I agree with you and that's also part of the appeal to me. The differences from our own age are interesting in and of themselves and also make me more comfortable with changing history to meet the needs of the game. Somehow giving Charles Martel magical or divine powers seems much more fitting than doing the same to Philip Augustus.
At the same time, paradoxically, this earlier period contains lots of elements familiar to popular conceptions of the Medieval that are lacking in the 13th century. Vikings. Pagan invaders. Shining (relatively) cities of learning and culture in the East. Empty forest landscapes punctuated by rare towns and monastaries. You even had bubonic plague for a few centuries. Ok, no knights, shining armor or not, but still it feels "Medieval".
Yes, I do maintain that several things of importance got worse, in addition to science. Just as an example - hospitals and public doctors in public health, and water mills in agriculture. I've yet to see a single fact you raised to the contrary, but don't bother - I won't be reading it. I'm done with this discussion.
For the record, you totally misunderstand the position being purported. You yourself maintain historical gradualism, and maintain that the fall of Rome led to a dark time - yet refuse to call the ensuing period a "dark age". You confuse innovation made in the late middle ages with innovation made in that dark age, when according to your own historical gradualism such gradual recovery is to be expected. You refuse to recognize the virtues of the Roman era and the near irrelevance of the Renaissance (we are comparing to Rome, and stopping at the late middle ages, before the Renaissance), and refuse to see the faults of the middle ages, focusing only on their virtues. We also disagree on basic facts, like the loss of Greek literature (even today we are missing about 3/4 of the works of Aristotle himself, for example!). All of this makes this discussion not fruitful.
I most recently did it as a three month thing, to fill in for one of our cataloguers who was off on a special project, and I'm so pleased it is over and I'm back to a public branch. Customers are the fun bit in the job, I agree.
Well I am drawing closer to the way you feel about this too. However, I have the endurance of Hercules when it comes to standing on an orange crate and spouting my own opinions, especially when someone else is standing on a similar box directly opposite with views I can only regard as apostacies!
So here's another perspective. The beginning of the Dark Ages is said to have been a result of the fall of Rome; perhaps the Dark Age is the result of the rise of Rome.
When we think about the richness of the Roman world, we are thinking about Hellenism and its offshoots. Alexandria, the intellectual center of the Roman world? Not Roman; indeed, Romans were the first library plunderers. Rabbinic Judaism? The whole of it is a Jewish reaction to Greek ideas, and evolves into existence after Alexander. The great philosophers? Literary forms? Greek, not Roman.
I am not saying that Rome produced nothing. They build much, they produced a literature based on what had come before. Like all civilizations, they produced a legal tradition. They also stifled intellectual life, plundered finances, and generally presided over a militarized slide into decay. Population dropped during the Roman period. Rome fell because the empire was not productive enough to support itself, and its social institutions encouraged stagnation.
From the time of Augustus to that of Alaric, just what intellectual achievements did Rome accomplish?
I think a good case can be made for the dark ages beginning as early as the third century - it started falling apart then.
But the Romans did contribute a lot. Much of "Greek" achievements are actually made under Roman rule. Many great developments were made in Roman times too, like Stoicism. Its contribution may have been overshadowed by Greece, but it still provided good scholars, philosophers, and artists - as well as amazing technology, legal system, a vision of near-global unity, and so on.
Stoicism was borrowed by the Romans; it existed before they conquered Athens. Their engineering was amazing, no question. They produced scholars, philosophers and artists, who do not seem to have advanced things much. Their vision of near-global unity... they're not the first to have it, and they stumbled into empire, where Alexander was pretty conscious about it. The idea of a world civilization is Hellene, not Roman. I might be missing something, but my own reading of history suggests two phases of Roman expansion, first in reaction to crises and increasingly a policy of "Go for the gold." Expansion stopped when no adjacent culture had sufficient plunder to justify the cost. (Parthia was too difficult a nut to crack.) Roman law... well, it's amazing to us because it is an antecedent to our own. But they were not the only culture whose legal systems had great coverage.
I'm not saying that that the Dark Ages began earlier, but that perhaps it was rooted in the rise of Rome, not the fall. The productive classes of Rome fare poorly in the aftermath of the civil wars; the productive classes elsewhere eventually too.
The transition from great landholders with slave labor to medieval manors worked by unfree labor seems natural, yet this increasing tendency was a feature of the Roman system even in the second century BCE. The Roman system discouraged industrialization, encouraged agrarianism, a tendency that we associate with the Dark Ages, yet was wholly Roman.
I've heard it argued before that the Romans essentially killed off Hellenistic science. Even if this is true though at the same time they were spreading Mediterranean urban culture to chunks of the world that had never seen that way of life before. So it's hard to posit a generalized decline in the way once can for the 6th century.
Now you're mixing up the rise of Rome with the later years of the Empire. Populations thrived until the 3ed century.
The introduction of the ship mill and tide mill in the 6th century, both of which yet unattested for the ancient period,[6] allowed for a flexible response to the changing water-level of rivers and the Atlantic Ocean, thus demonstrating the technological innovativeness of early medieval watermillers.
Not to forget: The Romans created valetudinaria for the care of sick slaves, gladiators, and soldiers around 100 B.C., and many were identified by later archeology. While their existence is considered proven, there is some doubt as to whether they were as widespread as was once thought, as many were identified only according to the layout of building remains, and not by means of surviving records or finds of medical tools.
Just as you havent bothered sofar it seems. If you had read my previous links you wouldnt have been silly enough to use watermills as an example of things that "got worse". As watermills was one of the not so few things that saw great developments during medieval times.
No i dont. And im also a vehement opponent of the delusion of historical linearity of development.
Well here´s the problem, COMPARED TO WHAT? Why do you think i previously asked how the medieval period differed so much negatively that it was drastically worse than what came before or after? Noone even tried to answer that seriously either.
The rennaisance if looking at science and technology was one of the more pitiful periods in European history with sorrowfully little innovation. And before that, ooh lets see, there we have the Roman empire, one of the greatest destroyers of civilisations ever...
If you absolutely must call something a "dark age", at least stick to when things were actually lost, which, once again i repeat myself, during late antiquity and the migration period.
So based on that, was antiquity a dark age then i guess?
Gradual RECOVERY???
Things i have already mentioned, water mills went far beyond previous times in development during the "dark ages", mathematics had the concept of distance over time integrated for the first time...
You still refuse to get it dont you? Yes, alot of the "old classics" were lost, but that didnt stop NEW development. The Roman "Golden age" that was imperfectly recovered during the dreary dark ages, is bullshit. Its a myth that should be dead and buried by now because its over a freaking century since historians started to realise it, and the additional finds in the last few decades concerning how Rome actually wasnt so incredibly great compared to its surroundings, put the final nail in the coffin of the "dark ages myth". Or should have...
And if you insist on remaining on the level of ignorant, then i again suggest you take a look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Jones%27_Barbarians
as a very entertaining little primer, because its a primer you need.
Exactly what were those faults then? Please do list all that came into being or became far more common during medieval times.
I have repeatedly mentioned or inferred the loss of greco-roman literature. You however support the claim of your earlier quote, about over 90% of literature lost, and thats an absurd overstatement.
IF your great so called "historian" had limited his claim to be about the most well known Greek literature, then it would possibly have been correct.
The water mills of antiquity were mechanical and mathematical marvels but sadly all attempts to recreate them have proven they were ridiculously complicated deviced compared the simplicity and fuctionality of thoes used in medieval times. Simplicity has its own beauty, and many archeologists remain unconvinced that many devices found may well have never worked properly or may have required massive maintenance.
We are 'impressed' by their design, but much like the marvels of Leonardos workshop, some of them probably never worked.
Hopsitals...
Maybe there was a 'first spanish hospital' as you quote, but there were plenty in the ancient world. One in spain, I dont know but a great many definitely.
What the Romans ever did for us...
Roads, clean running water, sanitation... oh come on ... you have seen the movie havent you?
The BIG one from our particular debate is LITERACY. This plummeted with the fall of rome throughout Europe. Literacy was the norm in the ruling classes of europe, indeed the norm throughout society among the latins. This level of literacy would not be seen in europe for more than a thousand years after the fall of Rome (In the west). It did not gradually improve either, it steadily declined. I have already stated, without charlemane's mini-rennaisance the rot would have continued.
Libraries...
Someone alluded to Romans being the first major library vandals. Probably a fair claim, but at last they had libraries to vandalise. They, unlike their successors, knew the importance of the written word.
Wikipedia is not a bad source. It is unreliable, since anyone can go edit it after they state their argument. But in my experience, wikipedia is pretty accurate. And he can post links to it.
But also, I would like to point out that ALL of you are wrong. The era of the Dark Ages, which I myself restrict to the era between immediately after the fall of West Rome and the rise of Charlemagne, it's all a matter of perspective. Take France for example. For the Gauls, it was a horrible dark time. For the Franks, well, things were the best they had ever been and were on their way up. I nitially, the Franks comprised only 5% of the population, yet they controlled 95% of the land and wealth. They accomplished this in less than a generation.
Spain went through a Dark Ages when the Vandals and Suevi invaded. Then the Visigonths came along and things got better. Though they also only comprised 5% of the population at first, they quickly intermixed with the Hispano Roman population, eliminating the ethnic dichotomy that existed in other Germanic kingdoms. The Visigoths were quick to convert to Christianity, and had a thriving intellectual tradition. The Arab & Berber invaders of Andalusia, they get all the credit. They did contribute greatly, but they were building upon knowledge and texts preserved by "German Barbarians".
Oh, then Scandinavia. They didn't loose a single thing. For them, the "Dark Ages" was a period of development and enlightenment.
But in Italy, everything just sucked and would continue to suck for some time. It was truly a Dark Age for them at the time.
That was me, and I said it straight out. Specifically, they plundered from Greek libraries to add to their own, or to add to favored libraries (as Caesar did for Cleopatra.)
The material pinnacle of Rome occurred during the second century CE, not coincidentally around the time they ran out of places to plunder. Declines already began during that period.
Oh yeah I agree. If I want to check when is mothers day, or who the president of Uganda is then it is usually fine. Something in widely held common knowledge.
BUT reliability is THE factor when proferring a quote to back up an debate, and as such wikipedia is worthless. As a reader you cannot be certain and that doubt alone devalues it immensely. Books conversely, as reviewed, go through an editing process, and in some countries it seems even get evaluated by their libraries. If they are rubbish, they get discredited opely in the community and drop off reading lists pretty fast. And they don't get reprinted. Wikipedia can profer nonsense for an eternity, such is the nature of the internet.
Take a peak at schools-wikipedia.org/wp/p/Pythagoras.htm and read the section 'Pythagoreans' This is blatant vandalism but illustrates my point perfectly well. This is obvious rubbish, other errors hang around for years unchanged, this one is 2 years old. I suggest most experts are less inclined towards correcting errors on wikipedia because they don't bother to ever look at it in the first place. I would quote the passage here but I am pretty sure it violates forum posting rules.
Yeah it was a project for schools, and is ostensibly monitored and carefully selected pages form the main site - although they are not directly linked. It follows the same policies and proceedures as wikipedia... namely that they can be edieted by anyone who bothers to ask for a password. It offers an extreme example of my point.
One of my lib. assistants actually printed this off a few weeks before christmas as a handout for a project we were doing on famous mathematicians. Good job I don't hand out any stuff from the internet without reading it first. I wish I could say the same for my colleagues.
Regardless of how any of use prefer to judge Rome--and real historians seem to offer opinions that are all over the map, a superset of what has been discussed here, so feel free to feel right in your take on things--I think it's fair to say that the Rome of Mythic Europe did represent a peak of civilization, and the barbarian invaders might have had a nobility of their own, yet barbarians they were.
