5 ms·

Disclaimer: am an historian and agree with the basic premise of OP. Without a doubt, it would be preferable to have been born in 100 CE as opposed to 800 CE, in

Disclaimer: am an historian and agree with the basic premise of OP. Without a doubt, it would be preferable to have been born in 100 CE as opposed to 800 CE, in most parts of Christian Western Europe. But I think he dismisses point #1 far too hastily. Go a little bit south of the Visigoths, and you have one of the world's largest libraries to date and a city to rival ancient Athens in size (Muslim Cordoba). The point I try to make when I teach this stuff is not that there was no period of decline in Christian Western Europe after the fall of the Western empire. That's a given. But the culture of the Greeks and Romans also had a home in places like Morocco, Afghanistan and Egypt. Those places were doing great during the "Dark Ages" and were just as much the inheritors of the Classical world as, say, Germany and Ireland. In other words: fixating on a Dark Age that only befell something like 1/4 of the zone of Greco-Roman influence gives a misleading impression because it imposes much more modern geographic boundaries. Many of those "lost" classical texts rediscovered in the Renaissance were still readily available in places like Isfahan and Shiraz. Likewise with population: I would wager that, taking a century-level view, the regions encompassed by Alexander's empire increased steadily in urbanization and GDP from his time to that of the Mongols.

adrianratnapala 9y ago
> I would wager that, taking a century-level view, the regions encompassed by Alexander's empire increased steadily in urbanization and GDP from his time to that of the Mongols. There is evidence of a medeival decline, even in those areas, although obviously not as bad. In "Why The West Rules, For Now", Ian Morris defines "The West" very broadly, and definately includes everything you are talking about. He then comes up with various metrics which are not averages, but which focus the most successful part of the region (e.g. population of the biggest city). Not surprisingly, the most successful parts of the west by his reckoning, were in the Islamic world during the middle ages. But even then his overall metric shows a medeival dip for the west, which his "east" (aka China) did does not see.
- benbreen 9y ago
  Before the Mongol invasions? That would surprise me, if so. Would be interested to see his evidence, if anything from the book is online.
  - nl 9y ago
    I haven't read this book, but it is on my list. This data would surprise me too, but the author is fairly well credentialed and has done reasonable work at estimating this kind of thing before. He is one of the authors of https://classics.stanford.edu/publications/cambridge-economic-history-greco-roman-world https://classics.stanford.edu/publications/cambridge-economi... His work on city size seems to be in this PDF, pages 109-117: http://www.ianmorris.org/docs/social-development.pdf http://www.ianmorris.org/docs/social-development.pdf I'm far from an expert on this. The only thing I noted was that his estimate of 125K in 1000CE Baghdad is lower than I expected. He argues it may actually have been lower given the documented size, and he notes the 500K-700K estimates for Baghdad imply a much higher density to anywhere else at that time. I'd note that I don't see the OP's point (that population declined in the Muslim cities during this period) reflected in the numbers I'm seeing in this document. That is mostly because it isn't clear about the whole area population as opposed to the largest cities.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  I don’t see how The West could shift around like that. You might as well say “the most successful part of the New York art scene is in Philadelphia”. How is that the New York art scene? It’s equivalent to “privatize profits, socialize losses”. You’re saying when The West succeeds it’s because of its Westiness, and when The East succeeds it’s because it was having a Westy period.
mirimir 9y ago
What do you think about the role of Christianity in the decline of Western Europe after the Western empire fell? The Church was very powerful. And there was an absolute focus on "spiritual life", with physical reality considered as just an illusion.
- nl 9y ago
  Interestingly, the linked article has a (made-up) image relevant to your question. Search for the caption: "Pictured: one way to politicize this discussion; not recommended"
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Well, made up graphic or not, the idea strikes me as rather plausible. Also, it's about religion, not politics.
    - nl 9y ago
      it's about religion, not politics define:politicize cause (an activity or event) to become political in character. But good luck with that theory anyway!
      - mirimir 9y ago
        No, I made it about religion. And religion <> politics. Except to the bloody Midieval Christians, anyway. Which is a key aspect of the argument. But anyway, de gustibus non disputandum est :)
        nl 9y ago
        And religion <> politics. Except to the bloody Midieval Christians, anyway The loss of most of the Eastern Roman Empire and the defeat of the Persian Empire by a religious-based empire at around the same time indicates this "exception" may not be quite as universal as you seem to believe.
nl 9y ago
The linked article explicitly makes this point: "Every other historical age name is instantly understood by everyone to refer to both a time and a place. [..] let’s just agree to call it the Western European Dark Ages, as long as we can also agree it existed and was bad."
- benbreen 9y ago
  Like I said, I agree with the linked article but I think it skips over the implications of this point too hastily. "Christian Western Europe" is not a particularly large or important chunk of the Greco-Roman world, relatively speaking. Insofar as talking about a Dark Age gives the impression that there was a massive break with Classical Antiquity throughout that whole world (as opposed to just parts of the northwest quadrant of it), the concept is misleading. But if we're calling it the Western Christian European Dark Ages, Scott Alexander and I agree.
  - jdminhbg 9y ago
    > "Christian Western Europe" is not a particularly large or important chunk of the Greco-Roman world, relatively speaking. Importance is I guess in the eye of the beholder, but it's pretty hard to argue that Christian Western Europe isn't a particularly large part of the Greco-Roman world.
    - nl 9y ago
      it's pretty hard to argue that Christian Western Europe isn't a particularly large part of the Greco-Roman world. The argument was that it wasn't particularly large or important. It's pretty easy to make this argument: In terms of the known world during Greco-Roman times, most of the known world was to the South and East. Persia and Carthage were major empires, and writings from those parts and beyond were known in Rome. Compare that to Western Europe: The Romans barely knew that Britain existed before Julius, and it was so unimportant that they abandoned it. Gaul was geographically a large part of the empire, true, but wasn't particularly important. Note that land grants to legionaries were given in Romania, because Rome wanted to control that area rather than in Gaul. Counter-factual histories are endless of course, but it can be worthwhile thinking about them occasionally. We live in a world where the Mongols stopped before Vienna (at least partly because they didn't see anything rich enough in Europe to bother with). If they hadn't stopped, or if they hadn't destroyed the Islamic world and inland trading empires like they did it is entirely possible that Western Europe would still be considered a backwater.
woodandsteel 9y ago
Quite so. And when there was a great rebirth in interest in higher learning at the beginning of the Medieval period, many would-be scholars ran off to Muslim lands to read, often in Arabic translations, what the Greeks and Romans had originally written, and also the further original works of the Arabs themselves.
- hyperpallium 9y ago
  IANAH, but if you graph the rate of progress, it seems to generally be exponential (over the long term). Did this rate of progress continue smoothly in other parts of the world, during the "Western European Dark Ages", or did it slow a little? i.e. not a decline, but a lull or slower progress. I guess if 1/4 of the world is declining, that would make global progress a little slower than if it had contributed equally. As a layperson, I've always had the impression you counter, i.e. that there was great progress in classical times, and it didn't accelerate again until the Renaissance. OTOH I know of one fundamental development made elsewhere during the W.E. Dark Ages: algebra.
  - benbreen 9y ago
    A list of advances that came from the eastern and southern parts of the sphere of Greco-Roman influence c. 500 to 1000 would be pretty impressive I think. Off the top of my head, there'd be: algebra, chess, windmills, distilled alcohol, mounted plate armored warfare (earliest proto-knights are from Sassanian Persia) and Greek fire. I think the astrolabe too? A fun list and it would be interesting to see what else it might include. Technological innovation might be an interesting counterpoint to arguments based on population or GDP. I might write a blog post about it...
    - hyperpallium 9y ago
      I'd be very interested in reading that! Unfortumately, there's no objective metric to quantify the importance of each development, which is a problem for charting it, but this kind of thing has been attempted for the development of life on earth, and of technology, based on complexity. e.g. Kurzweil's singularity stuff. I think his charts are quite well argued for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PPTCountdowntoSingularityLinear.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PPTCountdowntoSingularity... It's also been back-extrapolated to estimate the genesis of life (which pre-dates earth, they find): https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html Moore's Law has a similar chart, but it's easy to quantify in FLOPS or other computation units, so doesn't really help here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moore%27s_Law_over_120_Years.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moore%27s_Law_over_120_Ye...

adrianratnapala 9y ago

> I would wager that, taking a century-level view, the regions encompassed by Alexander's empire increased steadily in urbanization and GDP from his time to that of the Mongols. There is evidence of a medeival decline, even in those areas, although obviously not as bad. In "Why The West Rules, For Now", Ian Morris defines "The West" very broadly, and definately includes everything you are talking about. He then comes up with various metrics which are not averages, but which focus the most successful part of the region (e.g. population of the biggest city). Not surprisingly, the most successful parts of the west by his reckoning, were in the Islamic world during the middle ages. But even then his overall metric shows a medeival dip for the west, which his "east" (aka China) did does not see.

benbreen 9y ago
Before the Mongol invasions? That would surprise me, if so. Would be interested to see his evidence, if anything from the book is online.
- nl 9y ago
  I haven't read this book, but it is on my list. This data would surprise me too, but the author is fairly well credentialed and has done reasonable work at estimating this kind of thing before. He is one of the authors of https://classics.stanford.edu/publications/cambridge-economic-history-greco-roman-world https://classics.stanford.edu/publications/cambridge-economi... His work on city size seems to be in this PDF, pages 109-117: http://www.ianmorris.org/docs/social-development.pdf http://www.ianmorris.org/docs/social-development.pdf I'm far from an expert on this. The only thing I noted was that his estimate of 125K in 1000CE Baghdad is lower than I expected. He argues it may actually have been lower given the documented size, and he notes the 500K-700K estimates for Baghdad imply a much higher density to anywhere else at that time. I'd note that I don't see the OP's point (that population declined in the Muslim cities during this period) reflected in the numbers I'm seeing in this document. That is mostly because it isn't clear about the whole area population as opposed to the largest cities.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
I don’t see how The West could shift around like that. You might as well say “the most successful part of the New York art scene is in Philadelphia”. How is that the New York art scene? It’s equivalent to “privatize profits, socialize losses”. You’re saying when The West succeeds it’s because of its Westiness, and when The East succeeds it’s because it was having a Westy period.

mirimir 9y ago

What do you think about the role of Christianity in the decline of Western Europe after the Western empire fell? The Church was very powerful. And there was an absolute focus on "spiritual life", with physical reality considered as just an illusion.

nl 9y ago
Interestingly, the linked article has a (made-up) image relevant to your question. Search for the caption: "Pictured: one way to politicize this discussion; not recommended"
- mirimir 9y ago
  Well, made up graphic or not, the idea strikes me as rather plausible. Also, it's about religion, not politics.
  - nl 9y ago
    it's about religion, not politics define:politicize cause (an activity or event) to become political in character. But good luck with that theory anyway!
    - mirimir 9y ago
      No, I made it about religion. And religion <> politics. Except to the bloody Midieval Christians, anyway. Which is a key aspect of the argument. But anyway, de gustibus non disputandum est :)
      - nl 9y ago
        And religion <> politics. Except to the bloody Midieval Christians, anyway The loss of most of the Eastern Roman Empire and the defeat of the Persian Empire by a religious-based empire at around the same time indicates this "exception" may not be quite as universal as you seem to believe.

nl 9y ago

The linked article explicitly makes this point: "Every other historical age name is instantly understood by everyone to refer to both a time and a place. [..] let’s just agree to call it the Western European Dark Ages, as long as we can also agree it existed and was bad."

benbreen 9y ago
Like I said, I agree with the linked article but I think it skips over the implications of this point too hastily. "Christian Western Europe" is not a particularly large or important chunk of the Greco-Roman world, relatively speaking. Insofar as talking about a Dark Age gives the impression that there was a massive break with Classical Antiquity throughout that whole world (as opposed to just parts of the northwest quadrant of it), the concept is misleading. But if we're calling it the Western Christian European Dark Ages, Scott Alexander and I agree.
- jdminhbg 9y ago
  > "Christian Western Europe" is not a particularly large or important chunk of the Greco-Roman world, relatively speaking. Importance is I guess in the eye of the beholder, but it's pretty hard to argue that Christian Western Europe isn't a particularly large part of the Greco-Roman world.
  - nl 9y ago
    it's pretty hard to argue that Christian Western Europe isn't a particularly large part of the Greco-Roman world. The argument was that it wasn't particularly large or important. It's pretty easy to make this argument: In terms of the known world during Greco-Roman times, most of the known world was to the South and East. Persia and Carthage were major empires, and writings from those parts and beyond were known in Rome. Compare that to Western Europe: The Romans barely knew that Britain existed before Julius, and it was so unimportant that they abandoned it. Gaul was geographically a large part of the empire, true, but wasn't particularly important. Note that land grants to legionaries were given in Romania, because Rome wanted to control that area rather than in Gaul. Counter-factual histories are endless of course, but it can be worthwhile thinking about them occasionally. We live in a world where the Mongols stopped before Vienna (at least partly because they didn't see anything rich enough in Europe to bother with). If they hadn't stopped, or if they hadn't destroyed the Islamic world and inland trading empires like they did it is entirely possible that Western Europe would still be considered a backwater.

woodandsteel 9y ago

Quite so. And when there was a great rebirth in interest in higher learning at the beginning of the Medieval period, many would-be scholars ran off to Muslim lands to read, often in Arabic translations, what the Greeks and Romans had originally written, and also the further original works of the Arabs themselves.

hyperpallium 9y ago
IANAH, but if you graph the rate of progress, it seems to generally be exponential (over the long term). Did this rate of progress continue smoothly in other parts of the world, during the "Western European Dark Ages", or did it slow a little? i.e. not a decline, but a lull or slower progress. I guess if 1/4 of the world is declining, that would make global progress a little slower than if it had contributed equally. As a layperson, I've always had the impression you counter, i.e. that there was great progress in classical times, and it didn't accelerate again until the Renaissance. OTOH I know of one fundamental development made elsewhere during the W.E. Dark Ages: algebra.
- benbreen 9y ago
  A list of advances that came from the eastern and southern parts of the sphere of Greco-Roman influence c. 500 to 1000 would be pretty impressive I think. Off the top of my head, there'd be: algebra, chess, windmills, distilled alcohol, mounted plate armored warfare (earliest proto-knights are from Sassanian Persia) and Greek fire. I think the astrolabe too? A fun list and it would be interesting to see what else it might include. Technological innovation might be an interesting counterpoint to arguments based on population or GDP. I might write a blog post about it...
  - hyperpallium 9y ago
    I'd be very interested in reading that! Unfortumately, there's no objective metric to quantify the importance of each development, which is a problem for charting it, but this kind of thing has been attempted for the development of life on earth, and of technology, based on complexity. e.g. Kurzweil's singularity stuff. I think his charts are quite well argued for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PPTCountdowntoSingularityLinear.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PPTCountdowntoSingularity... It's also been back-extrapolated to estimate the genesis of life (which pre-dates earth, they find): https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html Moore's Law has a similar chart, but it's easy to quantify in FLOPS or other computation units, so doesn't really help here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moore%27s_Law_over_120_Years.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moore%27s_Law_over_120_Ye...