> probably: > sharp rise... > plateau... > collapse... > dark ages then begin.
As probably the only Late Ancient / Early Medievalist on this list, I feel a need to correct this myth of the Dark Ages (which can be squarely blamed on Edward Gibbon, and his personal issues with organized religion). As we managed to work beyond a certain cultural bias brought on by Imperialistic 19th century powers manipulating our perspective of the Roman world for political gain, most historians who now study this era see it as an incredibly vibrant period of political, technological, and cognitive change. Most languages spoken in Europe today are a direct result of a massive growth in technical language developed by people who married Classical thought with new Germanic and Asiatic influences. Critical mathematical advances occurred laying the groundwork for what would become symbolic logic and algebra. If you focus on the then more populist and wealthy east, there is a straight continuity. In the west, there is actually pretty radical change which gave birth to the political structures that created the modern era (which Classicists view as everything after 1066). While outside of Ireland, nearly all knowledge of Greek was lost, those concepts were translated into vulgate resulting in a vast democratization of thought. (seeds of the reformation) From a pure info technology standpoint, there is no plateau, merely a paradigm shift which enabled new sources of intellectual growth. Just like we saw with the advent of digital computing. _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
