> It only works if you focus solely on western Europe, where the decline of Rome left a nasty gap in the records. Elsewhere – in Tang China, Abbasid Persia and

> It only works if you focus solely on western Europe, where the decline of Rome left a nasty gap in the records. Elsewhere – in Tang China, Abbasid Persia and in the rest of the Islamic world, which only developed in the seventh century – history continued apace. Sounds to me like Europe moved at a relativistically faster speed than the rest of the world which accounts for the missing time. People in the 1500s just didn't have the tools to explain it yet.