Split: Emergence of the 'new right'

[Eddy]

Each culture should keep developing in isolation.

This is a very bizarre thing to say, since very few cultures have done this, certainly not any who have formed large civilizations. The ones who have developed in isolation are in hunter-gatherer phase in remote corners of the world. Is that what this man wants?

[Fade the Butcher]

This is a very bizarre thing to say, since very few cultures have done this, certainly not any who have formed large civilizations.

The civilizations of the ancient world formed independently of each other for the most part. It's not like the Egyptians were in regular contact with the Chinese. They didn't even have horses until after Hyskos invasion.

The ones who have developed in isolation are in hunter-gatherer phase in remote corners of the world. Is that what this man wants?

It means they have survived right down until the twenty-first century. The same cannot be said of many hunter-gatherer groups that were fortunate enough to be in contact with their more advanced neighbors who either exterminated or enslaved them.

[Dan Dare]

This is a very bizarre thing to say, since very few cultures have done this, certainly not any who have formed large civilizations. The ones who have developed in isolation are in hunter-gatherer phase in remote corners of the world. Is that what this man wants?

Northern and Western Europe was primarily inhabited by hunter-gatherers until comparatively recently. Are you claiming that no large civilizations have originated in that region?

[Eddy]

Northern and Western Europe was primarily inhabited by hunter-gatherers until comparatively recently. Are you claiming that no large civilizations have originated in that region?

You surely aren't claiming that European cultures developed in isolation, since that would be preposterous.

[Dan Dare]

You surely aren't claiming that European cultures developed in isolation, since that would be preposterous.

Obviously NW Europe was influenced very heavily by earlier cultures on the northern littoral of the Mediterranean, but I think it is fair to say that they developed predominantly in isolation from the rest of world.

I understand there will be an attempt to case for Semitic and other other influences but I would argue they were inconsequential for the development of Northern and Western Europe.

And just so we are clear about the terminology, the area I am discussing is that north of the 43rd parallel and west of 20 deg East.

[Eddy]

Obviously NW Europe was influenced very heavily by earlier cultures on the northern littoral of the Mediterranean, but I think it is fair to say that they developed predominantly in isolation from the rest of world.

I understand there will be an attempt to case for Semitic and other other influences but I would argue they were inconsequential for the development of Northern and Western Europe.

And just so we are clear about the terminology, the area I am discussing is that north of the 43rd parallel and west of 20 deg East.

All of European civilization developed with influence from Rome and Christianity, and these were not inconsequential influences, nor were they indigenous to Northern European soil. Rome likewise had interaction with peoples around the world. If a barrier was formed around Northern Europe throughout it's history to block out all outside influence, contact, and interaction, it would not have developed as it is today.

[Dan Dare]

All of European civilization developed with influence from Rome and Christianity, and these were not inconsequential influences, nor were they indigenous to Northern European soil.

I have already acknowledged the influence of cultures from the northern littoral of the Mediterranean so it's unclear why you are bringing this up again

Rome likewise had interaction with peoples around the world.

No it didn't. And even if that had been the case, there is little to suggest any formative influences would have resulted from that interaction, any more than the English were influenced by their later interactions with Indians.

If a barrier was formed around Northern Europe throughout it's history to block out all outside influence, contact, and interaction, it would not have developed as it is today.

Probably true. But that's not the same as claiming that great civilisations would not have arisen in that part of the world.

[Fade the Butcher]

All of European civilization developed with influence from Rome and Christianity, and these were not inconsequential influences, nor were they indigenous to Northern European soil.

The Mediterranean civilization of the classical world collapsed in the fifth and sixth centuries under the pressure of the barbarian invasions. It wasn't until the middle of the tenth century, about five hundred years later, that civilization arose in Northern Europe. This had nothing whatsoever to do with the recovery of classical texts. It wasn't until the late eleventh/early twelfth centuries that their translation began in earnest.

Rome likewise had interaction with peoples around the world.

Unfortunately.

If a barrier was formed around Northern Europe throughout it's history to block out all outside influence, contact, and interaction, it would not have developed as it is today.

You seem to be forgetting here that most people were born, lived, married, reproduced, and died within fifteen miles of their birthplace until well into modern times.

[Fade the Butcher]

Probably true. But that's not the same as claiming that great civilisations would not have arisen in that part of the world.

The civilization that arose in Northern Europe during the High Middle Ages was clearly an indigenous one. I'm still waiting for Sulla and Ebusitanus to tell me how one learns to build a civilization from literary texts.

[Fade the Butcher]

Sulla and Ebusitanus have exaggerated the influence of the Romans upon Medieval Europeans. I still plan on getting back to that debate. I have been doing a lot of reading and taking notes in the meantime.

"Houses whether urban or rural were generally built of wood, with their roofs supported on posts and/or low dry stone foundations. Houses of this kind, if built by craftsmen, can be as functional and comfortable as those of stone, but they certainly require a narrower range of building skills. It has been suggested that stone quarries and quarrying techniques did not continue in use in Italy beyond the sixth century, presumably if building stone was needed it could be taken from the building of earlier times. Medieval quarrymen had to start from scratch. They used simpler techniques than those of classical times, and seem not to have rediscovered the techniques of stone-cutting by horizontal trench. Bricks with Roman dimensions are found in use until the Lombard period, that is until around the end of the sixth century. Medieval bricks have different measurements (1 ft x 1/2 ft) and appear in the ninth century. They seem to mark a new start in brick building."

J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.387

"In the late Roman period, the area between the Rhine and the Elbe still remained beyond the imperial frontier, its material culture betraying none of the characteristic marks of Roman civilization. This ancient line in the European sand is still discernible in the modern divide between Romance languages descended from Latin, and Germanic languages. On the face of it, this would explain why the western Roman Empire was to give way, in the fifth century, to a series of successor kingdoms with, at their core, groups of armed Germanic-speakers. Germania east of the Rhine was not swallowed up by Rome's legions in the conquest period because its inhabitants fought tooth and nail against them, and eventually had their full revenge more than four centuries later in the destruction of the Empire."

Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p.48

[Fade the Butcher]

The influence of the Romans and Christianity upon science is nicely summed up in the passages below. The Romans generally found scientific or theoretical knowledge distasteful; a sort of impractical idleness unworthy of a gentlemen to pursue. The extent of their interest in science was limited to compiling popular handbooks or encyclopedias (the "Idiot's Guides" of Antiquity) of some of the more notable Greek accomplishments in science. The fundamental reason the Greek scientific tradition was lost to the West for hundreds of years is because the Romans had never bothered to translate much of it into Latin. In a sense, the Romans were a lot like the Chinese mandarins. Roman education was also a literary education in grammar, literature, and rhetoric, not instruction in the sciences or mechanical arts.

This persistence of this conservative, unreflective, Latin attitude towards higher education into the Dark Ages was bad enough, but the influence of Christianity made it all the more worse. The church fathers associated Greek philosophy and science with paganism. Their attitudes towards secular knowledge ranged from outright hostility at worst to the notion that science and philosophy were only tolerable insofar as they were useful to Christianity at best. Thus, what little scientific knowledge the Romans had bothered translated into Latin was further reduced by centuries of Christians preserving only what they found useful for their own purposes.

"The transmission and fate of the classical tradition is a subject to which we could easily devote a book-length analysis. But the short version is this: As Rome extended its power over the Mediterranean basin in the centuries after 200 B.C., broad cultural contact between Greeks and Romans (encouraged by widespread bilingualism among the Roman upper classes) introduced a thin, popularized version of the classical tradition into Roman education and Roman culture. A few Greek works were translated into Latin; but as bilingualism and th conditions that had favored scholarship diminished in the declining years of the Roman Empire (after about A.D. 180), Roman audiences (initally pagan but gradually becoming Christian) were increasingly limited to pieces of the classical tradition that had been explained, epitomized, or otherwise appropriated by Latin authors. The Western church fathers of the patristic period and Christian authors of the early Middle Ages were forced to rely on this derivative, Latinized (but still philosophically vigorous) version of the classical tradition."

David C. Lindberg, "The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Tradition: Saint Augustine, Roger Bacon, and the Handmaiden Metaphor," in David C. Lindberg and Robert L. Numbers (eds.), When Science and Christianity Meet (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), p.10

"The church father who most influentially defined the proper attitude of medieval Christians toward pagan learning was Augustine. . . .

In Augustine's view, then, natural knowledge was not to be loved, but to be used. "We should use this world and not enjoy it," he wrote in On Christian Doctrine, "so that . . . by means of corporeal and temporal things we may comprehend the eternal and spiritual." The material and temporal must be compelled to serve the spiritual and eternal. Natural philosophy, pagan in origin, is legitimized -- indeed, sanctified -- by the service it performs for the faith -- especially as a source, when allegorically interpeted, of moral and theological truths and for the assistance it leads to the interpretation of Scripture. The natural sciences must be pressed into service as the handmaidens of theology and religion . . .

What are we to make of Augustine's attitude toward the classical natural sciences? Three points are worth making: First, it is important to appreciate his deep ambivilence: of only indirect relevance to salvation and the Christian's terrestrial pilgrimage, the natural sciences could be of no more than secondary or tertiary importance in the estimation of a theologian such as Augustine. Nevertheless, Augustine judged them indispensible for scriptural interpretation and defense of the faith. Second, despite this ambivalence, it was Augustine who most influentially articulated the handmaiden formula as a rationale for pursuing the natural sciences -- a rationale that would govern attitudes toward the natural sciences well beyond the end of the Middle Ages. Although of no intrinsic value, in his view, the natural sciences of the classical tradition acquired value extrinsically insofar as they proved useful handmaidens to theology and the church. Third, Augustine put hte natural sciences to work in his role as pastor, theologian, and biblical interpreter, demonstrating by example what the handmaiden formula prescribed in words."

Ibid., pp.12-19

[Sulla the Dictator]

The civilization that arose in Northern Europe during the High Middle Ages was clearly an indigenous one. I'm still waiting for Sulla and Ebusitanus to tell me how one learns to build a civilization from literary texts.

We can see that from these Latin inscribed, cross decorated, Carolingian coins.

http://home.eckerd.edu/~oberhot/flp6xrbg.jpg

[Fade the Butcher]

We can see that from these Latin inscribed, cross decorated, Carolingian coins.

The Carolingian economy was a rural, land based, feudal economy based upon private lordship centered on the river valleys of Northern Gaul and Western Germania. The Carolingian Empire was composed of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic speakers ruled by a Germanic warrior-king in accordance with Frankish customs and law. This was not a commercial, urban, slave based economy and civilization centered on the Mediterranean actively engaged in international trade under the administration of a centralized superstate and a professional bureaucracy.

[Sulla the Dictator]

The Carolingian economy was a rural, land based, feudal economy based upon private lordship centered on the river valleys of Northern Gaul and Western Germania.



This was not a commercial, urban, slave based economy and civilization centered on the Mediterranean


Fade's primary argument against Roman influence seems to be that the Carolingians wern't geographically located ontop of the Romans.


actively engaged in international trade under the administration of a centralized superstate and a professional bureaucracy.

Yes. The Carolingians were not as powerful or sophisticated as the Romans. Thats not in dispute. What you dispute is Roman influence on the world which followed it. These coins show a different story. If your argument were valid, the equivalent of this would be the US using money from Kazakhstan.

[Fade the Butcher]

Fade's primary argument against Roman influence seems to be that the Carolingians wern't geographically located ontop of the Romans.

I haven't denied that Northern Europeans were "influenced" by the Romans. I'm more than willing to grant that point. The Arabs were also "influenced" by the Byzantines and Persians, but Persia and Byzantium did not civilize Arabia. I have denied that Northern Europeans were civilized by the Romans. That was obviously not the case. There were no cities in the Carolingian Empire. Furthermore, the "foundation" of any civilization whatsoever is agriculture and trade, not fragments of literary texts, and the civilization that did ultimately emerge there was centered on the river valleys of Northern Europe and the North Sea, not the Mediterranean. Mediterranean Europe was a backwater for much of this period because of Islamic piracy.

Yes. The Carolingians were not as powerful or sophisticated as the Romans. Thats not in dispute.

The Carolingian Empire was a Germanic kingdom, not a revival of the Roman Republic or Roman Empire. There were other Germanic kingdoms across the Channel in Britain.

What you dispute is Roman influence on the world which followed it.

Of course. The world that followed the Roman Empire was not continuous with the Roman Empire, that is, unless you consider the inhabitants of Italy living in the ruins of ampitheaters in wooden homes with dirt floors evidence of Roman continuity.

These coins show a different story. If your argument were valid, the equivalent of this would be the US using money from Kazakhstan.

No, they don't. There was little in the way of commerce during the Carolingian Empire. Production was localized and remained that way for centuries.