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History Marches On: Difference between revisions
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* Despite the modern associations with the word, [[This Index Is Not an Example|Gothic architecture wasn't at all that dark]]; churches used to be painted bright colours, and there was plenty of light. After centuries, the paint faded away and everything was covered in grime and dust and the colours were lost. Emulators in later centuries built buildings that looked like the old churches ended up looking, with all the gloomyness and intimidation that entails, that wasn't originally even there.
** Actually, yes, one of the properties of Gothic cathedral structure was big windows (between pillars). Big windows means a lot of light.
* The Dark Ages weren't nearly as [[Medieval Morons|backwards]] as [[The Renaissance|Renaissance]] and Enlightenment scholars claimed. Even the phrases "Dark Ages" and "Middle Ages" are going out of style: both were [[Genius: The Transgression|invented by the same scholars]] to emphasize [[Insufferable Genius|the glory of the ancient world and the nobility of the scholars who reached for it]], in [[Small Name, Big Ego|comparison]] to [[Humans Are Morons|the ignorant fools]] who [[All Of The Other Reindeer|laughed]] at [[Mad Scientist|their theories]], yes, laughed, but [[For Science!|they'll show them]], they'll [[Gone Horribly Right|show them all]]... Apologies, [[Non Sequitur Scene|sometimes]] we're a little [[Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny|absent-minded]]. Where were we? Ah, yes! Historians are now more likely to use the phrases "early medieval" and "late medieval" ("medieval" is derived from the Latin for "middle age", so you have to wonder [[Altum Videtur|if it just sounds cooler]], but then again there's not much else to name it after... [[Face Heel Turn|unless]] you [[hypocrite|ignore European historical influence]] entirely).
** Those Renaissance scholars and especially the enlightened scholars apparently put in a lot of work to 'prove' how little books had been written in the Middle Ages: by throwing away anything written in that time-period. Later researchers bought into the propaganda and genuinely believed nothing of note was written during Medieval times. They also introduced the idea of Medieval people being obsessed with religion when it seems they were mostly pretty laid-back about the whole thing. It was the Renaissance people who were the overly religious nutjobs (keep in mind they were the ones who cared enough to break off from the mother church).
* The supposed fall of Western culture was once thought in part to have been caused by a series of massive tribal migrations collectively known as the "Volkerwanderung". Specific examples included the migrations of the Saxons, Angles and Jutes to England; the Lombards into Italy; the Vandals and Visigoths into Spain; and the Franks into northern France. The belief was that these tribal migrations displaced the original inhabitants of these areas, sending them into less hospitable areas (such as the supposed "Celtic fringe" of the British Isles) and disrupting cultural progress. But DNA comparisons of ancient and modern peoples show very little evidence that the Volkerwanderung ever occurred; modern Englishmen, for instance, are far more closely related to ancient Britons (and to modern Scots, Irish, and Welshmen) than they are to modern Saxons. This DNA evidence is so new that historians are still grappling with the implications, but one possibility is that the Volkerwanderung only displaced the elite - about 0.5% of the population in most areas - leaving the bulk of the population unaffected except by the consequent cultural changes.
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