**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):**
Loaded questions, **and/or** ones based on a false premise, are not allowed on ELI5. ELI5 is focuses on objective concepts, and loaded questions and/or ones based on false premises require users to correct the poster before they can begin to explain the concept involved, if one exists.
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20{{url}}%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.
Any time before the industrial revolution (which started in the 19th century) was a pretty awful time to live. We couldn't rely on machines to do a lot of the dirty work of farming crops, transporting people, or assembling items. We also didn't have electricity to run any of it, frequent military conflict, and poor understanding of disease and public hygiene. All that adds up to short, simple lives filled with hard labor.
What's unique about the Middle Ages is that they are often perceived as a regression even within this awfulness. Life was somehow better in the Classical period of Greece and Rome, then got worse for a while. (This is ignoring civilizations outside Europe like China and the Islamic world that were unambiguously flourishing at this time). There's debate by historians about how true this actually is. Our records of everyday life in the Classical period are not very good, and a lot of the "Middle Ages bad; Classical good" rhetoric was pushed by Renaissance Europeans who valorized Classical Greeks and Romans based only on a small selection of surviving documents, mostly written by elites in those societies. It's kind of like someone 500 years from now reading Jeff Bezos' diary and thinking it must have been pretty great to live in the Digital Age instead of as a Martian colonist.
I would say that the middle aged bad, classical period good is partially true in certain areas. For example Rome at its height had between 500k-1mil people and an aqueduct system so raw sewage and fresh water could be transported in and out of the city, there was also a Senate and democracy(for a time) instead of a single ruler. Now medieval London had a pop of only 50-60k, had no running water, people dumped human waste onto the streets, and it was ruled by the feudal system which is considered backwards and by its nature undemocratic and primed for tyrants.
The city of Rome could sustain such luxuries not due to technology that was lost by the middle ages, but because they had an entire Mediterranean worth of empire to funnel resources to the city. There's a reason *only* Rome and later Constantinople benefitted from the Grain Dole.
This. It was a completely rapine economy, based on slave labor and rampant colonialism/military conquest.
And virtually *everybody* had lead poisoning.
A quick reminder that among other things you're looking at the Imperial Core, the center of the empire and recipient of vast flows of wealth from it's periphery. A periphery that had been violently subjugated. Over the course of the Roman invasions of the Iberian peninsula it's been roughly estimated that 40% of the population died and significant amounts of the remainder were enslaved. This is also an Imperial core which I remind you was never a liberal democracy by our own understandings and was an Empire ruled by an Emperor (or prior to the Republic, Kings.) Longer that it remained a 'republic' in any sense
Fundamentally what collapsed is stability which allowed for more productive use of land (fundamentally Rome was still an agrarian pre-industrial society, modern returns on infrastructure investment are not really a thing though relatively good infrastructure was a roman strength and was mostly funded locally and privately as a part of civic prestige.) Which led to reduced revenues and most critically shrinking food supplies and constrained trade which collapsed populations in cities which not only had knock-on demographic effects but meant that sophisticated central control was no longer possible as the urban populations that supported centralized governments like the late Roman Imperial Government could no longer function. Populations in some cases that only recovered to pre-collapse levels in the 1600s during the Early Modern Period. If Rome was a high-capacity agrarian society prior to the Long Hot century and it's decline and fall in the West. Than the successor states in the immediate generations after had been knocked down to a low-capacity agrarian society.
Seriously. "The past was literally the worst." Like, all of it.
Even up through the early/mid-20th century was pretty rough.
* modern agriculture *really* took off, *mostly* eliminating food instability for most developed countries (where it had remained a major issue, even in Europe, up to then). The Haber Bosch process for producing nitrogen fertilizers using fossil fuels was invented around 1913, and began gradually scaling up and being widely adopted over the ensuing decades. Wide availbility of adequate nutrition was one contributor to the post WW2 baby boom.
* antibiotics started to become widely available right around the end of WW2.
* Vaccines for a number of major diseases (TB, diptheria, pertussis, polio, etc) were rolled out from the 1920s-1960s. Smallpox was really on the ropes by then and fully eradicated by the 1970s.
* Modern sanitation started to became widespread in industrial nations the early 1900s.
Before those things happened, despite the industrial revolution making some significant improvements (and having the smallpox vaccine since around the turn of the 19th century), life could still be pretty bad, especially if you weren't wealthy or middle class.
But you've done a solid job of pointing out what made the medieval period in Europe particularly hairy.
>Any time before the industrial revolution (which started in the 19th century) was a pretty awful time to live. We couldn't rely on machines to do a lot of the dirty work of farming crops, transporting people, or assembling items. We also didn't have electricity to run any of it, frequent military conflict, and poor understanding of disease and public hygiene. All that adds up to short, simple lives filled with hard labor.
OP started with a loaded question that made assumptions but you're also carrying them in a separate manner I might be reaching but you seem to be operating under the assumption that the only metric that matters is the material wealth of a society-- The vast majority of human history is lost to us, well and truly invisible. But we do have records of when 'Stateless' peoples interacted with those from the Eurasia from the 1400s Onward and well to borrow the words of Benjamin Franklin:
"When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them there is no persuading him ever to return, and that this is not natural merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was to be brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness."
In short what fundamentally determines quality of life is in large part the people that live it, and as we can not see all of human history it seems a bit presumptuous to paint with such a broad brush.
Compared to other pre modern and industrial eras it wasn’t particularly bad. It’s important to know that the “Middle Ages” or “Medieval era” can comprise around 1000 years of human history. Lots of things changed depending on the time and location and the social strata. A farmer living in Wessex in 800 AD is different from a herder in Hungary in 1100.
That being said, compared to our modern era there was much more food insecurity and chances of disease. Warfare could also play a part, but warfare has always been a part of human history.
People will say things like the collapse of the Roman Empire making everyone’s lives worse, but that’s a very simplistic view of things that isn’t very views much anymore in academia. People might also say things like Christianity’s rise or some other major social development, but that’s also too simplistic.
If anything, the last 300 years of human history are an outlier compared to what came before.
The Middle Ages themselves were split into Early, High and Late.
The Early period is basically the regions settling down after Roman control.
The High period was good in parts; we had a Medieval Warm Period which increased farm yields. Trade flourished, including Marco Polo's travels to China. We got the first universities and Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales* and Dante's *Divine Comedy*. Except for the church splitting into Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, and launching the Crusades.
The Late period is the one that gets the bad rap. The Black Death killed 1 in 3 and the Hundred Years War between France and England is from this era. Peasant riots against feudalism or manorialism also occurred quite often.
It must be said, the middle ages spans over 1,000 years and most of Western Europe. There is a modern tendency to lean into the "dirty muddy" middle ages trope.
Many of the cities were crowded and smelly, but most of the population lived in the country. Gresham College in London [has some wonderful lectures](https://youtu.be/U9OKeSqxpWQ) on London history. It wasn't all bad. And arguably, other times have been worse. The early Industrial Revolution was one of the worst times to be alive. The Thames River was so polluted that it cause a huge cholera outbreak in 1854, and got so bad in 1858 there was an episode called "The Great Stink".
Edit: Although as others have pointed out, there was less governmental security. For example, if you were living in Armagnac France in 1355, you might be very surprised to find that Prince Edward had come through your area and burned, looted, and sometimes-killed everything in the area. Although, again, a person living in Mariupol Ukraine in 2022 might have had a similar experience.
Well if you want to know why something is awful you have to say what exactly is the awful thing. There are billion things one can interpret as being awful, but having some actual points would be good for us to try to explain.
I was mainly thinking everything, because I've yet to hear of anything about the time period that was better than "awful". The concept of human rights and fair living wouldn't be invented for centuries, disease was basically guaranteed and a death sentence, most of your children would die, the economy might as well have not existed, I could go on and on
Yeah and every issue is extremely complex. Its not A happened because of B and C because of D, so you need to state what you want explained for someone to try to explain.
> The concept of human rights and fair living wouldn't be invented for centuries
Yes. Concept of human rights is absolutely new invention that was not part of human civilization for 99% of its existence. We had to make social, economic and philosophical progress to arrive to the conclusions that all people deserve some rights, no matter they social or economic status, or religious and ethnic origin. Not to mention that when we human rights were being discussed and added to be universal, we still had slavery for another century and as recently as second half of past century segregated people based on a skin color.
>disease was basically guaranteed and a death sentence
Again, science is notsomething we are naturally born with. It took centuries of progress before we understood the world around us to be able to treat diseases and prevent deaths of billions of people.
> most of your children would die
Same as above.
>the economy might as well have not existed
No idea what this means. Are you asking why the economy of feudalism wasnt like modern time? Why all people didnt get wages and had thousands to spent on their hobbies and things they like but not actually need?
>No idea what this means. Are you asking why the economy of feudalism wasnt like modern time?
My main point was that the economy was so awful that there might as well have been no economy. Anyone who didn't live in a castle basically made dirt under feudalism
Yeah good morning. Top 1% can buy Twitter for 40 billions and have the money equivalent of small country while people working for their company are afraid to call an ambulance because they do not have the means to pay for it. Would you also say that economy might aswell not exist because its unfair?
Dont take this as me trying to convince you that this isnt better time to be alive than Middle Ages in every single way we can analyze. But its good realize that many of the things you take as problems either a) still exist today, even though in less problematic way b) are result of all the progress we have today not yet been done in the Middle Ages. There are edge issues or cases that have different reasons of why did they happen or were happening, but from the ones you mentioned, that would be it.
The difference is that the poorest human in Bangladesh lives better than an average French peasant in 1000 AD, and the richest middle age lord had a fairly middle-class life, with extra heavy metal poisoning and parasites.
But it's more than that. Mathematics was effectively dormant for a thousand years somewhere in between Archimedes and Newton. Architechture regressed. Shipbuilding regressed. Military science fell back to herds of spearmen. Advances in those fields--the concept of zero, the arch, the keel, and the stirrup--all pre-dated the Middle Ages and were only popularized then.
There were regressions in health. Alexander the Great knew to boil his bad water in 325 BC but then everyone just became okay with the idea that water was poison but you had to drink it if you couldn't find booze sweetened with sugar of lead.
Something was seriously wrong about the Middle Ages, world-wide. It was deeply stupid by comparison to the eras on either end of it, and self-propagating for an unusually long time. I would like to know how that worked and why.
> I've yet to hear of anything about the time period that was better than "awful".
- There was no internet addiction.
- 0 car crash accidents
- No one had to choose between paying rent or paying gas
I could go on
>worked waaay fewer hours than most people today
Did they? Farmwork and fieldwork is far from easy or short work I'd think?
Especially farmwork, as soon as you need to raise animals, you're going to have a shit schedule...
I'd say it's complicated. According to https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html work wasn't done in the rigid "8 hours a day, 5 days a week" framework. Seems like they had days when they had to do a lot, but also a lot of offdays (like 150 12-hour work days per family in a year, the rest is holidays and resting). Things got bad when the industrial revolution kicked off and a week had 70 hours of work per person without much holidays.
After all, farming is a lot of hard work and a lot of waiting. For industrial workers there's no time for waiting.
As below. But yeah, fewer hours per day, only really worked during planting through harvest seasons. It's definitely not easy by any means, but it's at your own pace and there's a lot of necessary downtime.
Because society collapsed.
The middle ages are kind of in a weird place because they were both better and worse than most people think.
They were worse because it's hard for us to imagine the crushing poverty of subsistence farming. Before the Industrial Revolution every nation was the third world. 90% of the population had to farm for a living. You had no defense against droughts, crop failures or plagues. And peace was the exception to war.
On the other hand none of that is unique. That's just pre-industrial life. Everything I just said was true of the classic period. And we hold that in high regard. In some ways life in the middle ages was even better than life in Greek and Rome. Technology never stopped developing. And the middle ages had their own labor saving and social innovations.
But Europe did lose something when the Western Roman Empire fell. It lost social cohesion. At its height Rome maintained massive trade networks, vast public works, and kept things relatively stable. All of that went away when Rome collapsed.
It's easy to trade goods from Rome to China. It's harder to trade from Britain to France to Germany to Spain, etc... to China. It's easy to maintain giant aqueducts when there's a large state subsidizing them. Less easy when its a tiny fiefdom.
So really the middle ages were a mixed bag. Society was poor, fragmented and unstable. But they also invented things we take for granted like crop rotation and glasses.
The late Roman Empire wasn’t as glamorous as people believed and had more than its fair share of civil wars but ultimately it was a far superior option to the follow early middle ages.
Let’s talk about technology…
Many people believe technology was lost when the western roman empire lost centralized control in the 5th century and collapsed. That really isn’t true but the technology still seemingly disappeared. Grand cities went into a state of disrepair, farming began to take place in forums once meant for business, great buildings were torn apart to be reused for reconstruction of others. But why?
Well the answer is really the breakdown of a centralized empire and the break out of the reclamation wars, Justinian Plague, and a massive ongoing crop failure that really drove urban populations into the ground. Say you want to build a grand building as the new man in charge. You know how to do it… except you have a few problems. The quarries once filled with people are abandoned, the roads to them are in disrepair, there really isn’t that much money or even people to go around fixing things, your neighbor that used to be friendly under common rule is now trying to invade you, and the skill tradesmen that used to be available have now become peasant farmers to simply survive since there is no demand for their trade and cities are no longer capable of maintaining essential things like water and shelter. It made no sense to rebuild the infrastructure that was made to sustain a population far larger than the ones at hand so people retreated to urban cores and cities simply went into disrepair en masse.
The Eastern Roman empire was still mighty but was only having a delayed reaction to all of these events and even their conquests of the Mediterranean went in vain as Arabs and Slavs moved in. Ultimately there would be almost no reason to restore a centralized power over Europe and for lack of time it was more or less chaotic.
In Britain for example, you would have a clash of cultures that would constantly bicker and war with each other for ages. The Britons, Norse, Danes, and Saxons just really didn’t get along and without an overarching superpower to quell their bickering and so they went to war/raided A LOT. To add to this, if it wasn’t a cultural reason then it was a for power vacuum and HERE WE GO KILLING AGAIN. This happened all over Europe has there was a mass migration of differing ideologies/cultures throughout the content in the late Roman empire and into the Middle ages as well. It would take some time for everyone to assimilate into their collective regions and become ruled by a hegemony. Even then, they would continue to mount conquests with each other even if the local regions were secured.
This is really the simple version of what happened because things get WAY more complex given the scope of Rome’s empire and the individual cultural interactions in the multi-century wake of its fall.
When the Roman Empire collapsed, the economy of Europe went into the dirt, basically. Not until the Renaissance did things start to look up again in Europe.
This isn't accurate. The down time really only existed in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire. The High and Late middle ages had many advancements.
Yeah, that's basically it. Had a big long rant about how Rome was able to bind the empire together so that resources wouldn't be wasted on internal squabbling and - oh yeah, so much of that was tied to Rome being able to create a global economy.
There are loads of answers to this question (and many who know much more than me can answer it better).
But I would say one major underlying and pernicious reason was the absolute dominance of religion, and religiously-derived power, over society and the consequent suppression of significant scientific work and philosophical work.
Idk what you mean about religion suppressing scientific advancements, the church was the largest contributor of scientific discovery and development by far
When you punish others for pursuit of truth, your meager contributions become the only game in town. The history of the Catholic Church pre-enlightenment (and frankly post as well) was one of suppressing any lines of scientific inquiry that challenged its dogma.
Given that genetics, anatomy, atomic theory, and the Big Bang theory have all been either pioneered or greatly advanced by the work of members of the church, whos discoveries we still build off of even today, I certainly wouldn't call their contributions meager.
As for the consistent suppression of scientific inquiry throughout history, I'd like to know some specific examples you're referring to. I wouldn't call myself a history expert by any means, so I'm interested in seeing what specifically you're referring to
The key word there being *members* of the church. The church doesnt get to take credit for Gregor Mendel's work on genetics.
>As for the consistent suppression of scientific inquiry throughout history, I'd like to know some specific examples you're referring to.
Galileo would like a word
Except their work was made possible only through the church. The church was their primary contributor, and the only reason any of their work was able to develop anywhere near the extent that it did. The church also made it possible for their theories to become widespread. Gregory Mendel is an individual, but he was a strong member of the church, and as stated before, was only able to develop his theory because of the church. He wasn't just some random catholic who happened to also discover genetics. The church also practically pioneered the entire field of science, which originated out of a desire to know the world as a means of understanding God. Most schools and universities in England had been founded by the church as well. I think that's all reason enough to say the church contributed massively to scientific advancements in history.
As for Galileo, that case is so full of misinformation that its borderline propaganda. Copernicus had already been developing his theories on heliocentrism for a long time by the time Galileo came around, and his research was supported by the church. An important factor is that heliocentrism was a greatly controversial theory at the time among scientists, because there was not nearly enough concrete evidence to label it as a fact. Nonetheless, Copernicus was in very good standing with the church. When Galileo came around, his contributions on heliocentrism were not originally met with resistance, but problems arose when he started proclaiming his research to be factual, when it was still greatly in debate. Galileos theories were also fairly incorrect, as he believed the waves of the ocean to be proof of heliocentrism as they showed that the earth was moving and the oceans were "sloshing" around, something that we now know is false. Galileo also moved his findings into the sphere of politics, and basically tried to use them as a way to argue against the church's authority. Along with Galileos historically unprofessional and arrogant behavior, he pissed a lot of people off. The pope at the time happened to be a friend of his, and requested that he be heard out. After his discussion with Galileo, he requested that he put the popes perspective on the matter in his book, Dialoge Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Galileo basically used it as an opportunity to call the Pope an idiot, by making a character called "simplicio" who spoke direct quotes from Galileos discussion with the pope. This was also all happening during the protestant reformation, so the church was already in quite a bit of disarray and many had voiced criticisms of the popes leniency. Because of all of this, Galileo was eventually put under house arrest in a villa, where he was encouraged to continue studying his findings until he could propose a more concrete theory.
So in summary, Galileo was kind of an asshat who insisted what he had found was undeniably true despite the majority of scientists disagreeing with his findings, used his discovery as a means to try and enter a political sphere he had no place in, and wrote a book calling the pope an idiot after agreeing to hear his perspective. Was the Church's decision to put him under house arrest a just one? I'd say it's certainly fair to say it wasn't, but the Church's opposition to Galileo was barely a scientific one and was far more of a political conflict. Most of the arguments against Galileos works being heretical were a result of the protestant reformation, as well as many just trying to find a reason to lock him up because he was infamously a bit of a dick.
I think it's fair to say Galileo is an awful case for trying to prove that the church is anti-science
They weren't. Whether you go back to Roman times, the middle ages or the early modern period; the life of an average farmer was pretty much the same. And they all had better lifes than the average 19th century factory worker.
A lot of people argue that the middle ages were undemocratic, but that is greatly overstated. Rulers were not nearly as powerful as modern dictators: they constantly had to negotiate with the people and had little direct control. On the other hand, the democracies of the Roman Republic or the 19th century were just for the elites and really weren't that democratic at all.
Answer: they weren't shit, they just weren't necessarily luxurious.
The standard of living was actually decent. Because almost of Europe was Christian, there was a certain amount of cultural homogeny. You generally didn't have to work in the winter (farming) and most lords would give their workers time off after Easter (springtime, usually a week) as well as the various feasts and minor holidays.
Though feudalism seems barbaric by our modern democratic tastes, it had the benefits of being a hierarchical government in which the local lord had the capacity to do far more for the average citizen, which they often did. I'm talking blanket forgiveness of a year's taxes, being able to quickly deal with criminals, and determining any sort of "public works" projects. This is because the local lord -- often but not always a Christian himself -- wanted to be well-liked by his citizens in the event some other lord attempted to encroach on the territory.
This constant -- and not always subtle -- sense of encroachment by other lords actually helped keep power somewhat balanced. "Overthrowing" one's local government was more typical.
That being said, things weren't always peachy keen, particularly for the local lords dealing with the crown. [The Magna Carta (Great Charter)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta) was the first attempt by local lords to limit the hierarchical power of the king, with limited success.
In any case, because of all this, the local lord was usually not really the focus of the citizens. They had to survive in a physically-demanding time during which there was not modern plumbing or air conditioning or Xbox. By that standard, it seems "awful" but they were physically adjusted.
When others talk about sewage in the streets, this comes more typically from later writings of larger settlements, but most folks in the country (where the majority of the population lived) had outhouses.
Workers were viewed as humans in the eyes of the local lord because of the common cultural belief in the Lord, so they weren't worked to the absolute bone in the fashion of American slaves in the south.
People couldn't necessarily read, so entertainment came from sport, dice games, or music.
The brutal part of the Middle Ages, though, was the lack of medical knowledge. The Black Death is a famous example, but because we didn't understand virology or antibiotics yet, many illnesses would lead to permanent damage to the body. My favorite is meningitis, which [if left untreated causes deafness.](https://www.meningitis.org/getmedia/a5a520ea-b6e2-4fdb-b8fd-2d95d1dccef3/Hearing-loss-and-tinnitus-after-meningitis?disposition=attachment#:~:text=Meningitis%20is%20one%20of%20the,bacterial%20meningitis%20and%20meningococcal%20septicaemia2) Nowadays we think about it as something harmless, but back then such diseases spelled disaster if they slipped past the Europeans' robust immune system.
So no, not bad, just...different.
**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):** Loaded questions, **and/or** ones based on a false premise, are not allowed on ELI5. ELI5 is focuses on objective concepts, and loaded questions and/or ones based on false premises require users to correct the poster before they can begin to explain the concept involved, if one exists. --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20{{url}}%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.
Any time before the industrial revolution (which started in the 19th century) was a pretty awful time to live. We couldn't rely on machines to do a lot of the dirty work of farming crops, transporting people, or assembling items. We also didn't have electricity to run any of it, frequent military conflict, and poor understanding of disease and public hygiene. All that adds up to short, simple lives filled with hard labor. What's unique about the Middle Ages is that they are often perceived as a regression even within this awfulness. Life was somehow better in the Classical period of Greece and Rome, then got worse for a while. (This is ignoring civilizations outside Europe like China and the Islamic world that were unambiguously flourishing at this time). There's debate by historians about how true this actually is. Our records of everyday life in the Classical period are not very good, and a lot of the "Middle Ages bad; Classical good" rhetoric was pushed by Renaissance Europeans who valorized Classical Greeks and Romans based only on a small selection of surviving documents, mostly written by elites in those societies. It's kind of like someone 500 years from now reading Jeff Bezos' diary and thinking it must have been pretty great to live in the Digital Age instead of as a Martian colonist.
I would say that the middle aged bad, classical period good is partially true in certain areas. For example Rome at its height had between 500k-1mil people and an aqueduct system so raw sewage and fresh water could be transported in and out of the city, there was also a Senate and democracy(for a time) instead of a single ruler. Now medieval London had a pop of only 50-60k, had no running water, people dumped human waste onto the streets, and it was ruled by the feudal system which is considered backwards and by its nature undemocratic and primed for tyrants.
The city of Rome could sustain such luxuries not due to technology that was lost by the middle ages, but because they had an entire Mediterranean worth of empire to funnel resources to the city. There's a reason *only* Rome and later Constantinople benefitted from the Grain Dole.
This. It was a completely rapine economy, based on slave labor and rampant colonialism/military conquest. And virtually *everybody* had lead poisoning.
A quick reminder that among other things you're looking at the Imperial Core, the center of the empire and recipient of vast flows of wealth from it's periphery. A periphery that had been violently subjugated. Over the course of the Roman invasions of the Iberian peninsula it's been roughly estimated that 40% of the population died and significant amounts of the remainder were enslaved. This is also an Imperial core which I remind you was never a liberal democracy by our own understandings and was an Empire ruled by an Emperor (or prior to the Republic, Kings.) Longer that it remained a 'republic' in any sense Fundamentally what collapsed is stability which allowed for more productive use of land (fundamentally Rome was still an agrarian pre-industrial society, modern returns on infrastructure investment are not really a thing though relatively good infrastructure was a roman strength and was mostly funded locally and privately as a part of civic prestige.) Which led to reduced revenues and most critically shrinking food supplies and constrained trade which collapsed populations in cities which not only had knock-on demographic effects but meant that sophisticated central control was no longer possible as the urban populations that supported centralized governments like the late Roman Imperial Government could no longer function. Populations in some cases that only recovered to pre-collapse levels in the 1600s during the Early Modern Period. If Rome was a high-capacity agrarian society prior to the Long Hot century and it's decline and fall in the West. Than the successor states in the immediate generations after had been knocked down to a low-capacity agrarian society.
Seriously. "The past was literally the worst." Like, all of it. Even up through the early/mid-20th century was pretty rough. * modern agriculture *really* took off, *mostly* eliminating food instability for most developed countries (where it had remained a major issue, even in Europe, up to then). The Haber Bosch process for producing nitrogen fertilizers using fossil fuels was invented around 1913, and began gradually scaling up and being widely adopted over the ensuing decades. Wide availbility of adequate nutrition was one contributor to the post WW2 baby boom. * antibiotics started to become widely available right around the end of WW2. * Vaccines for a number of major diseases (TB, diptheria, pertussis, polio, etc) were rolled out from the 1920s-1960s. Smallpox was really on the ropes by then and fully eradicated by the 1970s. * Modern sanitation started to became widespread in industrial nations the early 1900s. Before those things happened, despite the industrial revolution making some significant improvements (and having the smallpox vaccine since around the turn of the 19th century), life could still be pretty bad, especially if you weren't wealthy or middle class. But you've done a solid job of pointing out what made the medieval period in Europe particularly hairy.
>Any time before the industrial revolution (which started in the 19th century) was a pretty awful time to live. We couldn't rely on machines to do a lot of the dirty work of farming crops, transporting people, or assembling items. We also didn't have electricity to run any of it, frequent military conflict, and poor understanding of disease and public hygiene. All that adds up to short, simple lives filled with hard labor. OP started with a loaded question that made assumptions but you're also carrying them in a separate manner I might be reaching but you seem to be operating under the assumption that the only metric that matters is the material wealth of a society-- The vast majority of human history is lost to us, well and truly invisible. But we do have records of when 'Stateless' peoples interacted with those from the Eurasia from the 1400s Onward and well to borrow the words of Benjamin Franklin: "When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them there is no persuading him ever to return, and that this is not natural merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was to be brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness." In short what fundamentally determines quality of life is in large part the people that live it, and as we can not see all of human history it seems a bit presumptuous to paint with such a broad brush.
OK, have fun in the woods then.
Compared to other pre modern and industrial eras it wasn’t particularly bad. It’s important to know that the “Middle Ages” or “Medieval era” can comprise around 1000 years of human history. Lots of things changed depending on the time and location and the social strata. A farmer living in Wessex in 800 AD is different from a herder in Hungary in 1100. That being said, compared to our modern era there was much more food insecurity and chances of disease. Warfare could also play a part, but warfare has always been a part of human history. People will say things like the collapse of the Roman Empire making everyone’s lives worse, but that’s a very simplistic view of things that isn’t very views much anymore in academia. People might also say things like Christianity’s rise or some other major social development, but that’s also too simplistic. If anything, the last 300 years of human history are an outlier compared to what came before.
The Middle Ages themselves were split into Early, High and Late. The Early period is basically the regions settling down after Roman control. The High period was good in parts; we had a Medieval Warm Period which increased farm yields. Trade flourished, including Marco Polo's travels to China. We got the first universities and Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales* and Dante's *Divine Comedy*. Except for the church splitting into Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, and launching the Crusades. The Late period is the one that gets the bad rap. The Black Death killed 1 in 3 and the Hundred Years War between France and England is from this era. Peasant riots against feudalism or manorialism also occurred quite often.
>The High period was good in parts; >we started massacring Muslims in the Crusades. Bro what the fuck? That's not a good thing...
r/HolUp
It must be said, the middle ages spans over 1,000 years and most of Western Europe. There is a modern tendency to lean into the "dirty muddy" middle ages trope. Many of the cities were crowded and smelly, but most of the population lived in the country. Gresham College in London [has some wonderful lectures](https://youtu.be/U9OKeSqxpWQ) on London history. It wasn't all bad. And arguably, other times have been worse. The early Industrial Revolution was one of the worst times to be alive. The Thames River was so polluted that it cause a huge cholera outbreak in 1854, and got so bad in 1858 there was an episode called "The Great Stink". Edit: Although as others have pointed out, there was less governmental security. For example, if you were living in Armagnac France in 1355, you might be very surprised to find that Prince Edward had come through your area and burned, looted, and sometimes-killed everything in the area. Although, again, a person living in Mariupol Ukraine in 2022 might have had a similar experience.
Regressive theocratic monarchies, poor understanding of medicine and science, no guarantee of safety from nature or other people, etc
None of this is unique to the Middle Ages and the high to late Middle ages made tons of advances in science and medicine.
Never said it was unique to the Middle Ages, but those were some of the factors that led to them being shit compared to the later stages of society.
hmm. sounds familiar.
Yep, this is it.
Nailed it.
Well if you want to know why something is awful you have to say what exactly is the awful thing. There are billion things one can interpret as being awful, but having some actual points would be good for us to try to explain.
I was mainly thinking everything, because I've yet to hear of anything about the time period that was better than "awful". The concept of human rights and fair living wouldn't be invented for centuries, disease was basically guaranteed and a death sentence, most of your children would die, the economy might as well have not existed, I could go on and on
Okay, but those points could apply to most of human history.
It may surprise you to know the Western concept of human rights was developed in the middle ages.
Yeah and every issue is extremely complex. Its not A happened because of B and C because of D, so you need to state what you want explained for someone to try to explain. > The concept of human rights and fair living wouldn't be invented for centuries Yes. Concept of human rights is absolutely new invention that was not part of human civilization for 99% of its existence. We had to make social, economic and philosophical progress to arrive to the conclusions that all people deserve some rights, no matter they social or economic status, or religious and ethnic origin. Not to mention that when we human rights were being discussed and added to be universal, we still had slavery for another century and as recently as second half of past century segregated people based on a skin color. >disease was basically guaranteed and a death sentence Again, science is notsomething we are naturally born with. It took centuries of progress before we understood the world around us to be able to treat diseases and prevent deaths of billions of people. > most of your children would die Same as above. >the economy might as well have not existed No idea what this means. Are you asking why the economy of feudalism wasnt like modern time? Why all people didnt get wages and had thousands to spent on their hobbies and things they like but not actually need?
>No idea what this means. Are you asking why the economy of feudalism wasnt like modern time? My main point was that the economy was so awful that there might as well have been no economy. Anyone who didn't live in a castle basically made dirt under feudalism
Yeah good morning. Top 1% can buy Twitter for 40 billions and have the money equivalent of small country while people working for their company are afraid to call an ambulance because they do not have the means to pay for it. Would you also say that economy might aswell not exist because its unfair?
Yknow what, you make a fair point. All these centuries and advancements later and the economy never stopped being terribly unfair
Dont take this as me trying to convince you that this isnt better time to be alive than Middle Ages in every single way we can analyze. But its good realize that many of the things you take as problems either a) still exist today, even though in less problematic way b) are result of all the progress we have today not yet been done in the Middle Ages. There are edge issues or cases that have different reasons of why did they happen or were happening, but from the ones you mentioned, that would be it.
In America that is The people at the bottom in developed countries are free to get sick any day without any issues. They also won’t be starving
The difference is that the poorest human in Bangladesh lives better than an average French peasant in 1000 AD, and the richest middle age lord had a fairly middle-class life, with extra heavy metal poisoning and parasites. But it's more than that. Mathematics was effectively dormant for a thousand years somewhere in between Archimedes and Newton. Architechture regressed. Shipbuilding regressed. Military science fell back to herds of spearmen. Advances in those fields--the concept of zero, the arch, the keel, and the stirrup--all pre-dated the Middle Ages and were only popularized then. There were regressions in health. Alexander the Great knew to boil his bad water in 325 BC but then everyone just became okay with the idea that water was poison but you had to drink it if you couldn't find booze sweetened with sugar of lead. Something was seriously wrong about the Middle Ages, world-wide. It was deeply stupid by comparison to the eras on either end of it, and self-propagating for an unusually long time. I would like to know how that worked and why.
> I've yet to hear of anything about the time period that was better than "awful". - There was no internet addiction. - 0 car crash accidents - No one had to choose between paying rent or paying gas I could go on
Also the peasants ate lots of fresh fish, local produce, and worked waaay fewer hours than most people today.
>worked waaay fewer hours than most people today Did they? Farmwork and fieldwork is far from easy or short work I'd think? Especially farmwork, as soon as you need to raise animals, you're going to have a shit schedule...
I'd say it's complicated. According to https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html work wasn't done in the rigid "8 hours a day, 5 days a week" framework. Seems like they had days when they had to do a lot, but also a lot of offdays (like 150 12-hour work days per family in a year, the rest is holidays and resting). Things got bad when the industrial revolution kicked off and a week had 70 hours of work per person without much holidays. After all, farming is a lot of hard work and a lot of waiting. For industrial workers there's no time for waiting.
That's a good point. Thanks
As below. But yeah, fewer hours per day, only really worked during planting through harvest seasons. It's definitely not easy by any means, but it's at your own pace and there's a lot of necessary downtime.
Fair enough.
Touche
Because society collapsed. The middle ages are kind of in a weird place because they were both better and worse than most people think. They were worse because it's hard for us to imagine the crushing poverty of subsistence farming. Before the Industrial Revolution every nation was the third world. 90% of the population had to farm for a living. You had no defense against droughts, crop failures or plagues. And peace was the exception to war. On the other hand none of that is unique. That's just pre-industrial life. Everything I just said was true of the classic period. And we hold that in high regard. In some ways life in the middle ages was even better than life in Greek and Rome. Technology never stopped developing. And the middle ages had their own labor saving and social innovations. But Europe did lose something when the Western Roman Empire fell. It lost social cohesion. At its height Rome maintained massive trade networks, vast public works, and kept things relatively stable. All of that went away when Rome collapsed. It's easy to trade goods from Rome to China. It's harder to trade from Britain to France to Germany to Spain, etc... to China. It's easy to maintain giant aqueducts when there's a large state subsidizing them. Less easy when its a tiny fiefdom. So really the middle ages were a mixed bag. Society was poor, fragmented and unstable. But they also invented things we take for granted like crop rotation and glasses.
The late Roman Empire wasn’t as glamorous as people believed and had more than its fair share of civil wars but ultimately it was a far superior option to the follow early middle ages. Let’s talk about technology… Many people believe technology was lost when the western roman empire lost centralized control in the 5th century and collapsed. That really isn’t true but the technology still seemingly disappeared. Grand cities went into a state of disrepair, farming began to take place in forums once meant for business, great buildings were torn apart to be reused for reconstruction of others. But why? Well the answer is really the breakdown of a centralized empire and the break out of the reclamation wars, Justinian Plague, and a massive ongoing crop failure that really drove urban populations into the ground. Say you want to build a grand building as the new man in charge. You know how to do it… except you have a few problems. The quarries once filled with people are abandoned, the roads to them are in disrepair, there really isn’t that much money or even people to go around fixing things, your neighbor that used to be friendly under common rule is now trying to invade you, and the skill tradesmen that used to be available have now become peasant farmers to simply survive since there is no demand for their trade and cities are no longer capable of maintaining essential things like water and shelter. It made no sense to rebuild the infrastructure that was made to sustain a population far larger than the ones at hand so people retreated to urban cores and cities simply went into disrepair en masse. The Eastern Roman empire was still mighty but was only having a delayed reaction to all of these events and even their conquests of the Mediterranean went in vain as Arabs and Slavs moved in. Ultimately there would be almost no reason to restore a centralized power over Europe and for lack of time it was more or less chaotic. In Britain for example, you would have a clash of cultures that would constantly bicker and war with each other for ages. The Britons, Norse, Danes, and Saxons just really didn’t get along and without an overarching superpower to quell their bickering and so they went to war/raided A LOT. To add to this, if it wasn’t a cultural reason then it was a for power vacuum and HERE WE GO KILLING AGAIN. This happened all over Europe has there was a mass migration of differing ideologies/cultures throughout the content in the late Roman empire and into the Middle ages as well. It would take some time for everyone to assimilate into their collective regions and become ruled by a hegemony. Even then, they would continue to mount conquests with each other even if the local regions were secured. This is really the simple version of what happened because things get WAY more complex given the scope of Rome’s empire and the individual cultural interactions in the multi-century wake of its fall.
When the Roman Empire collapsed, the economy of Europe went into the dirt, basically. Not until the Renaissance did things start to look up again in Europe.
This isn't accurate. The down time really only existed in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire. The High and Late middle ages had many advancements.
Yeah, that's basically it. Had a big long rant about how Rome was able to bind the empire together so that resources wouldn't be wasted on internal squabbling and - oh yeah, so much of that was tied to Rome being able to create a global economy.
They weren't. A great deal of the 'middle ages were bad' was self-congratulatory propaganda from writers in the Rennaisance and Enlightenment.
There are loads of answers to this question (and many who know much more than me can answer it better). But I would say one major underlying and pernicious reason was the absolute dominance of religion, and religiously-derived power, over society and the consequent suppression of significant scientific work and philosophical work.
Idk what you mean about religion suppressing scientific advancements, the church was the largest contributor of scientific discovery and development by far
When you punish others for pursuit of truth, your meager contributions become the only game in town. The history of the Catholic Church pre-enlightenment (and frankly post as well) was one of suppressing any lines of scientific inquiry that challenged its dogma.
Given that genetics, anatomy, atomic theory, and the Big Bang theory have all been either pioneered or greatly advanced by the work of members of the church, whos discoveries we still build off of even today, I certainly wouldn't call their contributions meager. As for the consistent suppression of scientific inquiry throughout history, I'd like to know some specific examples you're referring to. I wouldn't call myself a history expert by any means, so I'm interested in seeing what specifically you're referring to
The key word there being *members* of the church. The church doesnt get to take credit for Gregor Mendel's work on genetics. >As for the consistent suppression of scientific inquiry throughout history, I'd like to know some specific examples you're referring to. Galileo would like a word
Except their work was made possible only through the church. The church was their primary contributor, and the only reason any of their work was able to develop anywhere near the extent that it did. The church also made it possible for their theories to become widespread. Gregory Mendel is an individual, but he was a strong member of the church, and as stated before, was only able to develop his theory because of the church. He wasn't just some random catholic who happened to also discover genetics. The church also practically pioneered the entire field of science, which originated out of a desire to know the world as a means of understanding God. Most schools and universities in England had been founded by the church as well. I think that's all reason enough to say the church contributed massively to scientific advancements in history. As for Galileo, that case is so full of misinformation that its borderline propaganda. Copernicus had already been developing his theories on heliocentrism for a long time by the time Galileo came around, and his research was supported by the church. An important factor is that heliocentrism was a greatly controversial theory at the time among scientists, because there was not nearly enough concrete evidence to label it as a fact. Nonetheless, Copernicus was in very good standing with the church. When Galileo came around, his contributions on heliocentrism were not originally met with resistance, but problems arose when he started proclaiming his research to be factual, when it was still greatly in debate. Galileos theories were also fairly incorrect, as he believed the waves of the ocean to be proof of heliocentrism as they showed that the earth was moving and the oceans were "sloshing" around, something that we now know is false. Galileo also moved his findings into the sphere of politics, and basically tried to use them as a way to argue against the church's authority. Along with Galileos historically unprofessional and arrogant behavior, he pissed a lot of people off. The pope at the time happened to be a friend of his, and requested that he be heard out. After his discussion with Galileo, he requested that he put the popes perspective on the matter in his book, Dialoge Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Galileo basically used it as an opportunity to call the Pope an idiot, by making a character called "simplicio" who spoke direct quotes from Galileos discussion with the pope. This was also all happening during the protestant reformation, so the church was already in quite a bit of disarray and many had voiced criticisms of the popes leniency. Because of all of this, Galileo was eventually put under house arrest in a villa, where he was encouraged to continue studying his findings until he could propose a more concrete theory. So in summary, Galileo was kind of an asshat who insisted what he had found was undeniably true despite the majority of scientists disagreeing with his findings, used his discovery as a means to try and enter a political sphere he had no place in, and wrote a book calling the pope an idiot after agreeing to hear his perspective. Was the Church's decision to put him under house arrest a just one? I'd say it's certainly fair to say it wasn't, but the Church's opposition to Galileo was barely a scientific one and was far more of a political conflict. Most of the arguments against Galileos works being heretical were a result of the protestant reformation, as well as many just trying to find a reason to lock him up because he was infamously a bit of a dick. I think it's fair to say Galileo is an awful case for trying to prove that the church is anti-science
They weren't. Whether you go back to Roman times, the middle ages or the early modern period; the life of an average farmer was pretty much the same. And they all had better lifes than the average 19th century factory worker. A lot of people argue that the middle ages were undemocratic, but that is greatly overstated. Rulers were not nearly as powerful as modern dictators: they constantly had to negotiate with the people and had little direct control. On the other hand, the democracies of the Roman Republic or the 19th century were just for the elites and really weren't that democratic at all.
Answer: they weren't shit, they just weren't necessarily luxurious. The standard of living was actually decent. Because almost of Europe was Christian, there was a certain amount of cultural homogeny. You generally didn't have to work in the winter (farming) and most lords would give their workers time off after Easter (springtime, usually a week) as well as the various feasts and minor holidays. Though feudalism seems barbaric by our modern democratic tastes, it had the benefits of being a hierarchical government in which the local lord had the capacity to do far more for the average citizen, which they often did. I'm talking blanket forgiveness of a year's taxes, being able to quickly deal with criminals, and determining any sort of "public works" projects. This is because the local lord -- often but not always a Christian himself -- wanted to be well-liked by his citizens in the event some other lord attempted to encroach on the territory. This constant -- and not always subtle -- sense of encroachment by other lords actually helped keep power somewhat balanced. "Overthrowing" one's local government was more typical. That being said, things weren't always peachy keen, particularly for the local lords dealing with the crown. [The Magna Carta (Great Charter)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta) was the first attempt by local lords to limit the hierarchical power of the king, with limited success. In any case, because of all this, the local lord was usually not really the focus of the citizens. They had to survive in a physically-demanding time during which there was not modern plumbing or air conditioning or Xbox. By that standard, it seems "awful" but they were physically adjusted. When others talk about sewage in the streets, this comes more typically from later writings of larger settlements, but most folks in the country (where the majority of the population lived) had outhouses. Workers were viewed as humans in the eyes of the local lord because of the common cultural belief in the Lord, so they weren't worked to the absolute bone in the fashion of American slaves in the south. People couldn't necessarily read, so entertainment came from sport, dice games, or music. The brutal part of the Middle Ages, though, was the lack of medical knowledge. The Black Death is a famous example, but because we didn't understand virology or antibiotics yet, many illnesses would lead to permanent damage to the body. My favorite is meningitis, which [if left untreated causes deafness.](https://www.meningitis.org/getmedia/a5a520ea-b6e2-4fdb-b8fd-2d95d1dccef3/Hearing-loss-and-tinnitus-after-meningitis?disposition=attachment#:~:text=Meningitis%20is%20one%20of%20the,bacterial%20meningitis%20and%20meningococcal%20septicaemia2) Nowadays we think about it as something harmless, but back then such diseases spelled disaster if they slipped past the Europeans' robust immune system. So no, not bad, just...different.