Part 14 (2/2)

Although it spent a good deal of time fighting off the attentions of Rome's old rivals, the Persians, the Byzantine Empire generally chugged along during this period. In the sixth century, Justinian's armies expanded the empire nearly to the limits of the old Roman Empire. In the tenth century, Basil II took back a lot of land that had been lost to the Arabs, and claimed new territory in Eastern Europe. As the millennium ended, the Byzantines were still hanging in there, although somewhat withered by age and attrition. They would continue to hang for a few hundred years more.

GOT SILK?.

For centuries, the Chinese jealously guarded the secret that silk was produced from the coc.o.o.ns of the mulberry silk moth. Their secret eventually reached India in the fourth century CE, but the West still had to pay dearly for it.Sometime around the middle of the sixth century, however, according to the Byzantine historian Procopius, two Indian monks came up with a way to smuggle the insects' eggs out China to Constantinople, by covering them in dung to keep them alive and secreting them in their hollowed-out walking sticks.However the eggs actually got there, by the middle of the next century, sericulture (the process of silk production) had become a thriving industry in the West.

BASHED AND BLINDED BULGARS.

Basil II was only five when his dad, the Byzantine emperor Romanos II died, so he had to wait quite awhile to succeed his pop. While he was waiting, he honed his military skills.It proved to be time well spent. Once he took over the empire, he beat back uprisings by powerful landowners in Asia Minor, in part by marrying off his sister to a Russian prince. In return, Prince Vladimir I of Kiev allied his armies with Basil's and converted to the Orthodox Christian Church. Then he whupped the Arabs and restored much of Syria to Byzantine rule.Basil followed this up by beating the Bulgarians. After crus.h.i.+ng the Bulgarian army at the Battle of Kleidion, he had 99 percent of the fifteen thousand captured enemy soldiers blinded. The remaining 1 percent had only one of their eyes put out, so they could lead the rest back to the Bulgarian leader, who subsequently died of a stroke.By the time of Basil's death in 1025, the Byzantine Empire was at its greatest height in several centuries. When he died at the age of sixty-seven, he was buried near the cavalry field, reportedly so that he could forever hear his troops training for battle.

The Roman Empire

(aka the Western Half of the Larger Empire Previously Also and Somewhat Confusingly Known as Rome)

The western half of the old Roman Empire (which covered most of what we now call Europe), however, was another story. The collapse of the empire left Europe with no central government and no military protection. The population of urban areas rapidly dwindled, since cities were prime targets for marauding hordes. (This turned out to have something of a silver lining, since more people on the farms meant more production, and famine generally lessened.)

O Christ...if you accord me the victory...I will believe in you and be baptized in your name. I have called on my G.o.ds, but I have found from experience that they are far from my aid...it is you whom I believe able to defeat my enemies.-A contemporary account of the prayer offered by the Frankish ruler Clovis before a battle in 496 with a Germanic tribe. Clovis won and not only converted to Christianity, but forced his entire army to convert as well.

The transportation system fell apart, and since Europe's main exports were heavy things such as timber and metals that were hard to transport, trade with the rest of the world withered. People rarely traveled far from home, which meant the exchange of ideas ceased.

Even here, however, where the ”Dark Ages” appellation could arguably be applied, there was progress. Stone and wooden tools were replaced with metal implements. The water-powered mill became commonplace. Farmers learned to rotate their crops in order to rejuvenate soil. And the harness was redesigned so that it fell across a horse's shoulders rather than its throat, thus increasing its proficiency in pulling a plow.

Charlemagne managed to put together a respectable empire in the second half of the eighth century, and even got crowned Holy Roman emperor in 800 by the pope after helping his holiness out of a jam in northern Italy with a Germanic group called the Lombards. But things soon fell apart again after Charlemagne's death, and Europe reverted to a collection of futilely feuding feudal states.

If there was a unifying element for Europeans during this period, it was their fear and hatred of their northernmost brethren, the Vikings (more to come on these guys).

WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY.

Around 600 CE, craftsmen along the Rhine River and in Normandy came up with a way to roll gla.s.s into flat panels that could be used in windows-something the Romans were never able to perfect.

LACKl.u.s.tER LEADERS, SUPERIOR SOBRIQUETS.

They didn't get to vote for their leaders, but that didn't stop folks in the Not-So-Dark Ages from giving their rulers some pretty descriptive nicknames. Such as: Basil the Macedonian, Basil the Bulgar Slayer, Charles the Bald, Charles the Fat, Charles the Simple, Edred Weak-in-the-feet, Edward the Martyr, Louis the Pious, Louis the German, Louis the Sluggard, and Louis the Stammerer.The roots of most nicknames were pretty self-explanatory. Pepin the Short, for example, was, at a reported three-foot-six, decidedly height-challenged. (Conversely, one of Pepin's sons, Charles the Great, aka Charlemagne, was a really big guy, described as being seven times as tall as the length of his foot, or about six-foot-four.)But the nicknames weren't always straightforward. Take Ethelred the Unready. Historians say the name wasn't due to his not being prepared. Instead, the language of the time meant that he was ”without counsel,” or lacked good advice. That made it sort of a pun, since Ethelred Ethelred meant ”well-advised.” meant ”well-advised.”

The Americas:

Huari and Chimu and Toltecs...Oh My!

In what is now Peru, the Huari culture conquered a five-hundred-mile-long strip on the coastal side of the Andes and supplanted the Moche. Another Peruvian group settled around a town called Tiahuanaco, in the Bolivian highlands, which eventually grew to a population of thirty-five thousand, or much bigger than London or Paris at the time. In northern Peru, a group called the Chimu was making its presence felt. All three were predecessors to an even greater culture to come: the Inca.

In Central America, the Mayan civilization on the Yucatan Peninsula had peaked and was on its way down. A new group, the Toltec, had traded its meandering ways for militaristic ones, and was taking over much of central Mexico.

And in the Southwest of North America, several tribes were developing irrigation systems and creating high-quality ceramics, while tribes in the Mississippi Valley were mastering the bow and arrow and settling in true towns.

But all of this was just a warm-up for the advent of civilizations in the Americas that in terms of architecture, sophistication, science, and really sick bloodthirsty gore would rival any of those in Europe and Asia.

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WHO'S UP, WHO'S DOWN

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