re: Romans or Mongolians? Which one cost the world more?

In the end, I believe the Romans cost the world more, because when the Roman Empire collapsed, much of the knowledge and technology they had developed died with them. With the Mongols, despite destroying the House of Wisdom, they actually spread technology and knowledge all over the globe. The Mongols were far from Luddites, and were happy to adopt the technologies and innovations of the peoples they conquered. When the Mongol Empire collapsed, the regions they ruled did not descend into an intellectual dark age as did Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, much of the areas previously ruled by the Mongols went full bore into their own Renaissance Golden Age soon after the collapse of the Mongol Empire. When the Mongols destroyed the House of Wisdom, they actually spread its knowledge far and wide. When the Romans destroyed the Library of Alexandria, they largely forgot what was in there, and the knowledge died with them.

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Both set the world's knowledge back centuries.

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Just going to ignore all of the knowledge & technological advances gained from those empires?

Didn't the Mongols fill in or destroy all of the water sources and irrigation in the Middle East?

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Both contributed wayyyy more to human civilization than they ever "cost" it

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Really? I had no clue!

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Let me rephrase then; your question in the OP is totally asinine and impossible to determine

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It's not asinine.


Even with all the benefits they've given, they still are responsible for the loss of centuries of collected human knowledge.

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But did they destroy the scrolls?

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are you dense? the library was all but empty at the time. lack of funding mothballed the place and without proper care papyrus as a shelf life of a goldfish.

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The Romans burned down the library in Alexandria under Caesar and it’s claimed that set civilization back hundreds of years.

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A. The Romans didn't burn down the Library of Alexandria, it lasted for several hundred years after Caesar

B. The Library was already on the decline when Rome conquered Egypt

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Genghis Khan invented mobile warfare

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Scythians say hello, Alexander the Great says hello.

Hell, the Comanches say hello too.

At which point did I say that the Romans or the Mongols were not a net positive for civilization?

Where is all the Mongolian revisionism coming from? The Mongols were a typical Steppe Horde like all the Steppe Hordes before and after them. They may have adopted the culture of the civilizations they conquered but they fricked up the more advanced civilizations of the Chinese and Persians and retarded the growth of Eastern Europe.

Roman Civilization survived in the East under Byzantium and later flourished throughout the Middle Ages in Europe. The founders of America based our institutions on Rome thankfully not on Mongol Hordes.