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European Middle Ages 500-1500 are about 3x more packed with future-shaping potential per year/per square mile than any other time or place. Call it psychohistorical energy density. 1 Seldon = 1 hist/sq mile. No wonder it gave birth to global modernity. It was the MVP.
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Europeans fetishize Greece, Rome, and the Viking B-plot of the Middle Ages. But it was the core Christian part that had this special historical intensity. Before or after, Europe doesn’t particularly stand out on a global heat map of Seldon radiation.
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It is very illegible, compared to its neighbors like contemporary Islam. Hence the informal Dark Age term. But perhaps Febrile Age is a better term.
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The Black Death definitely is the climactic point. Not until the wiping out of native Americans would a comparable clean slate exist anywhere in world history. You can track all the key MVP features locking into place in 14th century Europe.
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Next pandemic live read, Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, a history of the 14th century through the life of a single minor nobleman whose life was coextensive with the main events, esp the Black Death. amzn.to/2ww5ixs
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