It wasn't until I started reading about medieval science and thechnology that I figured out how fake most of modern discussions on politics and ideology is.

One phenomenon jumps out to you when you get seriously interested in history (even it you happen to be amateur like me). And that is that people tend to naively judge periods' accomplishemnts largely based on how much they superficialy resemble our age. If period is seen as good we emplasize good parts and forget about flaws; if period is seen as bad we forget good parts and sometimes even invent flaws out of tin air. Let me explain.

We think ancient Rome was awesome because it had some large cities and secular institutions like senate containing various squabbling politicians. Their issues can roughly pattern-match to our issues. (By "our" I mean anyone living in some kind of democracy, even a shitty one). They also had giant sporting arenas and were great at making complelling spectacles. All that makes them seem familiar to us. Ancient Athens is likewise seen as awesome as they had invented democracy.

So because these periods are seen as "good," we tend to build up their accomplishments and forget about flaws. We talk about Roman road infrastructure such as roads and aquaducts, and about giant structures like colloseum. And there is no doubt they could build on large scale. We also talk about greek ankythera mechanism as a great accomplishment of the ancients.

But then we forget about the flaws. Ancient Romans could think big, but because of the abundance cheap slave labor they never much mechanized. They had watermils but no windmills. The quality of their steel weapons was pretty low but they could make up in quantity. And their system of slavery was very brutal. They were also increddibly petty and vengeful towards anyone who opposed them, as evidenced in destruction of Cartage even after it stoped being any threat. Ultimately, Rome was one giant iron-age empire. Athenian democracy didn't last very long and their plilosophy often degraded to sophistry.

Medieval europe, on the other hand, was a period that is completely unlike ours. They were domiated by Catholic church, their system was feudal, few big cities and they had almost no politicians as we would understand today, as much politics was done by warlords (ie kings and lords) and celrgy. And because the period is so unfamiliar it is easy to think that it was not very advanced.

But a lot of flaws of medievals are exagerated and some are outright made up. We think of wich burnings as scary medieval invention -- but wich burnings were actually pretty rare in most of the middle ages (oficial position of the Church for the long time was that wiches didn't exist) and much more common near the end and in subsequent early modern period. Likewise idea that the medievals believed the earth was flat is modern invention and the famous 'medieval' drawing of flat earth is 19c forgery. Likewise medievals weren't filthy -- there was an extensive culture of bathouses (also connected to prostitution; medival people werent as prudish as you might think). Their teeth weren't all that bad (bad teeth started in early modern period with introduction of cheap sugar).

We also forget all about their accomplisments. European Middle Ages are defined as a period from 500-1500. Now, the beginnings were indeed rough because the whole Western Roman Empire collapsed creating a huge power vacuum. But the lack of slaves forced medievals to adapt and increase efficiency creating gains in agriculture such as heavy plough and crop rotation. Latter this brought

We think of plate armor as too heavy and bulky, but that is another myth. The idea that you needed to be lifted on horse by a crane was made up by Mark Twain. In reality armor redistributes weight very well preserving mobility, while making the vearer incredibly hard to kill. Thats why anyone who could fork out the cash for the armor did so. Take a look at these videos about armor mobility. If something that was built in ancient times

It wasn't until I started reading about medieval science and thechnology that I figured out how fake most of modern discussions on politics and ideology is.

One phenomenon jumps out to you when you get seriously interested in history (even it you happen to be amateur like me). And that is that people tend to naively judge periods' accomplishemnts largely based on how much they superficialy resemble our age. If period is seen as good we emplasize good parts and forget about flaws; if period is seen as bad we forget good parts and sometimes even invent flaws out of tin air. Let me explain.

We think ancient Rome was awesome because it had some large cities and secular institutions like senate containing various squabbling politicians. Their issues can roughly pattern-match to our issues. (By "our" I mean anyone living in some kind of democracy, even a shitty one). They also had giant sporting arenas and were great at making complelling spectacles. All that makes them seem familiar to us. Ancient Athens is likewise seen as awesome as they had invented democracy.

So because these periods are seen as "good," we tend to build up their accomplishments and forget about flaws. We talk about Roman road infrastructure such as roads and aquaducts, and about giant structures like colloseum. And there is no doubt they could build on large scale. We also talk about greek ankythera mechanism as a great accomplishment of the ancients.

But then we forget about the flaws. Ancient Romans could think big, but because of the abundance cheap slave labor they never much mechanized. They had watermils but no windmills. The quality of their steel weapons was pretty low but they could make up in quantity. And their system of slavery was very brutal. They were also increddibly petty and vengeful towards anyone who opposed them, as evidenced in destruction of Cartage even after it stoped being any threat. Ultimately, Rome was one giant iron-age empire. Athenian democracy didn't last very long and their plilosophy often degraded to sophistry.

Medieval europe, on the other hand, was a period that is completely unlike ours. They were domiated by Catholic church, their system was feudal, few big cities and they had almost no politicians as we would understand today, as much politics was done by warlords (ie kings and lords) and celrgy. And because the period is so unfamiliar it is easy to think that it was not very advanced.

But a lot of flaws of medievals are exagerated and some are outright made up. We think of wich burnings as scary medieval invention -- but wich burnings were actually pretty rare in most of the middle ages (oficial position of the Church for the long time was that wiches didn't exist) and much more common near the end and in subsequent early modern period. Likewise idea that the medievals believed the earth was flat is modern invention and the famous 'medieval' drawing of flat earth is 19c forgery. Likewise medievals weren't filthy -- there was an extensive culture of bathouses (also connected to prostitution; medival people werent as prudish as you might think). Their teeth weren't all that bad (bad teeth started in early modern period with introduction of cheap sugar).

We also forget all about their accomplisments. European Middle Ages are defined as a period from 500-1500. Now, the beginnings were indeed rough because the whole Western Roman Empire collapsed creating a huge power vacuum. But the lack of slaves forced medievals to adapt and increase efficiency creating gains in agriculture such as heavy plough and crop rotation. Latter this brought

We think of plate armor as too heavy and bulky, but that is another myth. The idea that you needed to be lifted on horse by a crane was made up by Mark Twain. In reality armor redistributes weight very well preserving mobility, while making the vearer incredibly hard to kill. Thats why anyone who could fork out the cash for the armor did so. Take a look at these videos about armor mobility. If something that was built in ancient times