinople never had flourishing rivals like Moscow, Florence and Venice, London and Paris, Cairo and Isfahan, Samarkand or Delhi, and that's just ignoring Tenochtitlan or Ming Nanjiang or Beijin.

What did Late Antiquity Constantinople have to rival in Europe? Until Cordoba, nothing even came close because of depopulation and decline. In the New World you had Mayan Chichen Itza and Tikal, but those are rarely understood as cities because of how they'd already collapsed by the time the Spanish arrived. And in China you had the great upheavals of the Jin Dynasty. So it solidified its reputation with almost no rivals worth the name.

>fielded legions of disciplined infantry as the backbone of their imperial army

I get that you are trying to exaggerate the Roman similarities, but the sipahis were the more important or at least prestigious section of the army during this period.

Mehmet 'fashioned himself' what he liked, he was not a Roman emperor, he killed the last one though.
He was not a Roman emperor, he was a ghazi sultan who adopted the same trappings as so many other sovereigns have. He even did the Trojan thing.

All that said, they were still an equestrian people. So were the Romans. People talk a lot about the legions, and its true they were the more important section of the army when Rome was most 'active' in its conquests, but the cavalry was more respected, and became progressively more important.

You're simply downplaying anything and everything the Ottomans did to develop the city at this point, as if it was no achievement at all to build things like the Blue Mosque or the Topkapi Palace because they're (purposefully) derivative.

Parity is not decline, especially when we have actual periods of decline to compare it to. No one here is saying the Ottomans built a better city than Constantine, but it is no way overrating them to say they redeveloped the city closer to its former glory than anyone since. And like says, to underrate that is to base your opinion on unrealistic expectations of a different time period and on things like novelty that have very little to do with the topic beyond aesthetics. This is not unreasonable nor artificial magnification.

>I get that you are trying to exaggerate the Roman similarities, but the sipahis were the more important or at least prestigious section of the army during this period.

>All that said, they were still an equestrian people. So were the Romans. People talk a lot about the legions, and its true they were the more important section of the army when Rome was most 'active' in its conquests, but the cavalry was more respected, and became progressively more important.

So they were like the Romans after all. Point is, they weren't Mongols roaming the fields grazing their horses and living in tents. They were more 'Roman' than Scythian by then.

Mexico City/Tenochtitlan

>as if it was no achievement at all to build things like the Blue Mosque or the Topkapi Palace

Derivation is perfectly acceptable, provided there is an element of refinement - what was refined here, in your opinion?

>Parity is not decline, especially when we have actual periods of decline to compare it to.
>No one here is saying the Ottomans built a better city than Constantine

That's the thing though, you can't compare Constantine alone with the Ottoman dynasty. There were many, many emperors who invested in Constantinople, a city which as you say went through many periods of decline and fluctuation in its population from let's say the 5th to the 9th centuries.
There were Byzantine emperors who better restored Constantinople to its former glory than Ottoman sultans. There were fires, civil disturbances, coups, riots, etc. over the thousand years the city was Roman, but we seem to be saying that the 4th Crusade was the end of any prospect of the city being at the level it was when John was emperor.

> base your opinion on unrealistic expectations of a different time period and on things like novelty that have very little to do with the topic beyond aesthetics. This is not unreasonable nor artificial magnification.

They are consciously based on something that was about a thousand years old when they were built.
They were built in a particular tradition which must be intelligible to us if it were to be intelligible to the Ottomans.
As I've said, I am not basing my opinion on an anachronistic love of novelty. This is magnification, since you are trying to present the Ottomans as at least as great as their predecessors in an area which they simply were not.

>So they were like the Romans after all

No more than the Franks, that was my point. Armies used functional tactics, by your logic the Persians were 'like the Romans', which in a sense is true and in a sense is not.

Scythian is a funny term. Slavs were also Scythian.