Millenniums

February 2000 Table of Contents

MILLENNIUMS: THEY COME AND GO!
by Betsy Bracey

I read with fascination an article in a recent International Herald Tribune titled 'New Year's Eve 999: Oh What a Difference a Millennium Makes' which relates in great detail life at the turn of that century. After the fall of the Roman Empire five centuries earlier, the vast majority of the 70 million Europeans, clustered on the coastland between today's Netherlands and Italy, lived in deplorable physical conditions. Not only was travel an extraordinarily difficult task due to the almost impassable roads and the great likelihood of being robbed or murdered, there was nowhere better to go than where you were.

An average man could expect to live about 30 years and it was an unbelievably difficult, dirty and unhealthy existence even for those in the upper brackets of society. The vast majority of the populace were peasants who in many cases were little better than slaves to their lord and had to not only farm his land, provide everything he might demand, but also serve as his defence force. The merchant class was small and just beginning to form and the largest cities of the day consisted of about 20,000 souls. Living conditions were even grimmer there than for those in rural settings.

Running water and refrigeration were a thing of the future so their diet was very limited to seasonal supplies with the exception of meat, which was frequently consumed on the verge of spoiling. This accounts for the demand for spices to cover the otherwise nauseating taste of decay.

This article tells us that peasants were relegated to wearing grey or black so that the most recognisable difference of social class was colour. Personal cleanliness was not of importance in any walk of life. Monks, for example, were limited to bathing five times a year. The historian Jean Gimpel wrote that "Hygiene thus disappeared from western society not to reappear for half a millennium."

The only other choice for one's life was that of a religious. Monasteries provided the only measurement of time with church bells and, in general, monks were the only people who could read and write. The most influential institution in this area at that time was the Christian church. It gave life meaning and from birth to death provided the structure by which men lived. It held Europe's main repository of wealth and was completely intertwined with affairs of state. More importantly, it was the only stable receptacle for knowledge and learning.

Another dynamic force which affected this society was from the incessant invasions of fierce warriors from Denmark, Norway and Sweden who terrorised southern Europe for centuries. These raiding tribes, generically referred to a Vikings, eventually began to settle the northernmost areas of southern Europe and many Normans who invaded England in 1066 were of Viking stock. Others became accomplished seafarers and their ships carried them to Greenland and Iceland and even to the shores of North America in about 1000 AD, establishing a short-lived settlement.

In 999 the spread of Islam was rapid and carried within a vast amount of learning from the Hellenic world, particularly in the field of science and mathematics. The article states that "Hindu scholars introduced to the world the concept of zero as well as the decimal system in which the value of each number was determined by its position. Both familiar now, but they would transform science in Europe which remained stuck with unwieldy Roman numbers until the Arabic-Hindu 'positional' system took over in the 13th century."

The most advanced centres of civilisation were certainly not in present day Europe. Historians have frequently judged Kaifeng Cina, to have been the greatest city in the world at the time. However, the Islamic Byzantine Empire was the most widely dispersed civilisation on earth. The Byzantines helped to preserve ancient Greek language, literature and philosophy and were far more influenced by the Hellenic cultures that by the Roman. Current day Istanbul, then Constantinople, was one of the world's most important cities at the turn of that century and it was through trade routes entering and leaving Constantinople that the wealth and knowledge of the East flowed into Europe.

Interesting to note is that there were predictions that the end of the world would come at the turn of the century. Happily for us, they survived. And it seems that we, too, survived modern doomsday predictions of the collapse of civilisation as we know it due to the Y2K computer glitch. From what I read, and from what I experienced, it was nothing but a rare blip of inconvenience.

Perhaps in no small measure we owe a debt of gratitude to those early collectors of mathematical and scientific knowledge from the Islamic, Hindu and Christian followers who, collectively, gathered and stored this precious knowledge so men and women in the 20th century could not only create a computer but fix it as well. Whatever would we do without e-mail in Treasure Cay!

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