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One of my precious teenage memories is visiting a friend whose parents had a good library and set of Roman bilingual writings (similar to the Loeb Classics seri

One of my precious teenage memories is visiting a friend whose parents had a good library and set of Roman bilingual writings (similar to the Loeb Classics series). I picked Pliny’s letters and read the entire thing in one gulp. I was blown away how modern the thoughts and problems and considerations were. The thousand years of Darkness after the fall of the Roman Empire were no joke. If we all can contribute just a little bit to keep civilization thriving for centuries to come, we have done our part.

artificial 4y ago
Isn’t that period when Europe pulled ahead technologically in every way from antiquity? For example many civilizations pursued alchemy and why only in Europe did it turn into chemistry? Same with astrology into astronomy. Wind power, metallurgy, ship building, farming, stirrups (using the weight of the horse with the rider) with spears, cathedral building, the university system etc. The eastern empire thrived until the Ottomans overthrew in the 14th. It has to do with reason and progress and the systems that drove those. I think a larger part was the translation from Greek to latin between 1125-1200.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Well, Isaac Newton was also a dedicated alchemist who spent some time and energy on a search for the philosopher's stone (which in no way denigrates his other work on gravity, calculus, optics, etc.). That was pretty common thinking up through the late 18th century, when people like Lavoisier and Priestly revolutionized everything via careful quantitative measurements (and open publication, i.e. not keeping their work secret). Again, this was an area where Islamic civilization preservend and advanced on Roman-Greek knowledge during the European Dark Ages. There's also some interesting history regarding the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who apparently made a determined effort to wipe out the alchemists in the Empire because he believed they'd actually managed to make gold, and feared debasement of the currency or the funding of rebel armies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_in_the_medieval_Islami... I think this is a legitimate YT channel, here's a clip on the Diocletian persecution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9Po7dlgUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9Po7dlgUo
- qwytw 4y ago
  The eastern empire was essentially destroyed by Venice in 1204. While they regained Constatinolpe, some territory in the Balkans and Anatolia, the empire never truly recovered. During the last 250 years of its existence it was a mere shadow of its former self. It never regained its status as the preeminent cultural and political power in the Christian world.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Europe pulled ahead technologically in every way from antiquity only after 1500, i.e. after the introduction of the movable-type printing press (whose first effect was that most writings preserved from antiquity became easily accessible for a large number of people, constituting a base for the later scientific and technical progresses) and after the discovery of the maritime ways to Asia and America. The transition from alchemy and astrology to chemistry and astronomy and the improvements in metallurgy happened later. The improvements in ship building had begun a little earlier, but the greatest progress was mostly later. Only the progresses in cathedral building had already happened many centuries earlier and the progress in firearms a couple of centuries earlier. In my opinion, the answer to the question "Why only in Europe did alchemy turn into chemistry?" is because only in Europe the printed books were available for making known to everybody the earlier alchemical works (e.g. by translations from Arabic) and then the progresses in alchemical experiments, until the 18th century during which the modern chemistry was created by the interchange of information between Swedish, French, British, German, Spanish etc. chemists. Without such an international network of scientists who were able to read very soon the printed results of the chemical research performed by their colleagues from other countries and then they could devise improved experiments for chemical investigations, the modern chemistry could not be created. If, instead of publishing immediately the results of their experiments, the 18th century chemists would have kept them secret, like most of the early alchemists, the modern chemistry could not have appeared.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    You should read "The Invention of Science", by David Wootton, which touches on these issues (and many others). https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Science-History-Scientific-Revolution/dp/006175952X/ https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Science-History-Scientific-...
- Maursault 4y ago
  > stirrups (using the weight of the horse with the rider) with spears Stirrups are not a European innovation but borrowed, probably from Asian invaders, and spread across Asia to Europe from China beginning in the late 6th century AD. China and Korea had stirrups for almost a millennia by then.
photochemsyn 4y ago
It's always worth remembering that Roman and Greek ideas (themselves partially built on Egyptian notions) in mathematics and science continued to be developed in North Africa, the Middle East and India during those 'thousand years of Darkness', and that store of knowledge was itself critical in turn to the following European explosion of knowledge beginning in the Renaissance. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Agricultural_Revolution#Islamic_irrigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Agricultural_Revolution#I... > "A 13th century observer claimed there were "5000" waterwheels along the Guadalquivir in Islamic Spain; even allowing for medieval exaggeration, irrigation systems were certainly extensive in the region at that time. The supply of water was sufficient for cities as well as agriculture: the Roman aqueduct network into the city of Cordoba was repaired in the Umayyad period, and extended."
- qwytw 4y ago
  It’s interesting that most people seem to forget or ignore the Eastern Roman/Byzantine empire for some reason. No state contributed more to preserving ancient knowledge and Constantinople was absolutely central to that. e.g. if it had fallen to the Arabs in the the late 600’s the dark ages would have been a lot darker an possibly would have never ended (e.g. the collapse of Roman-Hellenic civilization would have been a lot more similar to the bronze age collapse. Also the downfall of the (Eastern) Roman Empire mostly coincided with the high middle ages and early renaissance. And contact with the empire arguably was much more important for kickstarting the renaissance than that with North Africa or the middle east.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    The Byzantines sit in an uncomfortable middle for a modern intellectual. Too European to be exotic and "diverse" in the contemporary shallow meaning of the word, but at the same time too Orthodox to be culturally comprehensible to modern Westerners. Speaking an Indo-European language that is nevertheless very distant from all the current major Indo-European language groups and uses its own hard-to-read script.
    - 4y ago
Archelaos 4y ago
"Thousand years of darkness" represents a view of the Middle Age that was widespread among historians of the past, most famous Edward Gibbon and his: "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1776-1789), but is seen in a much more differentiated way today. For a recent introduction into the debate of the "fall" of Rome (in the West) see Bret Devereaux's three part series "Rome: Decline and Fall?"[1] In his conclusions at the end of the series Devereaux states: "The ‘nitwit’ of our duel – the notion that the Middle Ages was some general collapse of ‘progress’ which delayed the course of human development – doesn’t accord with the evidence. The popular perception is that many Roman technologies were lost, but in fact these were fairly few, the most notable being Roman concrete. As noted, what is remarkable about Greek and Roman literature and learning is not how much of it was lost, but how much of it survives to the present. Moreover, the Roman economy was not the durable foundation for a lost early industrial revolution; instead it was a delicate clockwork mechanism which could, for a time, haul itself modestly – and only modestly – above pre-modern agrarian norms. When the gears broke, the clockwork stopped and it fell back down. At the same time, ‘falling back down’ is not the only story of the Middle Ages. I cannot stress this enough, the European Middle Ages were not a stagnant time in Europe or anywhere else. Older scholars, like Rostovtzeff and Gibbon supposed that Europe only reached a Roman level of prosperity in the early modern period, perhaps in the 1500s or 1600s, reasoning from the grandeur of Roman buildings and literature. But a fair look at the economic and demographic history suggests, I think, quite clearly that the ‘crossover’ point is much earlier, well into the Middle Ages. My own rough estimate would be generally around 1100 in most places; state capacity remains lower for longer because the states of Europe were small and fragmented, but one can argue that was a good thing for their long-term development. Moreover, not everything between 476 and 1100 was just ‘recovery’ – some things were new! Speaking of my own expertise, medieval steel-making, especially at its upper end, tends to be quite a bit better than Roman steel-making. Water-mills (which the Romans had) and windmills (which they didn’t) were, by 1100 apparently far more common in Europe than they had been under the Romans. The collapse of Roman political authority doesn’t represent any sort of clear break in anything we might call ‘Roman civilization’ [...] Latin persisted; Christianity persisted; Roman literature persisted; Roman law persisted; the Roman Empire itself persisted in the East. The claims of Frankish and Gothic kings to be heirs to the legacy of Rome was not an empty one from a cultural standpoint – if Gallo-Romans or Greek-speaking Eastern Romans could be heirs of Rome, why not Latin-speaking Franko-Romans? At the same time, what we might call the ‘strong’ form of the ‘change and continuity’ position – that essentially nothing of value was lost as the Roman Empire crumbled in the west – doesn’t seem sustainable in light of the evidence either. [...] it is quite clear that, on the one hand, the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West represented a substantial decline in state capacity [...] At the same time, it seems fairly clear from the evidence that the collapse of Roman connectedness took a slow economic decline and turned it into a collapse. [...] my focus is drawn to the living conditions of the people in a society. From that perspective, the fall of Rome was an unmitigated disaster, a clear (but not total) break with the economic patterns of antiquity which had enabled a measure of prosperity in the Mediterranean world." [1] https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-i-words/ https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f... https://acoup.blog/2022/01/28/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-ii-institutions/ https://acoup.blog/2022/01/28/collections-rome-decline-and-f... https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/ https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f...
thom 4y ago
I experienced the exact same thing reading Cicero’s letters. If you’d told me he had chronic anxiety and spent far too long on Twitter I’d have half believed you.

artificial 4y ago

Isn’t that period when Europe pulled ahead technologically in every way from antiquity? For example many civilizations pursued alchemy and why only in Europe did it turn into chemistry? Same with astrology into astronomy. Wind power, metallurgy, ship building, farming, stirrups (using the weight of the horse with the rider) with spears, cathedral building, the university system etc. The eastern empire thrived until the Ottomans overthrew in the 14th. It has to do with reason and progress and the systems that drove those. I think a larger part was the translation from Greek to latin between 1125-1200.

photochemsyn 4y ago
Well, Isaac Newton was also a dedicated alchemist who spent some time and energy on a search for the philosopher's stone (which in no way denigrates his other work on gravity, calculus, optics, etc.). That was pretty common thinking up through the late 18th century, when people like Lavoisier and Priestly revolutionized everything via careful quantitative measurements (and open publication, i.e. not keeping their work secret). Again, this was an area where Islamic civilization preservend and advanced on Roman-Greek knowledge during the European Dark Ages. There's also some interesting history regarding the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who apparently made a determined effort to wipe out the alchemists in the Empire because he believed they'd actually managed to make gold, and feared debasement of the currency or the funding of rebel armies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_in_the_medieval_Islami... I think this is a legitimate YT channel, here's a clip on the Diocletian persecution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9Po7dlgUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9Po7dlgUo
qwytw 4y ago
The eastern empire was essentially destroyed by Venice in 1204. While they regained Constatinolpe, some territory in the Balkans and Anatolia, the empire never truly recovered. During the last 250 years of its existence it was a mere shadow of its former self. It never regained its status as the preeminent cultural and political power in the Christian world.
adrian_b 4y ago
Europe pulled ahead technologically in every way from antiquity only after 1500, i.e. after the introduction of the movable-type printing press (whose first effect was that most writings preserved from antiquity became easily accessible for a large number of people, constituting a base for the later scientific and technical progresses) and after the discovery of the maritime ways to Asia and America. The transition from alchemy and astrology to chemistry and astronomy and the improvements in metallurgy happened later. The improvements in ship building had begun a little earlier, but the greatest progress was mostly later. Only the progresses in cathedral building had already happened many centuries earlier and the progress in firearms a couple of centuries earlier. In my opinion, the answer to the question "Why only in Europe did alchemy turn into chemistry?" is because only in Europe the printed books were available for making known to everybody the earlier alchemical works (e.g. by translations from Arabic) and then the progresses in alchemical experiments, until the 18th century during which the modern chemistry was created by the interchange of information between Swedish, French, British, German, Spanish etc. chemists. Without such an international network of scientists who were able to read very soon the printed results of the chemical research performed by their colleagues from other countries and then they could devise improved experiments for chemical investigations, the modern chemistry could not be created. If, instead of publishing immediately the results of their experiments, the 18th century chemists would have kept them secret, like most of the early alchemists, the modern chemistry could not have appeared.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  You should read "The Invention of Science", by David Wootton, which touches on these issues (and many others). https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Science-History-Scientific-Revolution/dp/006175952X/ https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Science-History-Scientific-...
Maursault 4y ago
> stirrups (using the weight of the horse with the rider) with spears Stirrups are not a European innovation but borrowed, probably from Asian invaders, and spread across Asia to Europe from China beginning in the late 6th century AD. China and Korea had stirrups for almost a millennia by then.

photochemsyn 4y ago

It's always worth remembering that Roman and Greek ideas (themselves partially built on Egyptian notions) in mathematics and science continued to be developed in North Africa, the Middle East and India during those 'thousand years of Darkness', and that store of knowledge was itself critical in turn to the following European explosion of knowledge beginning in the Renaissance. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Agricultural_Revolution#Islamic_irrigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Agricultural_Revolution#I... > "A 13th century observer claimed there were "5000" waterwheels along the Guadalquivir in Islamic Spain; even allowing for medieval exaggeration, irrigation systems were certainly extensive in the region at that time. The supply of water was sufficient for cities as well as agriculture: the Roman aqueduct network into the city of Cordoba was repaired in the Umayyad period, and extended."

qwytw 4y ago
It’s interesting that most people seem to forget or ignore the Eastern Roman/Byzantine empire for some reason. No state contributed more to preserving ancient knowledge and Constantinople was absolutely central to that. e.g. if it had fallen to the Arabs in the the late 600’s the dark ages would have been a lot darker an possibly would have never ended (e.g. the collapse of Roman-Hellenic civilization would have been a lot more similar to the bronze age collapse. Also the downfall of the (Eastern) Roman Empire mostly coincided with the high middle ages and early renaissance. And contact with the empire arguably was much more important for kickstarting the renaissance than that with North Africa or the middle east.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  The Byzantines sit in an uncomfortable middle for a modern intellectual. Too European to be exotic and "diverse" in the contemporary shallow meaning of the word, but at the same time too Orthodox to be culturally comprehensible to modern Westerners. Speaking an Indo-European language that is nevertheless very distant from all the current major Indo-European language groups and uses its own hard-to-read script.
  - 4y ago

Archelaos 4y ago

"Thousand years of darkness" represents a view of the Middle Age that was widespread among historians of the past, most famous Edward Gibbon and his: "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1776-1789), but is seen in a much more differentiated way today. For a recent introduction into the debate of the "fall" of Rome (in the West) see Bret Devereaux's three part series "Rome: Decline and Fall?"[1] In his conclusions at the end of the series Devereaux states: "The ‘nitwit’ of our duel – the notion that the Middle Ages was some general collapse of ‘progress’ which delayed the course of human development – doesn’t accord with the evidence. The popular perception is that many Roman technologies were lost, but in fact these were fairly few, the most notable being Roman concrete. As noted, what is remarkable about Greek and Roman literature and learning is not how much of it was lost, but how much of it survives to the present. Moreover, the Roman economy was not the durable foundation for a lost early industrial revolution; instead it was a delicate clockwork mechanism which could, for a time, haul itself modestly – and only modestly – above pre-modern agrarian norms. When the gears broke, the clockwork stopped and it fell back down. At the same time, ‘falling back down’ is not the only story of the Middle Ages. I cannot stress this enough, the European Middle Ages were not a stagnant time in Europe or anywhere else. Older scholars, like Rostovtzeff and Gibbon supposed that Europe only reached a Roman level of prosperity in the early modern period, perhaps in the 1500s or 1600s, reasoning from the grandeur of Roman buildings and literature. But a fair look at the economic and demographic history suggests, I think, quite clearly that the ‘crossover’ point is much earlier, well into the Middle Ages. My own rough estimate would be generally around 1100 in most places; state capacity remains lower for longer because the states of Europe were small and fragmented, but one can argue that was a good thing for their long-term development. Moreover, not everything between 476 and 1100 was just ‘recovery’ – some things were new! Speaking of my own expertise, medieval steel-making, especially at its upper end, tends to be quite a bit better than Roman steel-making. Water-mills (which the Romans had) and windmills (which they didn’t) were, by 1100 apparently far more common in Europe than they had been under the Romans. The collapse of Roman political authority doesn’t represent any sort of clear break in anything we might call ‘Roman civilization’ [...] Latin persisted; Christianity persisted; Roman literature persisted; Roman law persisted; the Roman Empire itself persisted in the East. The claims of Frankish and Gothic kings to be heirs to the legacy of Rome was not an empty one from a cultural standpoint – if Gallo-Romans or Greek-speaking Eastern Romans could be heirs of Rome, why not Latin-speaking Franko-Romans? At the same time, what we might call the ‘strong’ form of the ‘change and continuity’ position – that essentially nothing of value was lost as the Roman Empire crumbled in the west – doesn’t seem sustainable in light of the evidence either. [...] it is quite clear that, on the one hand, the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West represented a substantial decline in state capacity [...] At the same time, it seems fairly clear from the evidence that the collapse of Roman connectedness took a slow economic decline and turned it into a collapse. [...] my focus is drawn to the living conditions of the people in a society. From that perspective, the fall of Rome was an unmitigated disaster, a clear (but not total) break with the economic patterns of antiquity which had enabled a measure of prosperity in the Mediterranean world." [1] https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-i-words/ https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f... https://acoup.blog/2022/01/28/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-ii-institutions/ https://acoup.blog/2022/01/28/collections-rome-decline-and-f... https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/ https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f...

thom 4y ago

I experienced the exact same thing reading Cicero’s letters. If you’d told me he had chronic anxiety and spent far too long on Twitter I’d have half believed you.