Why do history and historical events move in eras/epochs, whatever?

Question

Why was it that the Roman Empire became Christian, then the standard of living fell during middle ages, then the Renaissance, scientific revolution, industrial revolution, and now the modern era? I don't understand why ancient people were so smart but they couldn't even figure out scientific stuff like we do today?

Answer 1

Man is deep rooted in belief. In the time prior to us, they have followed the roads of religion, beliefs and morals which they held onto closely, for fear of reprisal (be it from the Church, State or God)

Man is becoming more secular and that brings us into more controversial areas such as sex, the human body and other topics capable of causing a maelstrom.

The different periods demonstrate the evolutionnary thinking of man.

Tha classical age was the foundation of ethics and morals within the Greeks. The founding of Democracy and the spread of free thinking.

The ancient periods such as the spread of the Roman Empire shows the expansion of different ideas from one place to another and how they evolved the people or how the people evolved the ideas. Also, it shows how power quashed and oppressed free thinking and undogmatic ideology.

When the Roman Empire fell, it was considered the Dark Ages because the room for enlightenment was limited, small and dangerous (Heresy, the Crusades and the bubonic plague)

Finally as the circle of influence grew, so did the ideals and questionning of authority came to pass. More people started to doubt the Church which led to the REFORMATION

More people started to open their eyes to the RENAISSANCE and more people started to REVOLT.

These capitalized words have all but one goal. To Reveal and only now people are able to receive this because now it is a collective effort and based on the best interest of society while before it was more individual and opportunistic bassis.



cheers

Answer 2

Your equating 'scientific stuff' with intelligence, as you appear to do, shows a fundamental fallacy. Just because we can launch probes to Mars doesn't mean we are smarter than the Ancient Greeks or Romans. I wonder if we could build the Parthenon or Stonehenge or the Pyramids now, virtually with nothing more than bare hands and block and tackle? And they did know how to figure out some of the scientific stuff, anyway. Have a look at this site concerning the Parthenon and how it was built with 'optical refinements' http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/projects/perspective/parthenon.htm
and this on Greek Mathematics generally:- http://www.angelfire.com/me/Huffamoose/

Answer 3

Your second question/observation could just as easily apply to contemporary times. It's what historian Barbara Tuchman referred to as "the March of Folly" - humanity's inability to rectify the imbalance between our technological and intellectual advances and our penchant for making incredibly poor, shortsighted decisions which ultimately work against us and our future.

We've figured out how to digitize the world, produce enough food to feed everyone, cured diseases and created more progressive societies than those of the past.

Is it so far fetched to imagine that future generations will judge us for our incredible stupidity and selfishness?

If we are going to celebrate our advances, we also need to acknowledge our mistakes, our failures and our hypocrisy. If we REALLY care about spreading democracy we need to hold ourselves and our allies to the same moral and legal standards to which we hold others.

A thorough understanding of the history of the Roman Empire recognizes its advances in the areas of democratic rule, science and medicine. But like most other empires, it is also known for its insatiable desire for conquest and the exploitation of foreign people.

Answer 4

Oh but they did!! You are only thinking of 2000 years of recorded history, while people lived long, long before that and did some really remarkable things.

For physical evidence, try the Nazca lines in Peru.