Nah. I know they didn't have horses, and used coconuts instead.
Posted on 01/13/2013 12:37:34 PM PST by EveningStar
When you think of the Middle Ages, chances are you picture gallant knights sitting astride brilliant destriers galloping through a sea of plagues, ignorance, and filth. And you can hardly be blamed for that, when everything from the movies you watch to your high school history teacher (who was mainly the football coach) has told you that ...
(Excerpt) Read more at cracked.com ...
Arabs had nothing to do with the invention of the modern place-value based, base-10 numerals which replaced the cumbersome and impractical Roman numerals. Guess the original source of that invention...
India?
From what I’ve read there were a few scientists in Muslim countries. However most of them were killed.
A lot of men also go bald around the middle ages.
I think the Powers That Be want to bring back serfdom — and the next version of serfdom is probably going to be a lot less pleasant than the Medieval version.
very true and it wasn’t pleasant then either
That was fun. Thanks.
Indeed it was India.
“Come and see the violence inherent in the system!!”
Middle Ages thread means Monty Python. It’s tradition.
“Bring out your dead!” (Clang)
Nah. I know they didn't have horses, and used coconuts instead.
Damn. I forgot the warning.
This article is so wrong about a number of things, that there’s no saving it.
#6 was the best one and most accurate, at least in my own opinion.
Oldplayer
I first read the title wrong....I thought it stated The Myths of Middle Age!
D’oh!
People knew the Earth was spherical long before mohammed came along.
Good article! I can vouch for a number of the things mentioned. The Church did indeed keep the flame of literacy and scholarship alive in the western half of Europe. Likewise, European knights were often more like a biker gang than anything in Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. Always looking for a rumble, and not always very nice to innocent bystanders.
I also agree with the part about life being better for the average peasant than is sometimes believed. It was not an easy life, to be sure. The diet was bland and the work was hard. A crop failure meant disaster. Then there was that whole serfdom thing. But in good years, life was better than one might suspect. English peasants in particular, lived pretty well by the standards of that age. I recently read an article that stated English peasants in the mid-late Medieval period actually had a higher standard of living than many citizens of 3rd world countries today.
I think the sections on women in Medieval Europe and the part about sexual beliefs of the times are a little bit incomplete. What they have is true, but both topics were a bit more complicated and involved than the article is making out, IMHO.
The role Muslim dominated Spain had in the renaissance of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages has been way overblown. And Driftdriver is right. Many of the early Muslim scientists were not Arabs. They were Assyrians who already were experts in science before the Arab Muslims showed up. Muslims later turned against much of the scientific development they themselves had helped foster. The Muslim world gradually became a backwater - and remained one until now. The Jordanian Minister of Education (maybe it was Culture?) admited a few years ago that the entire Arab Muslim world translated fewer books into Arabic over its entire history (1400 years) than Spain translates into Spanish in a single year. BACKWATER!
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