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If people did see those things it was fleeting because their lives had changed so much after the Romans left. In England it went back to the way it was prior to the Romans and for much of Europe it was the same. People were too busy fighting again to worry about such things and I am pretty sure that it would only take a generation for those things to be lost. Just think..............I would have no clue without books/internet how to build a toilet other than a hole in the ground. I could not even begin to work on an aqueduct. Once those engineers were gone the regular folks would have to relearn it all. Even simple things like farming takes skills and knowlege that is handed down generation to generation. Take out those with the know how and you have what happened here in America, a dust bowl. So its not so hard to envision that once the Romans left a place for good it went backwards several hundred years.

It's been said there are only two things we don't need to be taught how to do. (OK...maybe 5)....

Our heart beats all by itself without us doing anything
We breathe without noticing it
We eat when we're hungry
We drink when we're thirsty
We deficate when we feel the urge.

Everything else is learned.

Also remember that the Romans had the slaves maintain the baths and stoke the fires for the hot water and everything else. When they left they either took their them, or the slaves escaped. The locals, unless they were the slaves, knew nothing of these wonders. I saw a Roman villa in Germany that was uncovered when the farmer went to plow after a flood. The underground water tanks/foundations were the only things that were really intact, They were fascinating

That is the fascinating thing about "the old world" you never know what you will find.

I believe that if we were to get a major societal dislocation today that the drop off would be even more severe . Our current systems are so complex and require such specialized training and operatives , that without societal structure , we would shortly be below Stone Age because unlike the people in Roman times , we know virtually NOTHING about real life skills today .

One of my fave novels is "Earth Abides" written circa 1952. The US pop is wiped after an incurable epidemic. Only one fella, who was on an extended hike in the hills when bitten by a rattler survived. The power stations churned on without intervention for months, street lights came on automatically, electricity continued until anything needed repair then.....nothing. Roads fell into disrepair, foliage grew uncontrolled clogging the roads and invading buildings. The moral of the story is that Mother Earth couldn't really care less what efforts humans put into controlling it. It will eventually do whatever it will do.

You're right, JB, only 5 things carry on without learning them. We only have to look upon our own children to see how little they know how to do unless they learn it from us or in school. People need to dedicate some time to them on a day-to-day basis (especially for morals) because squeezed-in quality time on weekends, especially in the case of divorced parents, isn't really worthwhile since MTV/video games dominate their minds in between and I have my doubts on the quality of classrooms these days. With the reliance on calculators and, soon, e-books, unless we remember to do math in our heads and read and write on paper (or any surface), it'll be really bad with current texting usage and hip conversations. The original "Planet of the Apes" or "The Time Machine", though fantasies, were really thought-provoking as to how mankind forgets things. I hope to have my home book collection given to some local and willing library when I pass away because I don't even see a garage sale in their future, just the trash can.

when i was 17 my friend herb an EE mrmorized Pi to the 50th place he thinking was if the world was to face something like that he wanted to make sure things like measuring building of certain shapes would not be lost

What yichel...?....your friend Herb wasn't satisfied knowing that magic number 4? (in Indiana..I think it was..back in the 1890's legislated the value of pi to be 4. This ensured all land area measurements with a curved boundary line was wrong).

Pi 3.14721 remember it is a non epeating mumber here is Pi to the tenth place bo every burn this in your memory
3.1415926535