How were past times so violent?

[Mr Greene]

Agriculture stands out.  Armies to feed and taxes to pay on fiefdoms and all that.  Alot the the tools and methods we still used today (in one form or another) find their origin in that period.  The exception that proves the rule, right, lol?

-For the OP
In the grander scheme of things, whatever specific brutality we have in mind as arising from that period was not representative of human life before or after - which is pretty much how we circumscribe periods of human history.  "Past times" in the general probably weren't as violent as the crusades, or at least we have no reason to assume they were, and times since have been more violent as well.  We could add up all of the wars in all of recorded history, ignore that they weren't usually global, and we'll only be talking about the last few thousand years of 50k or more.  Mans ability to wage war has certainly increased over that span.

A huge portion of idea of the brutal past comes down to a certain pessimistic viewpoint that holds human nature in contempt, and interprets (or invents) history and pre-history to suit that belief.  We're goofballs that spend the majority of our time sleeping and shitting, literally.  Waging war (or any act of violence, really) is a fraction of our time spent by a fraction of our populace even at it's height.  I'd be more impressed with the amount of people waging war while others were pumping out fun shit than I would be at the artists who painted through wars.  We're going to paint regardless.  Beating the other guy to death is a shit job, and it rarely pays well, if at all.

  You have something specific in mind? Beyond the alterations to land ownership agriculture in the medieval period seems generally similar to that in the Roman period here.