Something that's fascinated me for as long as I can remember is history and archeology. Our small school didn't offer history as an exam option, so their approach to teaching it was a bit different to most schools and rather than mostly just trying to commit dates to memory we got to hear the stories from Norse and Egyptian mythologies. We covered other topics as well, but those were the ones that captivated me the most.
In my teens I developed an interest in the Tudors, namely Henry VIII and his children. It started with a book about Henry and his wives and while I never committed specific dates to memory, I just knew they lived roughly in the period of 16th century ending early 17th, I did find an urge to commit all his wives names to memory. The first 3 I can recall the easiest, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. They each had children who went on to reign. Then Anne of Cleves was the political marriage that never really went anywhere. Catherine Howard was the unfortunate cousin of Anne Boleyn and met the same fate as her, then Catherine Parr is the fourth one who sticks in my mind as she practically nursed Henry in his later years and got him to reinstate his daughters to the line of succession.
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Recently I've been listening to podcasts on other periods and places in history and what strikes me is that you can learn a lot about human psychology (another topic that fascinates me) from how events have unfolded throughout history, often repeating in different times and places. Empires have risen and fallen countless times and when they fall it's interesting to see how we fall back into communities to support one another. This co-operative nature is not only one of the good aspects of human nature, it's an aspect that has contributed to the survival of the species likely since caveman times.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
People develop systems and societies in order to work together on a large scale. Today these systems often get blamed for being detrimental to the common people, whether it's capitalism, communism, socialism, democracy or whatever else is in place somewhere. Yet the irony is that these systems are nearly always started in order to improve life for the majority as a response to a system that has become corrupt. Take, for example, feudalism. It's generally viewed as something better left in the past, but it started out as an opportunity to survive and thrive in Europe as the western Roman empire fell into shambles. It was, in effect, a return to working together in communities when the systems and infrastructure could no longer allow the city dwellers to continue to trade as they once had.
The Roman empire was an impressive and prosperous time, connecting countries and economies together in such a way as to become dependant on one another for certain goods. Both internal and external factors brought it to an end, but many of the external factors likely wouldn't have been too big a problem if not for the corruption within the governing systems.
As the cities became more dangerous places to be even some of the wealthy sold all they owned and took that money to monastic communities where they turned to helping the poor. Local land owners realised that rather than relying on a crumbling empire and it's debased currency they could produce everything they needed on their lands. They invited people to farm the land and the craft men and women to join them to continue to apply their skills while being housed, fed and protected. In return they swore fealty to the lord and gave a contribution/tax. It was a win for everyone involved.
This system worked well and feudalism lasted for centuries. The western Roman empire ended in the mid to late 5th century and feudalism ended around the early 16th century for the most part. Like any system created by people there will come a point where people in the position where they are able to do so will do what they can to benefit themselves to the detriment of the majority who aren't in that position. Over time the serfs working on the land were seen as the property of the land holder, whether it be the lord or the church.
Ironically the periodic plagues and wars of the medieval period keeping populations low are likely what kept the serfs in a good position to negotiate reasonable conditions. It was as the population increased, and with it inflation, that the land owners began to make things more and more intolerable for the serfs. They demanded the same amount in payment, but gave them less land to use so they could put more serfs onto their land, thus increasing the amount of people paying tax in order to keep themselves in the comfortable lifestyles they were accustomed to. They demanded more other work from the peasants, essentially extra jobs or overtime, without any extra compensation. This, among other things, led to increased protests/revolts and ultimately what became known as the peasants' war from 1524-25 in the region that is now Germany.
The circumstances that led to the peasants' war actually remind me a bit of this last 100 years for the developed world. We started out with the depression, lost many lives in the second world war then had lots of growth and rebuilding after the war. Employment was easy to come by because there were more jobs than workers. Women stepped into the workforce to make up the shortages which was a step forward for the emancipation of women, but there was a benefit from a tax revenue income perspective as well. As the population grew there was now a second tax income stream coming in. It also meant that mortgages could now be calculated on two income streams allowing the banks to provide larger mortgage loans which pushed up property prices leading to bigger tax margins on properties.
The baby boomer generation stepped into this employment and growth boom, but as more of them did so and as the rebuilding growth slowed things started to change. Now employers had plenty of workers to choose from, even more so when their children came of working age. Employers could start making more demands of their employees and paying them less because they were easily replaced if they didn't agree to that. As the population continued to grow, so too did inflation and younger generations are coming to resent the generation who seemed to benefit the most from that growth period and blame them for what they see as the decline in their own standard of living. The serfs back in their day would also have seen that decline in their living standards compared to their parents and grandparents, but it was probably easier to see where the immediate blame lay back then.
As I read articles which suggest we need to implement inheritance or death taxes I'm again reminded of the death taxes from these feudal times when widows and their children were often further impoverished after losing their main provider by the lord taking their most valuable item which might have helped them through this period. Some countries already have inheritance taxes, which probably weren't so problematic when the economy was a bit more robust, but when many of the younger generation can't afford to buy a house it feels harsh that they are then forced to sell their parent's home in order to cover taxes when that might have been their only opportunity to have their own home. Still, it's hard to deny we're still far better off today than the serfs would have been 500 years ago, at least as long as our just in time trading systems hold up.
Have you seen similarities from events in history that you think are repeating today?
When I was recently facilitating a creative writing workshop (there's a post on that coming!) We spoke in great depth about the luddites. (The original ones, not just dull people) - and it was fascinating. We've got a populace of people who are trending toward luddite-ville when it comes to technology.
I pause to wonder if we will have digital iconoclasts, or whether they're working their way through things now, unknown to us. The fragility of global IT infrastructure and how much it empowers our modern way of life is something most people are (probably thankfully) not aware of.
And back to technology: It's accelerating so rapidly now, and faster each day. Developments are being amplified, and I do not see us as a species heading toward good anytime soon.
It's been a while since I even heard the word Luddite. I've just quickly looked them up and ironically the movement started in Nottingham, where I'm from. I'd never even heard about the movement before and our school was usually pretty good at talking to us about local history as well. Classes visited Arkwright's Mills on excursions, although they're actually in Cromford, Derbyshire.
When we look at things on the scale of hundreds or thousands of years, I feel like a digital world will probably not be around forever, which is kind of comforting. It's probably here to stay for the rest of my life, though. I was wondering just today how long technology would take to break down and disappear, which in turn makes me wonder if we've been here before, some thousands of years ago.
@topcomment
That is the one thing that is strange about history, the past is compressed into a book or written record, and the last several hundred years (or even things that happened fifty years ago) are so disconnected from the present and the world that we find ourselves in today.
I often find my head spinning a little bit, struggling to accept that humanity has tens of thousands of years of history behind it, when we seem so vulnerable and young in the face of the more recent history (the last 200 years) compared to the entire span of human existence.
And perspective plays a big part as well. WWII is now part of taught history, but I never viewed it as history because people I grew up with (my grandparents and their friends) experienced it first hand. Yet when our teacher read us a story about the racial segregation in the US after the war it felt more like history because I knew no-one who'd experienced it. Then when you look back at historical records a period of a hundred years seems so small you forget that people at the start of a century would likely never have even been met by those at the end.
When I first came to Australia I felt that it didn't have much in the way of historical buildings compared to the UK, but then even in the UK many buildings pale in comparison to the ages of things like the pyramids. We're unearthing more and more things from different cultures across the world as well, that we used to assume were primitive.
Yet it all still seems completely disconnected from our world today, despite the fact that everything has brought us to this point.
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Wrong comment, that's mine
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Hello, @minismallholding,
Thank you for such an informative history lesson. I hardly have anything to add. I read somewhere that "there is nothing hidden under the sun." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's attributed to Solomon—the heir to the United Kingdom of Israel under King David—about fifteen hundred years before the fall of the Western Roman Empire. So, what you're saying seems to be an ancient proverbial truth, perhaps drawn from the collapse of lost civilizations buried in the sands of time.
Of course, the more recent the events, the easier it is to see the workings of politics and society. However, there's an aspect we often overlook but which is fundamental: natural phenomena and epidemic outbreaks that decimated the great cities of the past. I used to think that moral decay and the factors you mentioned brought down Imperial Rome. Now we know—though it's still largely speculation, since it's less well-documented—that geological evidence shows a volcanic eruption in Iceland in the 6th century, causing a sharp drop of up to 2.5 degrees Celsius in Earth's global temperature, with devastating effects. Yes, those blessed climate changes. And I recall Pompeii and Herculaneum at the end of the 1st century come to mind.
Today, we hear about anthropogenic climate change (what a mouthful!), whose causes I don't quite believe, and about the fuss over supposed overpopulation. I wonder—will they dare to implement any kind of Malthusian solution, as predictive programming suggests? Don't think I'm crazy or that I believe in conspiracy theories. I'm just observing and pondering.
Maybe you're familiar with investor Ray Dalio's thoughts on this. He argues that we're approaching the end of an eighty-year economic cycle and that a reset is imminent. Not encouraging, because, according to his research, each reset has been marked by conflict and war. The problem is, humanity now has the power to destroy itself. God doesn't want this, and madness is unleashed.
Cycles repeat themselves... just as you suggest.
Finally, I invite you to speculate about Göbekli Tepe, a monumental archaeological site over 10,000 years old, believed to have been intentionally buried. Perhaps these were Solomon's references. Who knows how little we understand when he spoke of the cycles of human experience on every level? Even the myth of Atlantis is based on the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization and the dark age of Mediterranean legends after the eruption of Santorini.
Fascinating, isn't it? It wouldn't surprise me if history repeats itself today. Still, I have no doubt that we’ll get through it. 200,000 years of genetic heritage seem to prove that, even if traces of cultures have faded away.
Greetings.
While there were multiple factors that contributed to it's downfall it's speculated that they could still have been weathered had there not been corruption or incompetence at organisational levels, as evidenced by the fact that others found ways to continue on while incorporating some of the things learnt from the Romans. It could also have been that they'd grown too large for a centralised governance to understand how to respond to things happening on more local levels farther away, so it pretty much fell back to locals organising themselves. The Eastern Roman Empire faced similar problems, but still muddled on for nearly another 1000 years. At what scale, I'm not sure, I've not delved into it much.
With mention of Pompeii and Herculaneum I'm also reminded of the Minoan civilisation which seems to have mostly ended with a caldera on a similar scale to Krakatoa, if not bigger. Our earth can very easily humble us with hiccups and shudders like this when we think we're in control of everything.
I have yet to delve into Göbekli Tepe more, but my husband has listened to some bits on it and mentions it on occasion. He will readily admit to being a bit of a conspiracy nut, so loves to latch onto anything that might contradict the current narrative. 😉 I also find Sumer interesting as they seemed to have knowledge of the solar system that we only recently rediscovered. So that's another culture I'd like to look into further.
Regarding our supposed overpopulation, that's another interesting discussion topic. Our population today is certainly far above anything in recorded history and I do wonder if it could have been possible to sustain it without modern infrastructure. With lots of talk about population collapse because most countries have birth rates below replacement levels perhaps we are subconsciously self correcting. There are a lot of doomsayers who predict the extinction of the human race whether due to climate change, population collapse or self destruction, but I think history demonstrates that at least some always make it through.
@topcomment
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It's somber learning, which is why, I suppose, people tend to focus on the glitzier part of history, if you can call it that. I mean, if you remember Henry as the guy with six wives (which, to be fair, everyone seems to), you get to obviate other aspects of his reign, his actions as sovereign, his relationship with the Church that was much more intricate and interesting than simple getting a divorce, and so on.
We stick to these things because it keeps things exciting, and keeps us blind (by our own accord).
I think it's cyclical in some ways, and that there are patterns. And that those patterns can, in turn, help us keep a steadier boat than most once we understand them.
I would love to hear what podcasts you're digging into. Been looking for a good historical one for ages. (Fantastic write-up.)
Yes, his relationship with the church was quite interesting. I don't think he ever really wanted to leave Catholicism, but he also felt such a need for a male heir and the church wasn't allowing the divorce.
I'm enjoying Eva Schubert's podcasts because she likes to weave it as a story focusing on the actual people. She also investigates the evidence to check the validity of viewpoints from others and will put things in context with the times so will give reasons why certain accounts might not be entirely reliable.
This exactly. It's certainly helped me take a step back from a lot of the tensions we have today.
@topcomment
Thanks so much! I've drifted a bit from history in the past few years and miss it acutely - I will definitely check her out!!
I don't think so either. I think people tend to tell the story in terms of how Anne turned his head, only that's a skewed way to look at it and shows ignorance. I very much doubt he would've left Catholicism if it wasn't, for one, advantageous financially (in some ways, the broader consequences are another can of worms), and if there had been a way for him to secure the line, as you said. We can't forget who his father was and the complicated history that came before that famous schism, a history that must've been very glaring in Henry's mind (and with it the importance of securing his line on the throne).
The schism is on my list to listen to. I'm currently on a diversion with Boudica, though.
I haven't looked into Henry's father yet. Eva is currently releasing a series on Eleanor of Aquitaine with the latest being about Henry II and Thomas Becket, so I've jumped back to an even earlier Henry.
Ohhh both of those (Boudica and Eleanor) should be really fun!! Can't wait.
Her Boudica series is called Warrior Queen 😁
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This was an interesting read❤️. I could see so many connections that show how history tends to repeat itself, could be because of who we are as humans; our nature, choices, and patterns.
I think this is a sign for me to start reading history again; there’s honestly so much to learn from it.
Evolutionarily I don't think our psychology has changed much from what we needed to survive thousands of years ago. Modern times with our virtual world is probably the most out of our natural environment we've ever been.
Yep
Fantastic article. I always found the quote about history repeating rather flaccid. Of course it does, and we imagine the same of the future, because that's human psychology for you. Utter cynic here - can't see it'll ever be different. .
I'm cynical with you. The more I learn about history the more I see the same patterns when it comes to human psychology. Sometimes you get someone rising up from the bottom to change things and they bring about a lot of good change while continuing to stand by their morals because they know what it's like to be on the receiving end of corruption. Unfortunately they then hand things on to their descendants who've only ever known a comfortable life and have no idea what is like for those at the bottom and will never connect with them enough to care that what they do could harm them.
History is always mystery to me. When i try to dig into our history, I found it more messy and consuming. There are too many manipulation and not the actual truth were ever revealed.
They've recently been finding discrepancies between written records of history and archaeological evidence. A reminder that certain people get to dictate what gets recorded. I think historians are starting to realise that getting multiple viewpoints, taking certain accounts with a pinch of salt (because they wouldn't have been able to criticise their rulers) and cross referencing with physical evidence is necessary to get a more accurate account of events.
This is an irrefutable part of human behavior. Excellent article
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Hi , you might want to check your witness votes , i saw your name voting for a witness that is no longer active ;)
Thanks, I'll take a look when I get chance