5 ms·

But surely by that definition Europe was also a unified entity in the medieval period.

kumarvvr 4y ago
- ahtihn 4y ago
  > Christianity is so young, it hasn't had the time to develop into a serious religion. This is complete nonsense.
  - dang 4y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- oynqr 4y ago
  All the people who died in the Thirty Years' War would like to have a word with you.
  - eru 4y ago
    To be fair, that came quite a bit after the medieval period. However, there's plenty of division during the Medieval period. Eg the Iberian peninsula wasn't even Christian during most of that time. And neither was much of Eastern and Northern Europe.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Lots of people question the unified nature of Europe! Whole world wars have been fought over that very question. Regardless of cultural or racial similarities, whether there's a single government or not is a major factor in deciding if an area is a unified entity. That's not some British invention, it's fundamental to the whole concept of a nation state to begin with.
- dang 4y ago
  Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN, including religious and nationalistic comments. You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
OJFord 4y ago
I was going to say the same thing, but then I realised the initial claim was also about 'cultural unity'. So fair enough, and yes a lot of Europe (or all of it in a few sections) has been culturally unified since time immemorial. It is a bit more complex though, certainly even today there's some very distinct 'culture' in different regions across India. But also shared themes and roots (e.g. Sanskrit & texts written in it, from which modern 'distinct' languages/beliefs/teachings have been derived) that kumarvr's far better placed to comment on than I am.
- eru 4y ago
  > [...] has been culturally unified since time immemorial. Could you be a bit more concrete?
  - hnfong 4y ago
    Not the GP but I'll be more concrete in the other direction. The Roman Empire is located in Europe, is more recent than "time immemorial", and I'll claim that they didn't regard the various barbarians in Europe outside its sphere of influence as culturally unified with them.
    - eru 4y ago
      It depends a bit on what we mean by 'time immemorial'. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial for some possibilities. In a legal context, 'time immemorial' is often much, much more recent than the Roman Empire, even the Eastern part.
bnralt 4y ago
To go even further: I imagine if the Arab world was politically unified with Europe today, there'd be a lot of people saying that it was always a unified Mediterranean cultural entity, sharing Monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Greek intellectual foundations, and having a long-term shared history in the Roman world. It's not a point of view commonly encountered today, though, probably because Europe and the Arab world aren't politically unified. That is to say, if you decide that a region should be seen as unified (perhaps because of modern political boundaries), one can cherry-pick common elements to try to reach that conclusion. It's not entirely incorrect, but it's a biased way of presenting the evidence in order to justify a preconceived belief.

ahtihn 4y ago
> Christianity is so young, it hasn't had the time to develop into a serious religion. This is complete nonsense.
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
oynqr 4y ago
All the people who died in the Thirty Years' War would like to have a word with you.
- eru 4y ago
  To be fair, that came quite a bit after the medieval period. However, there's plenty of division during the Medieval period. Eg the Iberian peninsula wasn't even Christian during most of that time. And neither was much of Eastern and Northern Europe.
origin_path 4y ago
Lots of people question the unified nature of Europe! Whole world wars have been fought over that very question. Regardless of cultural or racial similarities, whether there's a single government or not is a major factor in deciding if an area is a unified entity. That's not some British invention, it's fundamental to the whole concept of a nation state to begin with.
dang 4y ago
Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN, including religious and nationalistic comments. You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I was going to say the same thing, but then I realised the initial claim was also about 'cultural unity'. So fair enough, and yes a lot of Europe (or all of it in a few sections) has been culturally unified since time immemorial. It is a bit more complex though, certainly even today there's some very distinct 'culture' in different regions across India. But also shared themes and roots (e.g. Sanskrit & texts written in it, from which modern 'distinct' languages/beliefs/teachings have been derived) that kumarvr's far better placed to comment on than I am.

eru 4y ago
> [...] has been culturally unified since time immemorial. Could you be a bit more concrete?
- hnfong 4y ago
  Not the GP but I'll be more concrete in the other direction. The Roman Empire is located in Europe, is more recent than "time immemorial", and I'll claim that they didn't regard the various barbarians in Europe outside its sphere of influence as culturally unified with them.
  - eru 4y ago
    It depends a bit on what we mean by 'time immemorial'. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial for some possibilities. In a legal context, 'time immemorial' is often much, much more recent than the Roman Empire, even the Eastern part.

bnralt 4y ago

To go even further: I imagine if the Arab world was politically unified with Europe today, there'd be a lot of people saying that it was always a unified Mediterranean cultural entity, sharing Monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Greek intellectual foundations, and having a long-term shared history in the Roman world. It's not a point of view commonly encountered today, though, probably because Europe and the Arab world aren't politically unified. That is to say, if you decide that a region should be seen as unified (perhaps because of modern political boundaries), one can cherry-pick common elements to try to reach that conclusion. It's not entirely incorrect, but it's a biased way of presenting the evidence in order to justify a preconceived belief.