Just to expand upon some points that have already been touched upon:
1)People in the past never thought the Earth was round The Ancient Greeks proved the Earth was a sphere by cleverly calculating the angle of the earth's shadow- and from that gave an impressively accurate estimation of the Earth's circumference. But even if some people didn't know about the Ancient Greeks, it was common knowledge to sailors that if you sailed to the horizon, a man on deck would lose sight of the coast but a man in the crows nest would still be able to see land- hence the Earth must be spherical.
2)Christianity is not a cause behind the Dark Ages: On the contrary, Christian monks copied and made more copies of ancient manuscripts so that they could be preserved for future generations. In many cases, the original ancient manuscripts have been long lost but thanks to the Christian monks we are a lot more knowledgeable about the ancient world than we would have otherwise been. In fact, we wouldn't half of what went on in the Dark Ages if it wasn't for Christian monks- No Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Beowulf or the Norse Sagas from which we know about their god's.
3)Christianity did not simply suppress science: In the 12th century a monk called Thomas Aquinas researched the philosophy of Aristotle, a figure who's works had been rediscovered due to the Crusades in the Arab world. He synthesised Aristote's theory of nature with that of the Bible to create what's known as the Aristotelian Philosophy, showing that the Church was able to adapt to new developments in thinking. The trouble is that the Church chose not to adapt to the latest developments in philosophy in the Rennaisance when it's own clergymen like Copernicus and other thinkers like Galileo started to find evidence to suggest Aristotle was wrong, perhaps because the Church felt less secure following the rise of protestantism in Europe and became more conservative.
3a)In any case, the Church throughout history has played an active part in promoting education, many of Europe's modern universities trace their history back to being theological colleges. In the 11th century the Church ruled that all clergymen should remain celebrate, hence instead of farthers passing their learning onto their sons who would join the clergy, the Church had to establish colleges to educate recruits in reading, writing and scripture- and such institutions later evolved, taking on non-clergy students and offering more subjects. Following the invention of the printing press, a desire for individuals to read the Bible for themselves served a a major motive behind learning to read, and hence the development of mass print culture in 16th century Europe.
Other quickfire points:
-"Viking" is a loose umbrella term which chiefly but not exclusively refers to the Norwegians and Danish peoples in the early middle ages, who were themselves distinctive peoples. Hence the Vikings essentially wern't a homogeneous culture- and neither did they wear horned helmets!
-You shouldn't directly equate Celtic druids with being priests or mythical magicians like Merlin, they wern't just priests. They were lawmakers, judges, philosophers and advisor's to king's- essentially a class of "intelligencia" which performed all the educated functions an advanced society like the Celt's required.
-The Romans also made a big deal about the Celt's doing human sacrifice, but in reality Celtic sacrifices were uncommon occurrences, and the number of people the Romans sacrificed to their god's and to the crowds in amphitheatres dwarfs the number of people the Celt's sacrificed.
-This has been mentioned but it deserves a mention it again- there's nothing particularly amazing about the katana- it's a great cutting weapon but it won't cut through armour and probably not chain mail if it's of a half descent standard. A lot of popular perceptions of the Samurai stems from the 19th and 20th Japanese cultural imagined nostalgia.
-Up until the modern era, disease was generally a bigger killer in armies than enemy swords, arrows or bullets. Most of medieval warfare was not set piece battles but long, drawn on siege warfare and the most effective way to take land was not by force but by marriage.
1)People in the past never thought the Earth was round The Ancient Greeks proved the Earth was a sphere by cleverly calculating the angle of the earth's shadow- and from that gave an impressively accurate estimation of the Earth's circumference. But even if some people didn't know about the Ancient Greeks, it was common knowledge to sailors that if you sailed to the horizon, a man on deck would lose sight of the coast but a man in the crows nest would still be able to see land- hence the Earth must be spherical.
2)Christianity is not a cause behind the Dark Ages: On the contrary, Christian monks copied and made more copies of ancient manuscripts so that they could be preserved for future generations. In many cases, the original ancient manuscripts have been long lost but thanks to the Christian monks we are a lot more knowledgeable about the ancient world than we would have otherwise been. In fact, we wouldn't half of what went on in the Dark Ages if it wasn't for Christian monks- No Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Beowulf or the Norse Sagas from which we know about their god's.
3)Christianity did not simply suppress science: In the 12th century a monk called Thomas Aquinas researched the philosophy of Aristotle, a figure who's works had been rediscovered due to the Crusades in the Arab world. He synthesised Aristote's theory of nature with that of the Bible to create what's known as the Aristotelian Philosophy, showing that the Church was able to adapt to new developments in thinking. The trouble is that the Church chose not to adapt to the latest developments in philosophy in the Rennaisance when it's own clergymen like Copernicus and other thinkers like Galileo started to find evidence to suggest Aristotle was wrong, perhaps because the Church felt less secure following the rise of protestantism in Europe and became more conservative.
3a)In any case, the Church throughout history has played an active part in promoting education, many of Europe's modern universities trace their history back to being theological colleges. In the 11th century the Church ruled that all clergymen should remain celebrate, hence instead of farthers passing their learning onto their sons who would join the clergy, the Church had to establish colleges to educate recruits in reading, writing and scripture- and such institutions later evolved, taking on non-clergy students and offering more subjects. Following the invention of the printing press, a desire for individuals to read the Bible for themselves served a a major motive behind learning to read, and hence the development of mass print culture in 16th century Europe.
Other quickfire points:
-"Viking" is a loose umbrella term which chiefly but not exclusively refers to the Norwegians and Danish peoples in the early middle ages, who were themselves distinctive peoples. Hence the Vikings essentially wern't a homogeneous culture- and neither did they wear horned helmets!
-You shouldn't directly equate Celtic druids with being priests or mythical magicians like Merlin, they wern't just priests. They were lawmakers, judges, philosophers and advisor's to king's- essentially a class of "intelligencia" which performed all the educated functions an advanced society like the Celt's required.
-The Romans also made a big deal about the Celt's doing human sacrifice, but in reality Celtic sacrifices were uncommon occurrences, and the number of people the Romans sacrificed to their god's and to the crowds in amphitheatres dwarfs the number of people the Celt's sacrificed.
-This has been mentioned but it deserves a mention it again- there's nothing particularly amazing about the katana- it's a great cutting weapon but it won't cut through armour and probably not chain mail if it's of a half descent standard. A lot of popular perceptions of the Samurai stems from the 19th and 20th Japanese cultural imagined nostalgia.
-Up until the modern era, disease was generally a bigger killer in armies than enemy swords, arrows or bullets. Most of medieval warfare was not set piece battles but long, drawn on siege warfare and the most effective way to take land was not by force but by marriage.
