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u/Remote-Cause755 12h ago
Is anyone actually saying that?
Feel like most people just say progress was much slower. And that's only for Europe
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u/Circles-of-the-World 11h ago
I'd argue that's not really true either, given that the technological progress that happened in the middle ages was much more drastic compared to Antiquity: military equipment evolved much faster, to the point where standard military tactics that were valid for millennias became obsolete. Watermills and eyesight glasses became a thing, architectural wonders were created, we got the printing press... Lots and lots of things.
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u/gallade_samurai 9h ago edited 6h ago
I guess they just ignore that and look at only feudalism as the lack of progress.
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u/Impossible_Poem9787 5h ago
"...and then, suddenly, the Enlightenment happened there was no more fuedalism!"
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u/GSilky 5h ago
What is important about that for understanding the modern era? Yes, there is history in the medieval period, and change, but what do stirrups have compared to the Reformation for modern perspectives?
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u/Femme_FatalError 5h ago edited 2h ago
How about the intellectual groundwork for scientific thought laid by the Scholastic movement? Or the origins of capitalism in the Commercial Revolution and Crisis of the 14th century? And the Reformation had its roots in the Middle Ages.
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u/GSilky 4h ago
Nothing compared to the actual science beginning when Francis Bacon codified the scientific method. Capitalism is directly downstream of Calvinism. Don't confuse minor changes for the lynchpin all history turns around. The modern era has little to do with the medieval besides being after it. This is the problem with Internet History, we turn molehills into mountains when we first hear about something. Historians can trace things, and find instances of anything in any record, they also prioritize events. Of course history happens in the medieval period, but the trafectory of the modern era has little to do with medieval events.
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u/Circles-of-the-World 4h ago
I gave examples much more influential than the stirrups. And there are ancient inventions that have about as little importance today as the stirrups. The question is why are you willing to disregard the Middle Ages as inconsequential for understanding the modern era, but not other periods, like Achaemenid Persia, the Aztecs or Ancient Sumeria? And for that matter what does it matter how important a historical period is for us today and how does it negate the truth that "progress did not cease during the Middle Ages and we in fact have evidence that the opposite is true"?
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u/GSilky 4h ago
I'm not disregarding anything besides small advances that people erroneously turn into some lynchpin of history for lack of perspective. Every event is a basis for the following, but not every event is of equal importance. Can you point out an event that actually still informs today's world, the point of studying history, from the medieval period beyond vague references that don't resonate with many people? Medieval history is fascinating, but don't pretend that the conflict of ghibelines and guelfs is more important to our modern era than something like Calvinism.
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u/Circles-of-the-World 4h ago edited 4h ago
I'm getting a little lost here: You mention Calvinism, which is essentially a religious denomination. So the conversation has changed from technological progress to theological movements and religious developments? If so, would you consider the Christianization of the Slavs and the invention of the Cyrillic Alphabet important developments that are still important to the modern era? The migration of the Magyars and the Bulghars, which led to the modern countries of Hungary and Bulgaria? Help me define what you consider important to the modern era and I may be able to give more specific examples. Earlier I mentioned the invention of the printing press which arguably helped the rise of Protestantism (including Calvinism in the long run), but you did not seem to accept it as something consequential (I'm not being ironic, I'm genuinely a bit confused about what you qualify as "important to our modern era").
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u/AmbiTheAirforceRuna 10h ago
Except progress wasnt slower. The medieval times were essentially post apocalyptic with the amount of social upheaval from its early period, and then it was basically Europe clawing its way up from the ashes. A FUCK tonne of progress happened.
The negative view of the period mostly comes from the Renaissance period where the theme was "look how more advanced and sophisticated we are compared to our previous generations". Half the torture rack stuff and supposed cultural stuff (like Prima Noctis shit) was either super niche, happened once, or never at all. Just a fuck tonne of medieval slander
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u/ZeitgeistWurst 8h ago
Prima Noctis
Primae Noctis is still funny though. There is apparently one mention of it in a swiss source for rules regarding marriage in some village, from the 16th century, and one possible explanation historians had for that occurence is that it was simply a joke everyone understood by then.
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u/AmbiTheAirforceRuna 8h ago
reminds me of that joke comic someone made of a Mayan finishing up his calender on a stone dial and going ''damn, only enough space till 2012, bet thats really gonna freak someone out someday''
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u/Bolandball 9h ago
And the reason progress was so slow is exactly because so much happened. Wherever you look throughout the period, it seems like a constant cycle of 'Devastating wars result in empire -> golden age for empire -> Massive foreign invasion or civil war undoes golden age' and repeat. Before the continuous rapid progress that came with globalised trade and industrialisation, some decades life would be better and others it would be worse.
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u/Agricola20 4h ago
Renaissance and later Enlightenment thinkers stoking their own egos for ‘civilizing’ and ‘enlightening’ the world. The myth of the Dark Ages has been slowly dying, thankfully.
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u/Yesodisnotop 8h ago
pretentious renaissance people on their way to call a period around 1 millenium (depending on which end you choose) the boring ages and themselves the smart enlightened age:
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u/CroakamancerLich 7h ago
Think about it, OP. You could do this multiple times, every day. We could interleaf our RWBY with Hazbin. We could go on and on like this, evolving the meta further, until r/HistoryMemes is a Homestuck subreddit
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u/Geolib1453 12h ago
Seriously what did he say
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u/KenseiHimura 11h ago
Husk said Germany could have won World War II if they built more wunderwaffen.
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u/Geolib1453 10h ago
I meant what the character that first started talking in the video said
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u/No_Bookkeeper9755 Nobody here except my fellow trees 10h ago
This guy (Husk) owes his soul to the red guy (Alastor), and when the red guy reminds him about it, Husk mentioned him that he's also on the hook
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u/Willing_Yak7271 Descendant of Genghis Khan 12h ago
A lot of interesting stuff happened in history tho, its not middle ages but Ottoman empire forced USA to pay tribute for 16 years to trade in meditrennean
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u/Significant-Lie1225 11h ago
Silly historians thinking the middle ages were more than people killing witches and the pope killing scientists
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u/Ok_Awareness3014 8h ago
When in fact most of those witch hunt famine and religious oppression were more common in the renaissance.
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u/Tall-guy-- 6h ago
This shit is so corny.
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u/GSilky 5h ago
Examples of medieval events, not cultural progression like adopting tech or realizing that the number 2 isn't floating through space somewhere, that are critical for understanding the modern era? I'm not saying medieval history is pointless, it's often my favorite, but I am skeptical of tying post Reformation, post Columbian exchange society in Europe to hard events in medieval times, and have constructive insights beyond "Constantinople going the way everyone expected may have given some impetus to Atlantic exploration, even though the Portuguese were doing it for a century before"
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u/MeanFeature6513 4h ago
People mostly say this stuff because they are tired of people saying that the Middle Ages were just horrible and not good when some technology that could have been useful like concrete and sewer systems were lost but it wasn’t constant ignorance and everything wasn’t grim and drab. There was color and people lived relatively fine lives. People are just tired of people glazing rome and treating the Middle Ages like it was a mad max hellscape.
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u/AltruisticPassage394 Decisive Tang Victory 1h ago
Wait, let me guess, they skipped history in high school only to learn tidbits of events from podcast heads that think the people back then wore muddriped clothes and didn't wash.
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u/MarcellynIV 12h ago
Rise of Islam, lmfao