I first encountered this idea through Robert Anton Wilson, and it took me a little while to realize that it's so Western-Euro-centric it's insulting. After Rome, the center of wealth in the world shifted to Byzantium for about three hundred years, and then shifted further east to Baghdad for another five hundred. And that's not counting how much of the world's wealth was in south or east Asia or strung out along the Silk Road.
It's really hard for modern Westerners to keep in mind that from around 300 AD to 1500 AD, Western Europe was an economic and social backwater compared to the real seats of culture.
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zvi and
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Date: 2004-11-12 12:18 pm (UTC)It's really hard for modern Westerners to keep in mind that from around 300 AD to 1500 AD, Western Europe was an economic and social backwater compared to the real seats of culture.