Deforestation during the Roman period

Earth sustained a few million people 8,000 years ago and was still fundamentally pristine,[1] but Rome drove human development in Western Europe and was a leading contributor of the deforestation around the Mediterranean.

While some Mediterranean houses were built with brick and stone, roof structures, covered with tiles, as well as the floors in multistory apartment buildings were often made of wood.

Human hands gave way to iron ploughs and harvesting machines, and the use of animals to clear dense forests to utilize the rich topsoil.

As a result, in 111 BC Roman law allowed anyone who occupied public land of up to 20 acres (81,000 m2) to keep it, provided it was brought into cultivation.

[6] This type of policy created widespread clearing and reflected the importance of agriculture, not only to the affluent, but also to citizens, to the military and to merchants engaged in trade with other regions.

In Chapter 5 ("Roman Soil Erosion") of the book by Way of the Soil by Guy Theodore Wrench, the author describes the devastating effects which widespread deforestation and the subsequent overworking of the land to grow increasing amounts of grain for the Roman Empire's burgeoning population had on the land: A major contributor to the environmental degradation and barrier to the regeneration of forests was the grazing of domestic animals.

[10] Roman legions deforested areas where they camped or marched to reduce the cover where their adversaries could hide and or mount a sneak attack.

The environment underwent drastic degradation as pollution from the burning of fuelwood filled the air and smelters that used wood as fuel transmitted heavy metals into the atmosphere.

Runoff and eroded soil from deforested hillsides increased the amount of silt and impeded the flow of water into agricultural areas.

[13] Eventually, due to the Mediterranean climate and the increased depletion of soil nutrients from hundreds of years of harvesting, yields diminished.

[15] The washing away of topsoil and deposits of silt and gravel meant that harbors and ports needed to be moved, causing further burden upon the economy.

[17] In the 5th century BC Plato complained that "the loss of timber had denuded the hills and plains surrounding Athens and caused massive soil erosion.

As Williams wrote, it is more likely that constant war, ravaging epidemics, rebellion, invasion from outside, a declining population, and an excessive degree of urbanization, separately or in combination, operated on the land in an empire that had extended beyond its means.

[21] In the 2011 environmental book Life Without Oil by Steve Hallett, the author argues that the collapse of the Roman Empire may have been linked to a peak wood scenario in the Mediterranean Basin.

He suggests that, as wood had to be hauled from ever further away, the law of diminishing returns undermined the economic performance of Roman industry, leaving Rome vulnerable to the other, well documented problems of invasion and internal division.

[23] This alternative view argues that there are immense complexities of time, space, climate, geology and topography which, when combined with our extremely fragmentary information, makes generalizations almost impossible.