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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Left-handed Hummingbird" data-source="post: 609388" data-attributes="member: 268">Re: Re: OTThey were as far as litterature, philosophy and natural sciences were concerned. Nobody has claimed otherwise.You misunderstand my point. Roman masonry and roadbuilding went out of use, medieval craftsmen came up with new solutions. A medieval craftsman wouldn't be able to recreate parthenon, just as a Roman craftsman wouldn't be able to recreate the Cathedral at St. Denis. You have to understand that the material of choice for Northern Europeans was wood, not stone. Wood was plentiful and easy to craft and used as the main material in from the mightiest castles, and grandest royal palaces to the lowliest peasant hut. Stone houses went out of fashion with the Romans. And when you don't build stone houses, you don't educate masons.Now you're cheating. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Constantinople has never been part of the Europe of the Dark Ages. Neither has the enlightened muslim countries in Iberia and North Africa.True, though the vikings that travelled to Constantinople most likely had never seen buildings like that before, since there were no Roman stone buildings whatsoever in Scandinavia so they wouldn't have thought any building was made by giants in the first place. Beowulf is taking place in Britain - despite where it claims to take place. I'll repeat my argument that the people portraied in Beowulf  could not recreate buildings such as the roman roads or the Wall of Hadrian - not because they were inherently stupid, but because they couldn't fathom an organisation that could provide the means to do these things. Whatever the reason, those particular skills went out of use.The churches build back then had  huge and heavy walls because that was the only way they could make them strong enough. The Romans had better solutions. The Romans was able to ship the right materials needed to the right place, thus they had different tools at their disposal. The Medieval craftsmen had to make do with local material and thus, they did it differently. They had to reinvent masonry, and the roman customs were forgotten.I don't disagree with this, but the end result was that no notable scientist from outside the church emerged in the period of the Dark Ages.That was hardly their motive. The church did that because they gained an immense power by making the local lords, princes, and kings dependent of papal annointment.Now we're obviously discussing two different things, since the 13th and 14th century is far from the Dark Ages, but other than that I agree that the military tactics and technology improved immensely during the entire medieval era.I agree that political stability is a factor. I agree completely that the lack of political stability or economic growth was the main reason that the Dark Ages looked as they did. But that doesn't change the fact that with the disuse of the skills of the ancient world a lot of those skills were forgotten. When the Renaisance began - which I would claim had much more to do with the economocal development in Northern Italy than any political stability that was surely completely absent from that particular region, the craftsmen had to relearn the old crafts again.</blockquote>

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