During the dark age, Europe(?) Forgot how to write and read however, when rome was still a giant empire they could. How can that be?
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Because people were *extremely* isolated and information took ages to spread. People very rarely traveled more than 20 miles in a day. If an event happened in one place, it rarely effected areas outside that area. If someone discovered something, that discovery took ages to spread. If knowledge was lost, it took ages to be rediscovered, and not everyone lost everything. Trade and communication did exist, but it was all extremely slow.
That’s not even counting the uneven distribution of resources, manpower, climate, disease, politics, and sheer luck involved in the many events in history.
A quick google indicates the literacy in the Roman Empire was lower than Europe in the “dark age”. Rome about 10%, dark age Europe “under 20%”. So your premise isn’t even valid to begin with.
People *didn’t* “forget how to read” in the middle ages, scholars and royals wrote stuff down and peasants were mostly illiterate – just like classical Rome. The “dark ages” weren’t nearly so dark as the popular image, but yes, whole civilizations can build up and fall apart over time.
I think that’s a function of social/political *organization*. A massive empire like Rome takes a long time to build – building the whole Mediterranean into a single interdependent economy that can have flourishing trade, concentrate wealth enough to build huge buildings and employ scholars to write tons of books, and a state that can govern it all efficiently. When that organization falls apart, through disaster or decay, you’re left with a bunch of smaller states, none of whom have the same wealth as Rome and none of whom can guarantee peace for economies to boom like before.
This has happened in China tons of times over the millenia – a stable dynasty for centuries which fostered culture, huge public projects and overall prosperity, and then a period of chaos and division where everyone is fighting and the roads aren’t safe to travel. And then some new dynasty succeeds in unifying China again, and prosperity returns.
The exact same way it’s true today. Some places have more resources, better education, stronger economies, more trade, etc, etc. There are places you can visit today where there’s nearly 100% literacy, and places with <25%.
Also, during the “dark ages” Europe still had literacy, it was just not very common. Education was for the elite, and the monks. Really, the dark ages are just a period of economic collapse that took a long time to recover from. There were still both rich and poor, educated and uneducated, just mostly the later until the Renaissance, when education became a big deal.
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