History Analysis / MedievalStasis

Remember that [[NewerThanTheyThink until very recently]] in history, Eastern Europe and the East (i.e. Asia) was wealthier, more prosperous and more stable than Western Europe. The real reason why the medieval era or the Dark Ages is even remembered as such is that it was precisely the last time the people in that land could conceive or know of such a lifestyle, and the arrival of relative progress naturally led many of the beneficiaries to castigate the earlier intervening era as a dark age. Furthermore if you compare the Medieval European era with the Ancient Roman era, the average lifestyle enjoyed would be superior to anything in antiquity. The medieval era, in Western Europe, saw the end of slavery of fellow Western Europeans and the Black Death saw the gradual end of serfdom, and it saw many nascent peasant rebellions and other agitations that led to higher wages and improvement of a kind that the Ancient Romans never provided to any of its subject peoples. Indeed in the Roman era, the domains of Western Europe (the area of land conquered by Caesar and his descendants) was so poor and backward that it was literally left to decay in the Crisis of the Third Century, and the Eastern half of the Empire more or less allowed a corridor for Attila the Hun to raid it and leave it alone. To the extent the Dung Ages ever existed to start with, it began in Late Antiquity (when serfdom was first instituted).

[[TechnologyPorn Many forms of media focus on historical inventions]] because it seems logical that scientific advancement and inventions result in economic growth. As far as they are concerned, this is the story of human development--Science resulting in Modernity. Historically this has only been true over the last four hundred years or so, where we see and experience that linear organized proliferation of ideas in economic and social activity. This fact of history is why some engineers, historians, and economists alike are bemused at the idea [[OneManIndustrialRevolution that Archimedes alone could have started the Industrial Revolution two millennia early]]. UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire, [[UsefulNotes / DynastiesFromShangToQing the Empire of the Song]] and the Mughal Empire were all pretty damn big and culturally sophisticated, but their populations didn't craft precision optics or found joint-stock companies or use square-rigged sails because there was no reason for their peoples to use those things. In other words, necessity is the true mother of invention. ''Homo erectus'' adopted the technology of fire not because Prometheus told him to invent technological wonders to rival God; it's simply because [[KillItWithFire fire defended humans against nocturnal predators, and also made food easier to digest, parasite-free and safer to eat, thus more families and less roundworms]]. Desert civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Egypt invented farming because hunting-gathering in a desert will just kill you, square-rigged sails became popular because of inter-continental trade that involved ''loads'' of down-wind sailing (using the so-called 'trade winds'). Arguably the only major (material) difference between Europe in 1500 and Europe in 1800 was the presence of the million-plus muskets. Then again, for us modern humans, inventing nature-controlling technology for the sheer pleasure of it may count as a necessity too.

Scientific progress, moreover, was 'very' slow-paced from c.1400 to about c.1800 (even at which time the use of the so-called 'Scientific Method' was still far from universally accepted) and had no practical applications beyond navigation, time-keeping, and of course war--most European people, even in the more advanced parts of Europe like the Dutch Republic, were dirt poor and died young just like their compatriots in Colonial America, Bengal, the Sudan, Java, and Guangdong. The nature of most changes that occurred in that period concerned weaponry, the deployment of weaponry, and institutions for making and using and acquiring the money to make and use weapons--it was only with the advent of the UsefulNotes/IndustrialRevolution that people started becoming better-fed, living a bit longer and dying less. Indeed, it was only in 1865 that London completed its public water- and sewer-works; the first of its kind in the world, it was decried by the scientific community as a shameful example of governmental spinelessness in caving in to the demands of the so-called 'sanitarian' pseudo-scientific movement, which was making wild and unsubstantiated claims that the use of soap and general cleanliness would reduce the incidence of disease.

[[TechnologyPorn Many forms of media focus on historical inventions]] because it seems logical that scientific advancement and inventions result in economic growth. As far as they are concerned, this is the story of human development--Science resulting in Modernity. Historically this has only been true over the last four hundred years or so, where we see and experience that linear organized proliferation of ideas in economic and social activity. This fact of history is why some engineers, historians, and economists alike are bemused at the idea [[OneManIndustrialRevolution that Archimedes alone could have started the Industrial Revolution two millennia early]]. UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire, the Empire of the Song, and the Mughal Empire were all pretty damn big and culturally sophisticated, but their populations didn't craft precision optics or found joint-stock companies or use square-rigged sails because there was no reason for their peoples to use those things. In other words, necessity is the true mother of invention. ''Homo erectus'' adopted the technology of fire not because Prometheus told him to invent technological wonders to rival God; it's simply because [[KillItWithFire fire defended humans against nocturnal predators, and also made food easier to digest, parasite-free and safer to eat, thus more families and less roundworms]]. Desert civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Egypt invented farming because hunting-gathering in a desert will just kill you, square-rigged sails became popular because of inter-continental trade that involved ''loads'' of down-wind sailing (using the so-called 'trade winds'). Arguably the only major (material) difference between Europe in 1500 and Europe in 1800 was the presence of the million-plus muskets. Then again, for us modern humans, inventing nature-controlling technology for the sheer pleasure of it may count as a necessity too.

Continual technological progress has never been inevitable in human history, even though modern capitalism makes it ''feel'' inevitable in developed countries today. Different societies adopt and phase out 'technologies' according to their needs for survival/pleasure/social status. Even if something's a cultural-legal tabboo, if using something better suits a society's needs (e.g. accepting the wealth of non-noble merchants, radios in North Korea) it'll be done anyway and will almost inevitably become acceptable in time. Many peoples never invented writing, ceramics, wheeled vehicles, and some not even agriculture. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists don't have one universal answer for why this is--reasons can include lack of necessary resources (minerals, animals, plants, population, climate, energy, etc.), cultural aversion to a particular technology, or (and this is the biggest one) just plain not ''needing'' to adopt something new. Many a method and/or tool ('technology') has been abandoned when others are more profitable and/or convenient, such as the gradual abandonment of firewood in England in favour of coal [[note]] England had some of the poorest forest-management in the world. As early as the Elizabethan era the English found it profitable to mine and distribute coal instead of just cutting up and burning trees. This was literally unimaginable in a place like Russia, where there were a bajillion trees for every person as late as 1900. [[/note]] While all human cultures continually adapt the technology they already have to environmental and social changes--and thus true stasis never happens--people don't tinker with, much less adopt, entirely new technologies without significant economic, military, social, or other incentives making it a good idea for at least some of them to do so. Anthropologists are just as interested in figuring out why various technologies were invented at all, as in why some societies didn't invent or adopt them until others had a marked competitive advantage.

Remember that [[NewerThanTheyThink until very recently]] in history, Eastern Europe and the East (i.e. Asia) was wealthier, more prosperous and more stable than Western Europe. The real reason why the medieval era or the Dark Ages is even remembered as such is that it was precisely the last time the people in that land could conceive or know of such a lifestyle, and the arrival of relative progress naturally led many of the beneficiaries to castigate the earlier intervening era as a dark age. Furthermore if you compare the Medieval European era with the Ancient Roman era, the average lifestyle enjoyed would be superior to anything in antiquity. The medieval era, in Western Europe, saw the end of slavery of fellow Western Europeans and the Black Death saw the end of gradual end of serfdom, and it saw many nascent peasant rebellions and other agitations that led to higher wages and improvement of a kind that the Ancient Romans never provided to any of its subject peoples. Indeed in the Roman era, the domains of Western Europe (the area of land conquered by Caesar and his descendants) was so poor and backward that it was literally left to decay in the Crisis of the Third Century, and the Eastern half of the Empire more or less allowed a corridor for Attila the Hun to raid it and leave it alone. To the extent the Dung Ages ever existed to start with, it began in Late Antiquity (when serfdom was first instituted).

Scientific progress, moreover, was 'very' slow-paced from c.1400 to about c.1800 (even at which time the use of the so-called 'Scientific Method' was still far from universally accepted) and had no practical applications beyond navigation, time-keeping, and of course war--most European people, even in the more advanced parts of Europe like the Dutch Republic, were dirt poor and died young just like their compatriots in Colonial America, Bengal, the Sudan, Java, and Guangdong. The nature of most changes that occurred in that period concerned weaponry, the deployment of weaponry, and institutions for making and using and acquiring the money to make and use weapons--it was only with the advent of the GrandUnifiedTimeline/FirstIndustrialRevolution that people started becoming better-fed, living a bit longer and dying less. Indeed, it was only in 1865 that London completed its public water- and sewer-works; the first of its kind in the world, it was decried by the scientific community as a shameful example of governmental spinelessness in caving in to the demands of the so-called 'sanitarian' pseudo-scientific movement, which was making wild and unsubstantiated claims that the use of soap and general cleanliness would reduce the incidence of disease.

Scientific progress, moreover, was 'very' slow-paced from c.1400 to about c.1800 (even at which time the use of the so-called 'Scientific Method' was still far from universally accepted) and had no practical applications beyond navigation, time-keeping, and of course war--most European people, even in the more advanced parts of Europe like the Dutch Republic, were dirt poor and died young just like their compatriots in Colonial America, Bengal, the Sudan, Java, and Guangdong. The nature of most changes that occurred in that period concerned weaponry, the deployment of weaponry, and institutions for making and using and acquiring the money to make and use weapons--it was only with the advent of the IndustrialRevolution that people started becoming better-fed, living a bit longer and dying less. Indeed, it was only in 1865 that London completed its public water- and sewer-works; the first of its kind in the world, it was decried by the scientific community as a shameful example of governmental spinelessness in caving in to the demands of the so-called 'sanitarian' pseudo-scientific movement, which was making wild and unsubstantiated claims that the use of soap and general cleanliness would reduce the incidence of disease.

Due to (relative to Roman times) high wages and the proliferation of iron throughout the intervening millennia, technology ramped up again in TheHighMiddleAges which saw the introduction of cranks and wheelbarrows, European copies and improvements upon the mechanical clock, Arabian-style windmills, and the re-introduction of the old three-crop rotation system; the medieval world changed a fair bit in its time, not least because the population of Europe nearly returned to the level it had been in Roman times until the decades before the Black Death, which were marked by population stagnation[[note]] the aftermath of the Black death being a time of (re-)industrialisation, as the relatively high cost of wages in de-populated post-Black Death Europe gave landlords a big incentive to buy tools like shovels and hoes rather than just hiring more labourers[[/note]]. Even the so-called "Dark Ages" were just a western European phenomenon. In the Eastern Roman Empire, the Arab world, the Indian subcontinent, and the Chinese realms were, though constantly in flux--with major fluctuations in population and general prosperity levels due to the wars and chaos accompanying the rise and fall of several different empires--largely as militarily and culturally sophisticated as ever, their empires having done much better to resist the encroachment of the peoples of the Steppes (Mongol-led Empire of the Yuan aside). The idea of a medieval decline is a [[TheDungAges trope in itself]], which has been around since the Renaissance.

[[TechnologyPorn Many forms of media focus on historical inventions]] because it seems logical that scientific advancement and inventions result in economic growth. As far as they are concerned, this is the story of human development--Science resulting in Modernity. Actually, the opposite is true; necessity dictates the adoption, or not, of technologies with practical applications. This fact of history is why engineers, historians, and economists alike laugh [[OneManIndustrialRevolution at the idea that Archimedes alone could have started the Industrial Revolution two millennia early]]. UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire, the Empire of the Song, and the Mughal Empire were all pretty damn big and culturally sophisticated, but their populations didn't craft precision optics or found joint-stock companies or use square-rigged sails because there was no reason for their peoples to use those things. In other words, necessity is the true mother of invention. ''Homo erectus'' adopted the technology of fire not because Prometheus told him to invent technological wonders to rival God; it's simply because [[KillItWithFire fire defended humans against nocturnal predators, and also made food easier to digest, parasite-free and safer to eat, thus more families and less roundworms]]. Desert civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Egypt invented farming because hunting-gathering in a desert will just kill you, square-rigged sails became popular because of inter-continental trade that involved ''loads'' of down-wind sailing (using the so-called 'trade winds') rather than the usual cross-winds, and Renaissance Europe and the Soviet Union had to be forced into a LensmanArmsRace as their incentive for invention (if there was no Colonial Era[=/=]Cold War to force a LensmanArmsRace, the sheer amount of anti-intellectualism in the Inquisition-era[=/=]Communist Countries would have forced them back into a famine-ridden dark ages)--arguably the only major (material) difference between Europe in 1500 and Europe in 1800 was the presence of the million-plus muskets. Then again, for us modern humans, inventing nature-controlling technology for the sheer pleasure of it may count as a necessity too.

Scientific progress, moreover, was 'very' slow-paced from c.1400 to about c.1800 (even at which time the use of the so-called 'Scientific Method' was still far from universally accepted) and had no practical applications beyond navigation, time-keeping, and of course war--most European people, even in the more advanced parts of Europe like the Dutch Republic, were dirt poor and died young just like their compatriots in Colonial America, Bengal, the Sudan, Java, and Guangdong. The nature of most changes that occurred in that period concerned weaponry, the deployment of weaponry, and institutions for making and using and acquiring the money to make and use weapons--it was only with the advent of the industrial revolution that people started becoming better-fed, living a bit longer and dying less. Indeed, it was only in 1865 that London completed its public water- and sewer-works; the first of its kind in the world, it was decried by the scientific community as a shameful example of governmental spinelessness in caving in to the demands of the so-called 'sanitarian' pseudo-scientific movement, which was making wild and unsubstantiated claims that the use of soap and general cleanliness would reduce the incidence of disease.

[[TechnologyPorn Many forms of media focus on historical inventions]] because it seems logical that scientific advancement and inventions result in economic growth. As far as they are concerned, this is the story of human development--Science resulting in Modernity. Actually, the opposite is true; necessity dictates the adoption, or not, of technologies with practical applications. This fact of history is why engineers, historians, and economists alike laugh [[OneManIndustrialRevolution at the idea that Archimedes alone could have started the Industrial Revolution two millennia early]]. TheRomanEmpire, the Empire of the Song, and the Mughal Empire were all pretty damn big and culturally sophisticated, but their populations didn't craft precision optics or found joint-stock companies or use square-rigged sails because there was no reason for their peoples to use those things. In other words, necessity is the true mother of invention. ''Homo erectus'' adopted the technology of fire not because Prometheus told him to invent technological wonders to rival God; it's simply because [[KillItWithFire fire defended humans against nocturnal predators, and also made food easier to digest, parasite-free and safer to eat, thus more families and less roundworms]]. Desert civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Egypt invented farming because hunting-gathering in a desert will just kill you, square-rigged sails became popular because of inter-continental trade that involved ''loads'' of down-wind sailing (using the so-called 'trade winds') rather than the usual cross-winds, and Renaissance Europe and the Soviet Union had to be forced into a LensmanArmsRace as their incentive for invention (if there was no Colonial Era[=/=]Cold War to force a LensmanArmsRace, the sheer amount of anti-intellectualism in the Inquisition-era[=/=]Communist Countries would have forced them back into a famine-ridden dark ages)--arguably the only major (material) difference between Europe in 1500 and Europe in 1800 was the presence of the million-plus muskets. Then again, for us modern humans, inventing nature-controlling technology for the sheer pleasure of it may count as a necessity too.

Due to (relative to Roman times) high wages and the proliferation of iron throughout the intervening millennia, technology ramped up again in TheHighMiddleAges which saw the introduction of cranks and wheelbarrows, European copies and improvements upon the mechanical clock, Arabian-style windmills, and the re-introduction of the old three-crop rotation system; the medieval world changed a fair bit in its time, not least because the population of Europe nearly returned to the level it had been in Roman times until the decades before the Black Death, which were marked by population stagnation[[note]] the aftermath of the Black death being a time of (re-)industrialisation, as the relatively high cost of wages in de-populated post-Black Death Europe gave landlords a big incentive to buy tools like shovels and hoes rather than just hiring more labourers[[/note]]. Even the so-called "Dark Ages" were just a western European phenomenon- the Eastern Roman Empire, the Arab world, the Indian subcontinent and the Chinese realms were - though constantly in flux, with major fluctuations in population and general prosperity levels due to the wars and chaos accompanying the rise and fall of several different empires - largely as militarily and culturally sophisticated as ever, their empires having done much better to resist the encroachment of the peoples of the Steppes (Mongol-led Empire of the Yuan aside). The idea of a medieval decline is a [[TheDungAges trope in itself]], which has been around since the Renaissance.

[[TechnologyPorn Many forms of media focus on historical inventions]] because it seems logical that scientific advancement and inventions result in economic growth. As far as they are concerned, this is the story of human development - Science resulting in Modernity. Actually, the opposite is true; necessity dictates the adoption, or not, of technologies with practical applications. This fact of history is why engineers, historians, and economists alike laugh [[OneManIndustrialRevolution at the idea that Archimedes alone could have started the Industrial Revolution two millennia early]]. TheRomanEmpire, the Empire of the Song, and the Mughal Empire were all pretty damn big and culturally sophisticated, but their populations didn't craft precision optics or found joint-stock companies or use square-rigged sails because there was no reason for their peoples to use those things. In other words, necessity is the true mother of invention. ''Homo erectus'' adopted the technology of fire not because Prometheus told him to invent technological wonders to rival God; it's simply because [[KillItWithFire fire defended humans against nocturnal predators, and also made food easier to digest, parasite-free and safer to eat, thus more families and less roundworms]]. Desert civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Egypt invented farming because hunting-gathering in a desert will just kill you, square-rigged sails became popular because of inter-continental trade that involved ''loads'' of down-wind sailing (using the so-called 'trade winds') rather than the usual cross-winds, and Renaissance Europe and the Soviet Union had to be forced into a LensmanArmsRace as their incentive for invention (if there was no Colonial Era[=/=]Cold War to force a LensmanArmsRace, the sheer amount of anti-intellectualism in the Inquisition-era[=/=]Communist Countries would have forced them back into a famine-ridden dark ages) - arguably the only major (material) difference between Europe in 1500 and Europe in 1800 was the presence of the million-plus muskets. Then again, for us modern humans, inventing nature-controlling technology for the sheer pleasure of it may count as a necessity too.

Scientific progress, moreover, was 'very' slow-paced from c.1400 to about c.1800 (even at which time the use of the so-called 'Scientific Method' was still far from universally accepted) and had no practical applications beyond navigation, time-keeping, and of course war - most European people, even in the more advanced parts of Europe like the Dutch Republic, were dirt poor and died young just like their compatriots in Colonial America, Bengal, the Sudan, Java, and Guangdong. The nature of most changes that occurred in that period concerned weaponry, the deployment of weaponry, and institutions for making and using and acquiring the money to make and use weapons - it was only with the advent of the industrial revolution that people started becoming better-fed, living a bit longer and dying less. Indeed, it was only in 1865 that London completed its public water- and sewer-works; the first of its kind in the world, it was decried by the scientific community as a shameful example of governmental spinelessness in caving in to the demands of the so-called 'sanitarian' pseudo-scientific movement, which was making wild and unsubstantiated claims that the use of soap and general cleanliness would reduce the incidence of disease.

Continual technological progress has never been inevitable in human history, even though modern capitalism makes it ''feel'' inevitable in developed countries today. Different societies adopt and phase out 'technologies' according to their needs for survival/pleasure/social status. Even if something's a cultural-legal tabboo, if using something better suits a society's needs (e.g. accepting the wealth of non-noble merchants, radios in North Korea) it'll be done anyway and will almost inevitably become acceptable in time. Many peoples never invented writing, ceramics, wheeled vehicles, and some not even agriculture. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists don't have one universal answer for why this is -- reasons can include lack of necessary resources (minerals, animals, plants, population, climate, energy, etc.), cultural aversion to a particular technology, or (and this is the biggest one) just plain not ''needing'' to adopt something new. Many a method and/or tool ('technology') has been abandoned when others are more profitable and/or convenient, such as the gradual abandonment of firewood in England in favour of coal [[note]] England had some of the poorest forest-management in the world. As early as the Elizabethan era the English found it profitable to mine and distribute coal instead of just cutting up and burning trees. This was literally unimaginable in a place like Russia, where there were a bajillion trees for every person as late as 1900. [[/note]] While all human cultures continually adapt the technology they already have to environmental and social changes -- and thus true stasis never happens -- people don't tinker with, much less adopt, entirely new technologies without significant economic, military, social, or other incentives making it a good idea for at least some of them to do so. Anthropologists are just as interested in figuring out why various technologies were invented at all, as in why some societies didn't invent or adopt them until others had a marked competitive advantage.

Continual technological progress has never been inevitable in human history, even though modern capitalism makes it ''feel'' inevitable in developed countries today. Different societies adopt and phase out 'technologies' according to their needs for survival/pleasure/social status. Even if something's a cultural-legal tabboo, if using something better suits a society's needs (e.g. accepting the wealth of non-noble merchants, radios in North Korea) it'll be done anyway and will almost inevitably become acceptable in time. Many peoples never invented writing, ceramics, wheeled vehicles, and some not even agriculture. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists don't have one universal answer for why this is -- reasons can include lack of necessary resources (minerals, animals, plants, population, climate, energy, etc.), cultural aversion to a particular technology, or (and this is the biggest one) just plain not ''needing'' to adopt something new. Many a method and/or tool ('technology') has been abandoned when others are more profitable and/or convenient, such as the gradual abandonment of firewood in England in favour of coal [[note]] England had some of the poorest forest-management in the world. As early as the Elizabethan era the English found it profitable to mine and distribute coal instead of just cutting up and burning trees. This was literally unimaginable in a place like Russia, where there were a bajillion trees for every person as late as 1900. [[/note]] While all human cultures continually adapt the technology they already have to environmental and social changes -- and thus true stasis never happens -- people don't invent entirely new technologies without some economic, social, military, or other incentive driving them to want to. Anthropologists are just as interested in figuring out why various technologies were invented at all, as in why some cultures didn't invent them.

Continual technological progress has never been inevitable in human history, even though modern capitalism makes it ''feel'' inevitable in developed countries today. Different cultures invent new technologies at different rates, depending on the available resources, their needs for survival/pleasure/social status, cultural inclinations, historical events, and so on. Many peoples never invented writing, or ceramics, or wheeled vehicles, or in some cases not even agriculture. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists don't have one universal answer for why this is -- reasons can include lack of necessary resources (minerals, animals, plants, population, climate, energy, etc.), cultural aversion to a particular technology, or just plain not ''needing'' to invent something new. In some cases, once widespread technologies have been abandoned when the need or resources disappeared. While all human cultures continually adapt the technology they already have to environmental and social changes -- and thus true stasis never happens -- people don't invent entirely new technologies without some economic, social, military, or other incentive driving them to want to. Anthropologists are just as interested in figuring out why various technologies were invented at all, as in why some cultures didn't invent them.

[[TechnologyPorn Many forms of media focus on historical inventions]] because it seems logical that scientific advancement and inventions result in economic growth. As far as they are concerned, this is the story of human development - Science resulting in Modernity. Actually, the opposite is true; necessity dictates the adoption, or not, of technologies with practical applications. This fact of history is why engineers, historians, and economists alike laugh [[OneManIndustrialRevolution at the idea that Archimedes alone could have started the Industrial Revolution two millennia early]]. TheRomanEmpire, the Empire of the Song, and the Mughal Empire were all pretty damn big and culturally sophisticated, but their populations didn't craft precision optics or found joint-stock companies or use square-rigged sails because there was no reason for their peoples to use those things. In other words, necessity is the true mother of invention. ''Homo erectus'' adopted the technology of fire not because Prometheus told him to invent technological wonders to rival God; it's simply because [[KillItWithFire fire defended humans against nocturnal predators, and also made food easier to digest, parasite-free and safer to eat, thus more families and less roundworms]]. Desert civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Egypt invented farming because hunting-gathering in a desert will just kill you, square-rigged sails became popular because of colonial incentives, while Renaissance Europe and the Soviet Union had to be forced into a LensmanArmsRace as their incentive for invention (if there was no Colonial Era[=/=]Cold War to force a LensmanArmsRace, the sheer amount of anti-intellectualism in the Inquisition-era[=/=]Communist Countries would have forced them back into a famine-ridden dark ages). Then again, for us modern humans, inventing nature-controlling technology for the sheer pleasure of it may count as a necessity too.

Due to (relative to Roman times) high wages and the proliferation of iron throughout the intervening millennia, technology ramped up again in TheHighMiddleAges which saw the introduction of cranks and wheelbarrows, European copies and improvements upon the mechanical clock, Arabian-style windmills, and the re-introduction of the old three-crop rotation system; the medieval world changed a fair bit in its time, not least because the population of Europe nearly returned to the level it had been in Roman times until the decades before the Black Death, which were marked by population stagnation[[hottip:*: the aftermath of the Black death being a time of (re-)industrialisation, as the relatively high cost of wages in de-populated post-Black Death Europe gave landlords a big incentive to buy tools like shovels and hoes rather than just hiring more labourers]]. Even the so-called "Dark Ages" were just a western European phenomenon- the Eastern Roman Empire, the Arab world, the Indian subcontinent and the Chinese realms were - though constantly in flux, with major fluctuations in population and general prosperity levels due to the wars and chaos accompanying the rise and fall of several different empires - largely as militarily and culturally sophisticated as ever, their empires having done much better to resist the encroachment of the peoples of the Steppes (Mongol-led Empire of the Yuan aside). The idea of a medieval decline is a [[TheDungAges trope in itself]], which has been around since the Renaissance.

Back to MedievalStasis

[[TechnologyPorn Many forms of media focus on historical inventions]] because it seems logical that scientific advancement and inventions result in economic growth. As far as they are concerned, this is the story of human development - Science resulting in Modernity. Actually, the opposite is true; necessity dictates the adoption, or not, of technologies with practical applications. This fact of history is why engineers, historians, and economists alike laugh [[OneManIndustrialRevolution at the idea that Archimedes alone could have started the Industrial Revolution two millennia early]]. TheRomanEmpire, the Empire of the Song, and the Mughal Empire were all pretty damn big and culturally sophisticated, but their populations didn't craft precision optics or found joint-stock companies or use square-rigged sails because there was no reason for their peoples to use those things. In other words, necessity is the true mother of invention. ''Homo erectus'' started using fire not because Prometheus told him to invent technological wonders that make God run for his money; it's actually because [[KillItWithFire fire made food easier to digest, parasite-free and safer to eat, thus more families and less roundworms]]. Desert civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Egypt invented farming because hunting-gathering in a desert will just kill you, square-rigged sails became popular because of colonial incentives, while Renaissance Europe and the Soviet Union had to be forced into a LensmanArmsRace as their incentive for invention (if there was no Colonial Era[=/=]Cold War to force a LensmanArmsRace, the sheer amount of anti-intellectualism in the Inquisition-era[=/=]Communist Countries would have forced them back into a famine-ridden dark ages). Then again, for us modern humans, inventing nature-controlling technology for the sheer pleasure of it may count as a necessity too.

[[TechnologyPorn Many forms of media focus on historical inventions]] because it seems logical that scientific advancement and inventions result in economic growth. As far as they are concerned, this is the story of human development - Science resulting in Modernity. Actually, the opposite is true; economics dictates the adoption, or not, of technologies with practical applications. This fact of history is why engineers, historians, and economists alike laugh [[OneManIndustrialRevolution at the idea that Archimedes could have started the Industrial Revolution two millennia early]]. The Empire of Rome, the Empire of the Song, and the Mughal Empire were all pretty damn big and well-developed and culturally sophisticated, but their populations didn't craft precision optics or found joint-stock companies or use square-rigged sails because there was no reason for their peoples to use those things. In other words, necessity is the mother of invention; desert civilizations like Mesopotamia and Egypt invented farming because their hunter-gatherer lifestyle can't support their population, while empires such as Ancient Rome and the Soviet Union mostly had LensmanArmsRace as their incentive for invention (if there was no Cold War to force a LensmanArmsRace, the sheer amount of anti-intellectualism in the USSR would have forced it into a famine-ridden dark ages).

Scientific progress, moreover, was 'very' slow-paced from c.1400 to about c.1800 (even at which time the use of the so-called 'Scientific Method' was still far from universally accepted) and had no practical applications beyond navigation, time-keeping, and killing people at range - most European people, even in the more advanced parts of Europe like the Dutch Republic, were dirt poor and died young just like their compatriots in Colonial America, Bengal, the Sudan, Java, and Guangdong. The nature of most changes that occurred in that period concerned weaponry, the deployment of weaponry, and institutions for making and using and acquiring the money to make and use weapons - it was only with the advent of the industrial revolution that people started becoming better-fed, living a bit longer and dying less. Indeed, it was only in 1865 that London completed its public water- and sewer-works; the first of its kind in the world, it was decried by the scientific community as a shameful example of governmental spinelessness in caving in to the demands of the so-called 'sanitarian' pseudo-scientific movement, which was making wild and unsubstantiated claims that the use of soap and general cleanliness would reduce the incidence of disease.

Continual technological progress has never been inevitable in human history, even though modern capitalism makes it ''feel'' inevitable in developed countries today. Different cultures invent new technologies at different rates, depending on the available resources, their needs for survival and social status, cultural inclinations, historical events, and so on. Many peoples never invented writing, or ceramics, or wheeled vehicles, or in some cases not even agriculture. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists don't have one universal answer for why this is -- reasons can include lack of necessary resources (minerals, animals, plants, population, climate, energy, etc.), cultural aversion to a particular technology, or just plain not ''needing'' to invent something new. In some cases, once widespread technologies have been abandoned when the need or resources disappeared. While all human cultures continually adapt the technology they already have to environmental and social changes -- and thus true stasis never happens -- people don't invent entirely new technologies without some economic, social, military, or other impetus driving them to want to. Anthropologists are just as interested in figuring out why various technologies were invented at all, as in why some cultures didn't invent them.

* Continual technological progress has never been inevitable in human history, even though modern capitalism makes it ''feel'' inevitable in developed countries today. Different cultures invent new technologies at different rates, depending on the available resources, their needs for survival and social status, cultural inclinations, historical events, and so on. Many peoples never invented writing, or ceramics, or wheeled vehicles, or in some cases not even agriculture. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists don't have one universal answer for why this is -- reasons can include lack of necessary resources (minerals, animals, plants, population, climate, energy, etc.), cultural aversion to a particular technology, or just plain not ''needing'' to invent something new. In some cases, once widespread technologies have been abandoned when the need or resources disappeared. While all human cultures continually adapt the technology they already have to environmental and social changes -- and thus true stasis never happens -- people don't invent entirely new technologies without some economic, social, military, or other impetus driving them to want to. Anthropologists are just as interested in figuring out why various technologies were invented at all, as in why some cultures didn't invent them.