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6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes (contains offensive language)
Cracked ^ | January 13, 2013 | Steve Kolenberg

Posted on 01/13/2013 12:37:34 PM PST by EveningStar

When you think of the Middle Ages, chances are you picture gallant knights sitting astride brilliant destriers galloping through a sea of plagues, ignorance, and filth. And you can hardly be blamed for that, when everything from the movies you watch to your high school history teacher (who was mainly the football coach) has told you that ...

(Excerpt) Read more at cracked.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: cracked; middleages; myths
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I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this article but it is interesting.
1 posted on 01/13/2013 12:37:44 PM PST by EveningStar
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To: EveningStar
"Around the same time as universities were popping up all over Europe, the Crusades were bringing Europeans into contact with advanced Muslim ideas of science and technology. Ideas like the compass and the astrolabe came to the West via Muslim Spain and came in handy during the later Age of Exploration. Italian merchants came back from trading in North Africa and gave us another innovation: Arabic numerals."

Arabs had nothing to do with the invention of the modern place-value based, base-10 numerals which replaced the cumbersome and impractical Roman numerals. Guess the original source of that invention...

2 posted on 01/13/2013 12:44:20 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
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To: James C. Bennett

India?


3 posted on 01/13/2013 12:46:17 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine (It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!)
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To: James C. Bennett

From what I’ve read there were a few scientists in Muslim countries. However most of them were killed.


4 posted on 01/13/2013 12:46:46 PM PST by driftdiver (I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)
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To: EveningStar

A lot of men also go bald around the middle ages.


5 posted on 01/13/2013 12:48:53 PM PST by GrandJediMasterYoda (Someday our schools we will teach the difference between "lose" and "loose")
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To: EveningStar

I think the Powers That Be want to bring back serfdom — and the next version of serfdom is probably going to be a lot less pleasant than the Medieval version.


6 posted on 01/13/2013 12:49:01 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (Nothing will change until after the war.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

very true and it wasn’t pleasant then either


7 posted on 01/13/2013 12:50:43 PM PST by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: EveningStar

That was fun. Thanks.


8 posted on 01/13/2013 12:51:23 PM PST by Lazamataz (LAZ'S LAW: As an argument with liberals goes on, the probability of being called racist approaches 1)
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To: Jack Hydrazine

Indeed it was India.


9 posted on 01/13/2013 12:53:34 PM PST by mylife (The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts)
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To: EveningStar
Juvenile language is offputting.
10 posted on 01/13/2013 12:54:50 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: EveningStar

“Come and see the violence inherent in the system!!”

Middle Ages thread means Monty Python. It’s tradition.

“Bring out your dead!” (Clang)


11 posted on 01/13/2013 12:55:26 PM PST by elcid1970 ("The Second Amendment is more important than Islam.")
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To: EveningStar
When you think of the Middle Ages, chances are you picture gallant knights sitting astride brilliant destriers galloping

Nah. I know they didn't have horses, and used coconuts instead.


12 posted on 01/13/2013 12:56:06 PM PST by Oztrich Boy (I think, therefore I am what I yam, and that's all I yam - Rene "Popeye" Descartes)
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To: Jack Hydrazine
Yeah, it was the Indians, they needed to record how many scalps they took.
13 posted on 01/13/2013 12:56:33 PM PST by Navy Patriot (Join the Democrats, it's not Fascism when WE do it, and the Constitution and law mean what WE say.)
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To: hinckley buzzard

Damn. I forgot the warning.


14 posted on 01/13/2013 12:56:52 PM PST by EveningStar
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To: EveningStar

This article is so wrong about a number of things, that there’s no saving it.

#6 was the best one and most accurate, at least in my own opinion.

Oldplayer


15 posted on 01/13/2013 12:57:15 PM PST by oldplayer
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To: EveningStar

I first read the title wrong....I thought it stated The Myths of Middle Age!

D’oh!


16 posted on 01/13/2013 1:01:27 PM PST by NoGrayZone (For evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.)
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To: EveningStar

People knew the Earth was spherical long before mohammed came along.


17 posted on 01/13/2013 1:01:35 PM PST by fso301
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To: EveningStar

Good article! I can vouch for a number of the things mentioned. The Church did indeed keep the flame of literacy and scholarship alive in the western half of Europe. Likewise, European knights were often more like a biker gang than anything in Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. Always looking for a rumble, and not always very nice to innocent bystanders.

I also agree with the part about life being better for the average peasant than is sometimes believed. It was not an easy life, to be sure. The diet was bland and the work was hard. A crop failure meant disaster. Then there was that whole serfdom thing. But in good years, life was better than one might suspect. English peasants in particular, lived pretty well by the standards of that age. I recently read an article that stated English peasants in the mid-late Medieval period actually had a higher standard of living than many citizens of 3rd world countries today.

I think the sections on women in Medieval Europe and the part about sexual beliefs of the times are a little bit incomplete. What they have is true, but both topics were a bit more complicated and involved than the article is making out, IMHO.


18 posted on 01/13/2013 1:02:40 PM PST by DemforBush (You might very well think that. I could not *possibly* comment.)
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To: James C. Bennett; driftdiver

The role Muslim dominated Spain had in the renaissance of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages has been way overblown. And Driftdriver is right. Many of the early Muslim scientists were not Arabs. They were Assyrians who already were experts in science before the Arab Muslims showed up. Muslims later turned against much of the scientific development they themselves had helped foster. The Muslim world gradually became a backwater - and remained one until now. The Jordanian Minister of Education (maybe it was Culture?) admited a few years ago that the entire Arab Muslim world translated fewer books into Arabic over its entire history (1400 years) than Spain translates into Spanish in a single year. BACKWATER!


19 posted on 01/13/2013 1:03:30 PM PST by vladimir998
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To: James C. Bennett; oldplayer; All
My disclaimer in the initial post can apply to all too many Cracked articles. :(
20 posted on 01/13/2013 1:05:04 PM PST by EveningStar
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