More Shit For Creatards To Swallow

[Hatshepsut]

Oh, the Dark Ages was pretty dark in a socio-political setting, too.  The Moors overran Iberia.  The various barbarian tribes which overran the Western Roman Empire were settling their individual quarrels, there were 3 centuries of Viking raids, there was a climate collapse in the mid 6th century, but always the nobles and the fucking church were there scarfing up whatever they could from the commons. One of the underlying causes of the Crusades was to get bickering nobles out of Europe and off killing muslims instead of xtians.

These facts all agreed. Yet what if you were a farmer in Iberia when the Muslims blew in? Your farm might have been destroyed if it lay in the path of an army. If pagan, you might have been forced to convert to Islam at swordpoint. Between then and the Reconquista you merely paid tribute to a different master. At least the Muslims didn't hold Inquisitional courts to examine your inner conscience.

Not much different than the way it had always been from the time the first states arose. And not much different from the following Renaissance era which saw the stranglehold of the Hanseatic League, the frightening rise of the Hapsburgs, and the Spanish Armada, or the Enlightenment that began amid the Thirty Years' War and reached its peak with Robespierre kneeling at his own guillotine. Europe never got over its constant wars until after World War II, and the current prevailing peace may well be a temporary respite. Our next world war, likely to be fought with nuclear weapons over secular causes, will dwarf anything Charlemagne accomplished in the death department.

Meanwhile, instead of priests and nobles scarfing everything up we have the CEOs and bankers atop our global financial empires doing the same thing. The only blessing we really have is the hike in technology that has allowed everyone at each level to live better during the last 150 years or so.