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Comment by billfruit | Hacker News Reader

Historians think middle ages ended at the fall of Constantinople. From then on progress towards the modern world was swift.

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But I haven't heard a single analysis claiming the fall of Constantinople actually caused this and the parent article gives a pretty standard analysis why the fall of the Western Roman Empire eventually gave rise to the modern world.

The fall of Constantinople was more a matter that a variety of more advanced societies (Venice, the Turks, etc) were rising and the Byzantines were there, so why not loot them, as far as I understand the situation.

I listened to a podcast called “12 Byzantine Rulers” a while back. I believe they said a number of people fleeing after Constantinople fell made it into Venice and transplanted a lot of old knowledge that had been locked up and stagnant within the city. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment were both heavily influenced by a resurgence of interest in classical work that seems to have started around the exact same time Constantinople fell. I don’t know enough history to know all the reasons in favor or against that argument, but it makes a lot of sense to me that it was a contributing factor.

Well what you know, there is a connection, it seems,

https://web.archive.org/web/20030930225420/http://www.the-or...

The fleeing of scholars from Constantinople to Venice is comparable to the fleeing of scholars from Ionia to mainland Greece in the wake of the failed Ionian Revolt which kickstarted the golden age of Greek philosophy. They appeared at the right place and time with the right ideas which took root and transformed Western Europe.

It’s humbling to trace these kinds of intellectual lineages. Makes you appreciate the millennia of accumulated knowledge we’ve inherited/how everyone seems to be standing on the shoulders of the past.

> From then on progress towards the modern world was swift.

Personally I credit the printing press as the dividing line (yes I know the fall of Constantinople was at the same time).

Sometimes I idly think what would I invent if I was transported via mcguffin to ancient Rome. I'd invent paper and the printing press.

bicycles. all they would of needed was bicycles.

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