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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 5209029" data-attributes="member: 77019">It's a good point, though I think we have been through a long run, maybe 150 years? of leaning too far in the "Medieval people were stupid and everything they did sucked" direction. And ironically one of the Pythons themselves, Terry Jones, has written some excellent revisionist popular history in the last few years, has been a humorous voice for critical thinking about many of our worst preconceptions and cliches about history (including some of the ones Monty Python invented).  But you raise an excellent point. We often trade one cliche for another and I do find myself falling into this trap still over and over. I think 20% of my brain has accepted that History is completely open ended. That 20% is very happpy and grows a little stronger every day (it was probably just 5% a few years ago) because we live in a period of very rich data and new surprising revelations are constantly emerging. But the other 80% of me keeps over and over again makig alliances with this or that theory, or idea, or (worst of all) ancient group of people who seem cool, and then is thrown over and disappointed every time I read a new book and find out it wasn't so cut and dry.  Jacob Burckhardt, the famous historian of Renaissance Italy, (and Niestches reluctant History teacher) criticized the tendancy of having any grand theories of history at all, and recommended accepting the fact that history was complex and does not fit any pattern. I try to keep this in mind as I continue to learn. And that 20% grows a little more happy, because it knows it will always be entertained and can watch the patterns of reality endlessly come into focus and only make 'alliances' to what appears to be true, without being offended when the root of the tree twists in another direction; (only delighted to visit a new unexpected region). Reading history (in the form of primary sources and current archeology) has become for me, getting hooked on the ultimate fantasy or sci fi series that never ends and never 'jumps the shark'. yeah but how do we make all those teeny tiny rivets so the mail will work properly? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /> G.</blockquote>

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