So... I’ve been trying to find supporting arguments for my intuition that even though death rate is far lower than Spanish Flu (2%) and European Black Death (25-30%), the civilizational damage is comparable. I’ve found a pretty good one...
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Replying to @vgr
It's an interesting theory but there's no good evidence that suggests people considered life cheap and disposable, neither in family nor battle. https://www.medievalists.net/2015/06/medieval-warfare-and-the-value-of-a-human-life/ … https/radicaldeathstudies.com/2019/08/20/child-death-and-parental-mourning-in-the-middle-ages/amp/
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Replying to @M__Verbruggen
Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
I got a different impression from a discussion of child-rearing practices in 14th century, where kids were largely neglected beyond basic care for the first 6-7 years, animals were tortured for fun, and peasants were casually slaughtered during uprisings https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1261183650697064449?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1261183650697064449 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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Replying to @vgr
There is a lot of terrible history out there, especially depicting the middle ages as The Dark Ages, which the historical community has come back from. And there is no conclusive evidence suggesting they didn't value life.https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewgabriele/2019/01/06/children-in-the-middle-ages/ …
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I don’t know. Tuchman’s book is pretty modern and post the revision from naive dark age theories. The general idea of dynamics of family/societal life with lots of babies and high infant mortality rate squares with my experience. More children = much less investment per child.
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