[bane]

There's a weird kind of historic revisionism that's been going on the last couple years regarding the Medieval period...the "things weren't all that bad" and "the notion that nothing happened is just a myth".

Is it real? Are we just now learning about advanced and invention that happened during this period and were previously ignoring/ignorant of? Maybe. But I suspect something else is at play here, I'm just not sure what.

man, if that doesn't make me sound like a conspiracy theorist

I mean, we actually know that not only was there pitifully little scientific advancement during that period (especially as you point out in the first half), but that science and technology regressed massively and entire fields were completely forgotten. For example, there was a gap of over a thousand years before anybody could build large domes again, and even then it had to be completely reinvented.

The loss of knowledge was vast and unprecedented in history. I've heard it said that Western Europe almost reverted back out of the Iron Age the loss of information was so great.

What's triggering all this revisionism? Again, I don't know, but sources like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hwrSE5DZrQ

list all things that happened in the later periods.

Even if you just blame the first 500 years, that's a loong time where not much of anything interesting happened.

[antman]

There was another "Dark Ages" period in 1200BC [1] when dome building was again forgotten for 1400 years although it was quite usual in tomb building [2]. During that dark ages 500 year period most cities near the Mediterranean were destroyed, and it is attributed to the "Sea Peoples" [3]. Population in eastern mediterranean was reduced to 1/9 of its previous numbers and commerce that numbered thousands of ship transports ceased.

One can only imagine were we would be, if we had not forgotten printed type by 2500BC[4] or small gear mechanisms by 100 BC [5]

Non "Dark-ages" years are less than the "dark ages" years in recorded history, we just like to think that civilization improves over time.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse [2] http://traveltoeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/wpid- [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples Photo-Apr-1-2013-151-PM.jpg [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

[bglazer]

Your point about the domes is quite interesting. Can you imagine what it was like to be a citizen of Rome in the year 800, looking at a dome that is hundreds of years old and having no idea how people could possibly do that. I can't think of a modern analogue.

It would be like finding the monolith from 2001 on the moon.

[bsder]

> I can't think of a modern analogue.

There are plenty.

Ironically, building a medieval cathedral is one of those analogues. Yes, we can build a cathedral with modern equipment, but we don't know how much of it was done without it. Much of the knowledge was considered too commonplace to be worth writing down.

A modern one ... how about a Saturn V rocket. We no longer have the steel mills with big enough tooling in order to actually build such a mammoth beast. We would have to reinvent much of that tooling in order to do it again.

[sanoli]

I don't think we'd have to reinvent the tooling. I'm pretty sure we haven't forgotten how to do it. We'd have to build the huge mills again, sure, but that's a different thing.

[dragonwriter]

> There's a weird kind of historic revisionism that's been going on the last couple years

For various values of "last couple", e.g., I remember at least one college history class I had around 1996 where the instructor spent some time (it was something of a tangent from the central focus of the class) discussing research (which I don't think was particularly new at the time, but something the instructor thought most students wouldn't be aware of) which seemed to refute the existence of a period of a lack of technological development in the Middle Ages in Europe. (Not that a lot of early-developed technology wasn't lost or at least less widely distributed, just that new developments continued despite that.)

[graeme]

There may or may not be a new revisionism, but the idea has been around a while. I first remember coming across this idea in Timeline by Michael Crichton:

http://www.amazon.com/Timeline-Michael-Crichton/dp/034541762...

And I doubt he came up with the idea. I also think I heard that this debate has been going on in medieval scholarship for a while.

That said, the debate is unlikely to be a strawman that glosses over the very real collapse in certain types of knowledge. I doubt the scholarly debate explains whatever is currently happening on the popular level.

[kjs3]

Crichton is a really bad person to count on as a paragon of science reporting beyond being a journeyman doctor. He's a climate change denier, among other anti-science stances. And if you disagree with him, he might put you in a book, using your name and profession, but making you a child molester.

[graeme]

I didn't say he was a good example of science reporting. I said he made the same argument as above, at a far earlier date. This shows the argument itself isn't necessarily recent.

For those downvoting the parent comment because of the final sentence – Crichton actually did do that. It was highly unusual.

[brandonmenc]

What are some of his other anti-science stances? (genuinely curious)

[graeme]

There's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear

Crichton does have a point that computers models are not valid replacements for repeatable, empirical testing of hypotheses.

But then he went far, far past what his skeptical attitude supports empirically. He flipped from "we can't prove the anthropocene hypothesis is true" to "it's very false, and funded by a conspiracy of enviro-nuts".

[brandonmenc]

That's still not one of his "other anti-science stances."

The original comment implied that along with denying climate change he's also like, an anti-vaxxer, a creationist, or a flat-earther.

[graeme]

Oops. Missing the "along with client-change denial" part in the parent comment. Nothing else comes to mind. Crichton identified himself as an advocate of science, not the opposite.

This speech is the other notable place Crichton made specific scientific comments. It's possible he's wrong about some of his claims, but he approaches them from the point of view of a rationalist:

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~scranmer/SPD/crichton.html

[javajosh]

I have witnessed the same change in the zeitgeist, and also wondered about it's source. My hypothesis is that it's rooted in the trend toward environmental sustainability, local and human-powered production (e.g. hand-made things from locally acquired materials).

It seems reasonable to me to believe that life wasn't that bad even for a Christian peasant, assuming: good health, good weather, no plague, no war (to be conscripted in), ugly daughters (to avoid prima nocta). Sure, you didn't own anything but life was simple, food was good, the world was understandable (even if your understanding was primitive and wrong), and the countryside must have been beautiful to explore. Plus you had the remarkable benefit of dreaming about truly foreign and far-away places, like Africa, India or China. Even countries within Europe were so distinct from each other as to make travel a real adventure.

There's an interesting take on going back to something like this in Paolo Bacigalupi's _The Windup Girl_[1]. The world has undergone a "Contraction" and oil is incredibly scarce. Travel is difficult and expensive; the world has grown large again, and human and animal power are once again the staples (although military and governments still use oil for some things).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl

[mjmahone17]

The reason Feudalism came about was because it was a good deal for the average bloke. You weren't constantly threatened by slavery, you were mostly protected from raiding, etc. by your landlord, and you only had to work on someone else's land (in the beginning) 1 or 2 days a week. The reason we hear about it being so awful is because we hear about the last legs of Feudalism: when peasants were expected to work 8+ days a week (children counted for a half day, so this was actually possible) on the lord's land, and because of a rise in population had their labor devalued, and the average acreage for individual plots reduced.

[a8da6b0c91d]

The Roman empire was a disaster for most people. It ran on slave labor and high taxes. The early middle ages was a period where organizations scaled back to what was feasible without mass slavery. This involved a lot less literate types in urban centers. So to a modern urbanite it looks like things got worse after the empire, what with the decline of literacy and nice buildings. In reality, health and welfare improved.

[4891]

I mean, we actually know that not only was there pitifully little scientific advancement during that period (especially as you point out in the first half), but that science and technology regressed massively and entire fields were completely forgotten. For example, there was a gap of over a thousand years before anybody could build large domes again, and even then it had to be completely reinvented.

Like a few commenters here, you're confusing the dark ages and the middle ages. You can quibble over semantics and say that the middle ages includes the dark ages, but that obscures the point of the original post.

The standard narrative of Western intellectual progress looks like this:

~300BC to ~400AD: classical civilisation, high intellectual culture

~400AD to ~1500AD: Europe under the dominion of the Church, science and reason suppressed

~1500AD: bam, Renaissance

~1700AD: bam, Enlightenment

~1700AD - present: humanity freed from the yoke of religion, knowledge flowers again.

The revisionist view is as follows:

~300BC to ~400AD: classical civilisation, high intellectual culture

~400AD to ~1000AD: Europe in the dark ages due to barbarian invasions, underpopulated and poor, classical tradition barely kept alive in monasteries

~1000AD to ~1400AD: Europe begins to get wealthier, knowledge flowers in Church-sponsored universities

~1600AD: bam, Protestant Reformation

~1600AD - present: science builds on knowledge and philosophy developed by Catholic church, but Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda creates the false narrative of Church suppression of knowledge.

I don't know why this perspective is hitting the zeitgeist now, but one reason might be that the internet enables niche communities to share such ideas.

One such group is Catholics - here's a Catholic blogger explaining exactly how the heliocentrism vs geocentrism debate played out: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

Another group are environmentalists - here's an interesting blogger writing about how classical knowledge was preserved through the dark ages: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/merlins-ti...

And a final group are the reactionaries, a group who see the modern ideals of progress as a myth - here's a good starting point on the idea that modern 'progressive' ideas are largely derived from Protestantism: http://unqualifiedreservations.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/how-...

Anyone who's interested and has the free time, please do dig around those blogs - you may realise, as I did, that the 21st century is quite an intellectually narrow and ignorant time.