[muawiyah]

The advances were a tip of an icicle, not an iceberg ~ it's not until the end of the Reconquista and the voyages of discovery throughout the world that European productivity increases and begins to approach that of ancient Rome.

Then all hell breaks loose as civilization is forced down around what had been a straightjacketed peasant based agrarian society. (Circa 1500s)

[colorado tanker]

We can agree on this, that the foundation for modern Western Civilization, which became the world's civilization, was laid in the 1500’s. Although it seems to be in a state of decay today.