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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

It does not help that Middle Ages cover about 1000 years and very different civilizations. This is a huge span of history. From someone who was alive in 1500, the age of Huns, Avars, Vikings and Pechenegs was more distant than first spaceflight.

But Early Middle Ages were pretty bad in a lot of Europe, there is no way around it. The combination of large scale attacks and primitive agricultural technology was deadly.

Last year I read an article by Czech archeologists who excavated two old burial grounds in Southern Moravia. One was dated approximately to 850-950 AD, the other between 1100-1150 AD. They were just a few miles away from each other. Both were peasants' cemeteries. But the average age of the buried adults grew by 11 years in the meantime. That is a big chunk of extra life, caused by "less war" and "more food".

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> The combination of large scale attacks and primitive agricultural technology was deadly.

The thing is, this depends a lot on which side of the attack you are on! In Scandinavia, the early middle ages (called the Viking Age) was a golden age in terms of political power and influence and also a high point of art and culture.

In history there are always many sides, and often they are glossed over in the overarching narrative. For example the fall of Rome was clearly a cultural setback for Italy (which is of course why the narrative of The Renaissance originated there). But was it also a setback for the subjugates areas like France, England which now became independent?

Rome continued to prosper centered in Constantinople, but had a large setback when it was plundered by the crusaders and Venice, leading to the balance of power tipping back to the Italian states - hence the "rebirth".

Saying early middle ages was "bad" or "good" really depends on how you anchor the narrative. Same with the renaissance(s).

History is a bitch in the hands of the current political arrangement. There are indisputable historical facts about things in the past that have happened - wars, civil conflicts, inventions, works of art. Then there are endless possible interpretations and viable (but not provable) causal relations between the facts. Heck, we can't even identify the proper causal relationship for events happening around us right now. Then how about going N centuries back and trying to reason about the involved parties and their intents? We don't know what conversations took place between them, what their internal agenda was, etc.

One thing is for sure. A big boat was stuck in the Suez Canal recently.

That was a deep fake.

I can't tell if this is a joke.

I'm willing to bet money that there are conspiracy theories around that say the whole thing didn't really happen and was just a coverup for something.

With real flat earthers out there (and a lot more than I thought) - no one is probably taking that bet.

Conspiracy theories are products of our ideological process of the western sovereign subject believing it is is outside of ideology.

QAnon apparently believed it was secretly trafficking child sex slaves for Hillary Clinton.

Also apparently QAnon is still a thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

There were a lot of satirical conspiracy theories involving the Clintons, Epstein, Israel, etc. Some of them were actually quite funny and managed to have no obvious conflicts of interest in them. In 100yr when someone not knowing the context reads them the satirical part may be lost.

"Heck, we can't even identify the proper causal relationship for events happening around us right now. Then how about going N centuries back and trying to reason about the involved parties and their intents"

Part of the reason we do not understand much of today, is that much is done behind closed doors.

So historians does have an edge when trying to make sense of an event 80 years ago with (allmost) all relevant documents now open and the people dead, than trying to make sense of an event 5 years ago, with people involved still trying to influence every investigation etc.

Going further back in time, especially to a time with no or burned down archives, is harder, agreed.

Documents and other preserved artifacts are often a very "low-res" view of what actually drives the course of events. Even with a well-ordered chronological archive of documents, there are far too many dots to connect between any two of them. Connecting the dots ultimately comes down to interpretation and creating a narrative. And narrative-based history is almost always wrong, deceptive and politically-inspired.

> History is a bitch in the hands of the current political arrangement

Isn’t the point of the essay that that is ever true?

The middle ages were a terrible time for India. The Islamic Conquest put a definitive end to a relative era of peace and took India to the dark ages. Most Indian kingdoms were soft (Buddhism was the prevalent religion) and fell like ninepins to hardened invaders.

Vast libraries were burned and vast quantities of knowledge lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests_in_the_Indian... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda

As we are talking about an entire millennium, the middle ages were a terrific time for India, containing multiple centuries that are considered golden ages with the Gupta Empire and the Chola dynasty.

Both statements are true and false, it's meaningless to generalize to that degree.

The Gupta Empire aka Golden Age of India preceded the Islamic Conquest. 2nd to 6th Century AD. Not sure whether this fits into the Middle Ages.

Islamic conquest of India started from ~700 AD, though it became serious only after 900 AD.

>. Not sure whether this fits into the Middle Ages.

One or two centuries arguably do, which is why I worded my statement in that particular way.

Dark ages for India during Mughal Empire? You must be kidding right or you are in denial.

Mughal dinasty is probably the richest Indian dinasty and most probably the richest dinasty ever comparable to Byzantine empires. The older Indian dinasties before Moghul are not that rich or successful otherwise tourists will be visiting their buildings like pyramids in Egypt or Aya Sophia in Turkey.

We are talking far before the Mughal Empire. Most older Indian dynasties were utterly demolished by invaders. Islamic Conquerors deliberately made it a point to demolish them - temples, libraries, etc.

It is not surprising that Mughal Empire was rich for the ruling class. It imposed the Jizya tax on non-muslims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya

Mughal empire started probably just after the Middle age but there were several separate Sultanates namely Gujarat, Bengal and Delhi. These were very rich Sultanates probably not as rich as the Mughal empire because they were smaller, but they were rich Kingdoms nonetheless even by modern standards. India was not at that time in dark ages, by any stretch of imagination. They probably economically fare much better than India nowadays, and you would not call India now as dark ages, would you?

The jizya is tax for non Muslim and for Muslim they have got zakat and other normal taxes. It is not like Indian do not have any tax nowadays.

The Mughal Empire was founded by Babur (reigned 1526–1530).

The Delhi Sultanate (12th-15 century) was recognised for its oppression of Hindus. Muslim texts of that period even encourage oppression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Delhi_Su...

The Muslim texts of the Delhi Sultanate era treated Hindus with disdain, remarking "Hindus are never interesting in themselves, but only as converts, as capitation tax payers, or as corpses".

"The Muslim commanders of Delhi Sultanate regularly raided Hindu kingdoms for plunder, mulct their treasuries and looted the Hindu temples therein"

It was certainly one of the dark ages, unless you happened to be an Islamic conqueror! Comparing that era against modern India is hopefully a joke ? Perhaps you only meant to compare Muslim Nobles in that era against modern Indian citizens ? (Even then the life expectancy was lower). Being a Hindu citizen in that era meant you (and your family) could be enslaved for any reason and your village/town slaughtered to the last man, your template desecrated and looted. There are thousands of such documented cases.

Oh, btw, the Zakat tax in that era was negligible compared to Jizya. Can dig up several sources on this too, if needed. If you didn't pay Jizya, you were killed or enslaved. You were freed from Jizya only if you converted to Islam.

I am not sure you understand the meaning of dark ages. India as a nation and subcontinent not only doing fine at the time but also thriving[1]. This prosperity period is carried over to the Moghul dinasty as some historians considered its beginning as part of Medieval India.

Dark ages meant that there is a sharp decline in the quality of life especially in the knowledge and scholarly departments.

If the Sultanates are really bad as you have described there should be no Hindu left in the India sub-continent but the last time I checked they are still the majority. The Sultanates can easily pull a Spanish Inquisition style by killing or forced conversion. They can drive away the Hindu away like what the Spanish Christians did during inquisition to the Muslim and Jews by not spare anyone of them and eliminated all the mosques and sinagogues from Spain[2].

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_India

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

India at that time had lost most of its accumulated scientific and technological knowledge - burnt and destroyed by Islamic Invaders, suffered extraordinary cultural and education decline (destruction of temples, gender equality) and had an enslaved and subjugated populace. There was extraordinary loss of life and population declines.

It fits all metrics of a dark age. A distinct minority of the population being prosperous does not repudiate this.

The slaughter of Indians in that era even exceeds the Spanish Inquisition. There were regular massacres of over >100K folks after a city surrendered. (Ex: Ghiyas ud din Balban of Delih Sultanate).

The population of Delhi under the Delhi Sultanate was utterly exterminated by Timur. It took another century for the population to recover. He killed 17 million people in his campaign.

https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/time-prism/december-17-i...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timurid_conquests_and_invasion...

A full post on the large-scale massacres during that period are just too many to list here.

I think the myth that is the original article is referring to is probably your version of India dark ages story not the European dark ages story.

Believe it or not, Timur probably killed more muslim in his entire campaign than non Muslim.

The Delhi Sultanates created the Hindustan languages and started the Indo-Islamic architecture that reached its zenith during the Mughal Empire[1]. The Delhi Sultanate is also noted for its integration of the Indian subcontinent into a global cosmopolitan culture[2]. The Sultanate is a few forces in the world that has successfully repelled the Mongul catastrophic invasion. FYI, Mongul successfully decimated Baghdad of Abbasid empire and burnt it to the ground including the largest library known to the world at the time.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Sultanate

[2]Asher, C. B.; Talbot, C (1 January 2008), India Before Europe (1st ed.), Cambridge University Press, pp. 50–52, ISBN 978-0-521-51750-8

Dark ages for common people, obviously. Not the ruling class.

Mughals are solidly after Europe's Medieval period. It's greatest extent was later than even the Renaissance.

>But was it also a setback for the subjugates areas like France, England which now became independent?

Now England got to be attacked by a variety of other raiders. We actually don't know a huge amount about the early Medieval period in England. A lot of it comes from a handful of ecclesiastical records and the survey that was done after the Norman (French) invasion in 1066. Also a few discoveries, most notably Sutton Hoo.

But we don't even know if King Arthur was a real person or not. In contrast to the Roman Empire, very little came down to us from Northern Europe.

Another fascinating one is the Battle of Brunanburh - which is known to have been hugely important but nobody knows where it happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brunanburh

There is a chapter about it in Michael Wood's excellent book In Search of England.

Last night I killed a man in Brunanburh.

https://beelyrics.net/music/17276-jorge-luis-borges/671626-b...

In fact, the existence of written history is a pretty good indicator of the degree of chaos.

It wasn't just Italy that suffered with the collapse of the Roman system. Written history nearly disappeared from Spain, North Africa, France, Belgium, England, the Balkans, etc...

The notable difference is, of course, the surviving East Roman Empire, which continued for another 1000 years. The contrast between conditions in former Roman Western Europe, and the East Roman Empire very much highlight the degree of collapse that occurred.

There is more information about the 300-1000 period than is commonly assumed. It’s not as solid as earlier or later, but people have done a lot of research and analysis and it is no longer the “dark ages”.

If you follow the British History podcast, he covers this period in a lot of detail. What we don’t know can be frustrating but what we do know is illuminating. https://www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com/

> But Early Middle Ages were pretty bad in a lot of Europe, there is no way around it.

I recommend anyone who is interested in this topic watch Paul Freedman's "The Early Middle Ages, 284--1000" Yale course lecture videos, which are free online.

https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-210 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC8JcWVRFp8&list=PL77A337915...

The black death also created a massive redistribution of wealth. Labor wages went up, the power balance between lords and peasants shifted and power institutions were decimated.

> But the average age of the buried adults grew by 11 years in the meantime.

Was that progress or luck? It doesn't seem to me many things would chane in peasant's life.

Who knows about this particular burial ground, but large chunks of Europe did go through a 'rough spot' (cities depopulating, total population declining, industries collapsing, ...) in late aniquity/the early middle ages that took centuries to recover from.

Sadly, there's this unfortunate tendency to over-correct in the opposite direction when trying to clear up popular misconceptions...

> less war and more food

Life of peasants greatly improved in Western Europe after the 14th century due to plague killing half of the population, leaving to survivors more land and food and scarcity of work force. And then later in 15th century with the invention of printing the literacy and education became available to common people which again significantly influenced and improved their lives.

Just nitpicking here, but I don't think "literacy and education became available to common people" in the 15th century. In fact, for quite some time after Gutenberg's printing press was invented (or reinvented, depending from what cultural angle you look at history) it was common practice for States and catholic Church to legally prevent people from printing stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_patent

Depends on the country I guess, the Venetian Republic seems to had more than 150 presses by 1500, the most famous of publishers Aldus Manutius printing 30 thousands of inexpensive “pocket editions” books in just 5 years ("six titles a year for the next five years", at 1000 copies per edition) according to Encyclopedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/The-medieval-boo...

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. I still would not say 30K books is "available to common people" (most of whom could not read), but i was definitely not aware Venice had such a policy so early in history.

Peace is a huge improvement in a peasant's life.

With no more invaders coming across the fields, killing indiscriminately, trampling down wheat and rye, burning villages down and stealing your meagre reserves of food, you and your kids have much better chances to survive.

Magyar (proto-Hungarian) raids of the early 10th century were pretty destructive in that corner of the world.

On the bright side, if history wasn't so damn cruel, we wouldn't have such great athletes.

? Athleticism is something that's increased dramatically over the 20th century. The cruelty of history physically stunts humans.

Are you seriously implying that before there were marathons, the capability for long-range running didn't exist (or existed much less)? Athleticism as a general activity has increased because it's a leisure activity (as in, something you do when there's not anything really important to do), so it makes sense that there's a dramatic rise in it when we're unquestionably in an abundant time.

No? I'm saying that (as is documented by the olympic records!) the peak ability has increased. Things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_run_world_record_progress...

It probably was the case that the average person in a world where you had to walk everywhere was fitter than the average person in a world where you don't.

Similarly people have gotten taller: https://ourworldindata.org/human-height

I think the commenter's point was that genetically, we were just as capable (if not moreso) before modern times.

Of course people's lives and outcomes have improved; that's not in question.

> genetically, we were just as capable (if not moreso) before modern times

They're claiming that, but on what evidence? Comparative measurement is very difficult, but at least with skeletons you can measure height. Which has increased.

Height is largely a function of diet. We very much eat better, but historically you find average heights very quite a bit over time with people getting taller and shorter based on the food supply.

Even today it varies quite a bit, but almost directly maps to country wealth and immigration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_countr...

That’s environment not genetics. History gave modern athletes their baseline, and Science is what’s breaking records.

English longbows for example had much higher draw weights than modern bows so the strongest archer of all time presumably lived hundreds of years ago. The critical difference is effectively nobody is training for that kind of draw strength.

Someone else mentioned the varation in height over time and among populations, so I won't go into that. But:

> No? I'm saying that (as is documented by the olympic records!) the peak ability has increased. Things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_run_world_record_progress...

This doesn't tell us anything. Assume a normal distribution of running speed among people who seriously practice running. Assume precision timing instruments were invented in the last couple hundred years.

What we would expect to see, even if physiological conditions haven't changed at all, is a steady decline in record mile times as you sample more and more people on the right side of the distribution, until eventually better times require more and more extreme, rare outliers and average times between records begins increasing.

That does not mean that the fastest mile ever was run in 1999, or that athleticism is increasing, or anything. (It might be. There are certainly more people training for specifically competitive athletic reasons than ever before.) But it would not be surprising to learn that the fastest mile ever was run 2000 years ago.

Consider this footprint analysis of a random Australian aboriginine. [1] They calculate him as running at 23mph, which is comparable to Usain Bolt's record setting average speed of 23mph in a 100m sprint. Did we get lucky finding the footprints of one of the fastest Australians in history? Maybe. Or maybe he just wasn't that unusual in an environment where people ran a lot.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/20-000-ye...

Bolt's 23 mph includes acceleration from a standing start. His top speed during a race is more like 28 mph.

I'd be willing to bet that about 95% of that is environment. Like it or not we're basically the same people, just have more resources (in most countries) than back then. I would venture their better bone density was simply unless you were wealthy you -had- to work and usually that involved physical labor, only a few artisans, the rich, academics, etc got out of it.

That doesn't seem to be the case. Although agricultural peoples were often shorter, ancient peoples who were less settled frequently had better bone density than moderns and were as tall. In both cases, most people were in much better shape than the average modern human.

Look at the athletic stunts performed by the Greeks, from the professional athletes to the runners to the rowers. Trireme rowers outperformed modern Olympic rowers.

I think you could pretty safely pit the average human being from pre-modern times and they would embarrass almost anyone except top athletes from today in physical fitness tests, and some of the better specimens would almost certainly be competitive even with those.

Evolution is not that fast.

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