Like, if all we do is look to the way human wastes were handled, and made our judgment on that, Spain was pretty decent, Venice less so, and most the rest of the territory really bad.
China took 300 years to begin its recovery from the climate catastrophe of 535AD ~ so it was nasty there for a long time too.
BTW, the Moslems and Christians in Spain did not always leave the Jews alone to prosper. Like Democrats they regularly inflicted a severe Depression on "the rich Jews".
If you want to believe Europe was a shining city on a hill during the Early Middle Ages go ahead ~ dream on. It was a dreadful place. They'd even stopped using gold and silver
“Outside of Venice, which used the Adriatic to rotate the sewage in and out, Europe was pretty nasty from about 535 AD to probably the 1200s ~ when one of my ancestors figured out the best place to build his castle was ON TOP OF THE RIVER so he could have “flushing toilets” in every room.”
Might I point out that the UNITED STATES did not have plumming at it’s inception, and plumming and sewage were not generally implemented untill the late 1800’s in this country (remeber out houses?). Yet, the U S was ahead of most nations from the time of the Declaration of Independence. We were a nation of simple farmers, but we also had great minds like Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson. Your point that Europe was so backward because of the implementation of toilets is pretty weak. Parts of europe were indeed backwards, but there were islands of knowledge and greatnest that persisted though the middle ages. The backwardness of europe in the middle ages is a myth itself and should be put to bed. The mighty caliphate was defeated for hundreds of years in the east by the EUROPEAN Byzantine empire. Islam was indeed ahead of Europe for a while, but this is generally exaggerated.