Part SIX = The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages.

The next bit of our history is what we call 'The Middle Ages,' which were between 5th to 15th century, of which we will talk about the western branch of it.

Previously and sometime known as 'The Dark Ages', because it is compared to the artistic, cultured, rich, educated and technology driven Romans. When their Empire collapsed, there was a lot of wars, battles and land grabbing, although on a smaller scale.

Their was a general lack of education for the common man, with only the rich getting education.

The fall of the Empire also created single or 'Mono' religions like Judaism, Islam and Christianity. People started looking to the Christians for a sense of belonging and for its sense of moral code.

During this period, knights would protect a village with a nobleman in charge, overseeing everything.

Crop rotation = the growing of different crops on one block of land each year, over a four year rotation, was introduced, which increased yields.

Churches became places of worship as well as a place for protection from invaders. Church spires had arrow slits in them to fend off intruders, whilst the villagers hid inside the building.

Churches also became rich and started to educate people, who were also taught in the churches and the bibles ways but as usual it was only the rich that could afford to pay for the services. These educated people would then write / reproduce copies of the scriptures. This in turn made the church a propaganda machine.

Remember it wasn't until 1440 AD, that Gutenberg invented the printing press. 100 pages a day could now to be produced, which was a lot more than when the only way of reproduction was hand copying, which was how copies of the bible had been made up until then.
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Art was also controlled, so most of the art from the Middle Ages is of a religious nature.

The BLACK DEATH (The Bubonic Plague):

This is something the middle ages are known for. The plague was thought to be spread by black rats, when it was actually spread by fleas that lived on the rats. It spread as the people didn't even have a basic understanding of cleanliness. The Egyptians in comparison, who were about thousands of years earlier, had a much higher concept of cleanliness.

Across Europe, 33 million people died and across the world 100 million died out of a world population of 400 million. This brought up questions about Christianity and why god would allow people to die? Various superstitions were brought to blame, involving cats, dogs.

If a single person in a household got the plague, they were forced to stay in their house with the rest of the household, basically condemning them all to death.

So how was a cure found? Well, one wasn't. The way that the plague died out, was when there were no more people left to contract it.

Even today, MADAGASCAR has a few hundred cases a year. SCARY eh???!!!