The Mental Floss History Of The World Part 13

number of contemporary nations absorbed into the Roman Empire 122.

height, in feet, of Colossus Neronis, the bronze statue of himself that the emperor Nero erected in Rome in the first century CE 123.

number of days the celebration lasted for a Roman military victory in 107 CE 11,000.

number of exotic animals killed in the arena as part of the celebration 177.

number of annual official Roman holidays by the fourth century 1,000,000.

estimated population of Rome at the time of Christ 250,000.

seating capacity of Rome's Circus Maximus arena by the fifth century 50,000.

estimated population of Rome after final sack by Visigoths in 476 CE 547,000.

area, in square feet, of the base of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan 5,500.

number of pounds of gold paid by Roman citizens to the Visigoths in 410 CE to prevent destruction of the city 3,000.

number of pounds of pepper paid in same ransom 6,000.

number of men in a Roman legion 4,000.

length, in miles, of the Silk Road, linking China to the West

THE NOT-REALLY-THAT-DARK (UNLESS YOU LIVED IN EUROPE) (UNLESS YOU LIVED IN EUROPE) AGES AGES.

(5001000)

IN A NUTSh.e.l.l.

The decline and eventual collapse of the Roman Empire in the West during the fifth century CE plunged the world into centuries of doom and gloom, wherein humanity became a collection of dull-witted, superst.i.tion-ridden dolts who accomplished next to nothing and waited around for the Renaissance to begin.

Or not.

Actually, the "Dark Ages"-the term used to describe the first half of what is traditionally described as the "Middle Ages"-is something of a misnomer. So is the "Middle Ages" for that matter. The idea that there was a thousand-year period between the end of the Roman Empire and the beginnings of the Renaissance where nothing much happened was fostered mainly by intellectuals starting in the fifteenth century, especially in Italy. These bright lights wanted to believe-and wanted others to believe-that they had much more in common with the Cla.s.sical Age than they did with the centuries that had just preceded them. By creating, and then denigrating, the Dark, or Middle, Ages, the "humanists" also sought to separate themselves from the very real decline in the quality of life in most of the European continent after the Roman system fell apart.

It was a pretty Eurocentric view of things. In reality, there were a lot of places in the world where mankind was making strides. Centered on what is now Turkey, the Byzantine Empire was a direct link to the culture and learning of ancient Greece and Rome. In the deserts of what is now Saudi Arabia, an empire centered on the new religion of Islam was spreading with lightning speed, and carrying with it not only new beliefs but also new ways of looking at medicine, math, and the stars. In the North Atlantic, Scandinavian s.h.i.+ps were exploring the fringes of a New World, while in the Pacific, the Polynesians were pus.h.i.+ng across even more vast aquatic distances to settle in virtually every inhabitable island they could find.

In the jungles of Central America, the Maya were reaching the peak of a fairly impressive civilization. In the jungles of Southeast Asia, the Khmer were setting up an equally impressive cultural and trade center. Even in Europe, which admittedly was pretty much a mess, devoted monks were doing their best to keep the flame of learning burning.

As in every age of man, there were great individuals. At six-foot-four, the Frankish king Charlemagne literally towered over his contemporaries. Sometimes referred to as the father of modern Europe, he was a success at war and politics, and also a great patron of education.

And there were those capable of horrific acts by the standards of any age, such as the Tang Dynasty empress Wu, who killed her own infant daughter in order to gain power by framing a rival with the murder. (It worked.) There were astounding feats of human endeavor, such as the construction of the Grand Ca.n.a.l in China, which stretched more than 1,200 miles and connected the farmlands of the Yangtze Valley with the markets of Luoyang and Chang-an. There were astounding feats of human barbarity, such as the blinding of more than fourteen thousand prisoners by the Byzantine emperor Basil II. And there were equally astounding feats of individual endeavor, such as the founding of a major world religion by a comfortably fixed middle-aged Arab trader who became known as the Prophet Muhammad.

As Christianity had done in the late Cla.s.sical Age, the rise of a new religion set in motion a hurricane of political and military clashes that would stir things up far beyond the Not-So-Dark Ages. But the storm also precipitated a mixing of cultures and ideas that would reap benefits for the various affected groups.

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WHAT HAPPENED WHEN.

527.

Justinian begins a thirty-eight-year reign over Byzantine Empire.

538.

Buddhism reaches j.a.pan from Korea via Chinese missionaries.

570.

Muhammad is born.

637.

Islamic armies capture Jerusalem.

661.

The a.s.sa.s.sination of Muhammad's cousin Ali widens schism among Muslims that results in s.h.i.+te and Sunni sects within the religion.

664.

Christianity replaced pagan religions in Britain after Synod of Whitby. Almost simultaneously, British Isles are ravaged by plague.

695.

The first Arab coins are minted.

~700.

Polynesian voyagers reach New Zealand.

~750.

Mayan civilization nears its peak.

762.

Baghdad becomes the center of the Islamic Empire.

768.

Charlemagne begins a forty-six-year rule, briefly (more or less) uniting Europe.

793.

Vikings attack the village of Lindisfarne, their first raid on the British Isles.

~800.

Tribes in Mississippi Valley of North America begin using bows and arrows.

~825.

Irish monks reach Iceland.

~900.

The Khmer Empire establishes its capital at Angkor.

~900.

The Anasazi have established cliffside adobe settlements in what is now the southwestern United States.

907.

The Tang Dynasty collapses after nearly three centuries ruling China.

954.

All English kingdoms are united under the Saxons.

~1000.

Leif Ericsson, son of Eric the Red, reaches North America from Greenland.

1066.

William, the Duke of Normandy, defeats the Saxon king Harold at the Battle of Hastings and takes over England as William I.

SPINNING THE GLOBE.

The Middle East:

Islam Rising

At the time of Muhammad's birth in 570, the Arab people were a relatively obscure group of desert dwellers, best known by other cultures as traders. Like their Semitic cousins, the Jews, Arabs claimed the biblical patriarch Abraham as one of their key ancestors. But their religious beliefs tended toward the polytheistic, and they generally weren't big on thoughts about the afterlife.

Muhammad changed all that. Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by an uncle and became a trader and merchant. At the age of twenty-five, he married an older widow and was financially set for life. But when he turned forty, he said he experienced the first of a set of revelations from the angel Gabriel and began preaching a new religion called Islam, or "submission to G.o.d."

The religion initially didn't go over well in Muhammad's hometown of Mecca, and in 622 he and his relatively few followers were forced to flee to the more hospitable town of Medina. But Islam-and its promises of paradise for the faithful believer and h.e.l.l for the infidel-proved very attractive to both poor and rich, especially poor. Over the next decade, Muhammad put together an impressive army, and by the time of his death in 632, Islamic warriors had conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula.

As for the unbelievers, their works are like a mirage in a desert. The thirsty traveler thinks it is water, but when he comes near he finds that it is nothing. He finds Allah there, who pays him back in full. Swift is Allah's reckoning.-From the Koran

After Muhammad's death, his followers found themselves embroiled twice in civil wars within the culture that sprang up around their religion. In 661, the victorious Umayyad Dynasty began an eighty-nine-year run, taking charge of things. That dynasty was overturned in 750, by the Abbasid Dynasty, which moved the Arab capital from Damascus, in what is now Syria, to Baghdad, in present-day Iraq. The Abbasids were to stay in charge through the middle of the thirteenth century, when they were overthrown by another Muslim culture run by the Turks.

Despite the infighting, Muslim armies rapidly swept over a huge section of real estate like ants over a picnic, taking advantage of the internal squabbling going on in the various empires around them. By the middle of the eighth century, Arab armies dominated from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the borders of China in the east, and from North Africa in the south to Russia in the north.

The Arab conquerors were fairly tolerant, and for a very practical economic reason: Under Islamic rule, Jews and Christians were allowed to practice their own religions-as long as they paid a tax on it. The fewer converts to Islam, the more money there was to run the empire.

CAPITAL GAINS.

The army of the caliph Al-Mu'tasim, like that of many Arab rulers, was made up in large part by soldier-slaves who had been, uh, "drafted" from other countries, such as Turkey and Armenia. The soldiers sometimes didn't get along particularly well with the locals, and by 836, relations between Al-Mu'tasim's army and Baghdad's residents were so tense that the caliph decided it would be politically smart to relocate his capital.He chose Samarra, a site about seventy-five miles north of Baghdad, near the Tigris River. Al-Mu'tasim and the several caliphs who followed him built some pretty impressive palaces, which stretched for eighteen miles along the river, as well as barracks for the army that were kept on the outskirts of town. The city was the heart of the expanding Muslim empire.There were three-count 'em-three racetracks, two of them out-and-back courses six miles long, and the other an oval track. There was also a huge game preserve. The city was laid out along seven parallel avenues. But the coolest local attraction was the Great Friday Mosque, the largest mosque of its time. Its construction begun in 852, the mosque compound covered almost 500,000 square feet and featured a spiral minaret that was about 150 feet high and 100 feet in circ.u.mference.By 892, however, things had calmed down enough in Baghdad that the capital was relocated there. Samarra's importance, save as a pilgrimage center for s.h.i.+te Muslims, pretty much dried up after that.