Comment by ptaipale
10 years ago
> And quite a number of low marks in terms of industrial production, technical knowledge, public health, collective wealth, individual freedoms and so on.
What makes you claim this? The growth of population, economy and individual freedoms continued through the Middle Ages. Ancient Rome was not a particularly "civilized" place if you look at it by, say, medieval English standards.
And lots of technical innovations were made during Middle Ages (both through interaction with Middle East and Asia, and through independent development). Technical knowledge accumulated. Public health learned some lessons - yes, some of those very slowly, it took 200 years to fully recover form the Black Death - but the population and economy grew, except for this plague anomaly which the ancient civilizations would hardly have handled any better.
Throughout Middle Ages, agricultural output grew and new tools were brought in and new crops were introduced, as well as crop rotation in farming (from just farming to fallowing and then to three-field rotation).
New scripts were developed, e.g. Carolingian minuscule enabled faster writing and producing of books (prior to the printing press which is seen as the starting point of Renaissance but was developed by medieval people).
Regarding individual freedoms: slavery, common in ancient civilizations, was largely abolished in Europe during medieval times. Magna Carta is clearly a medieval document.
Medieval times were not dark. Development was not as fast as later on, but it existed, almost continuously, with some (mostly local) setbacks.
"Ancient Rome was not a particularly "civilized" place if you look at it by, say, medieval English standards."
One of the odd things about the fascination with Greece and Rome as the basis of all civilization (ahem) is the failure to understand how alien those civilizations were.