Putting the Middle Ages in Perspective

A lot of us modern folks tend to think of the Middle Ages as a very compressed period of time, when in reality things couldn't be more different. My aim with this departure from our usual format is to help bring the Medieval Era and especially the notion of different armor styles into perspective within the historical context and timeline.

Here's my take on the 'rapid tech advancement' piece.

I do admit that technology growth tends to accelerate at more of an exponential pace than a linear pace like time does, however I think perspective is very important here, and first-person experience even more so. What I mean is there was no Industrial or Digital revolution to the 1540 Tudor knight. So from his perspective, technology had progressed only at the pace he had seen, and thus the changes from 1066 to 1540 are pretty impressive to him. From our perspective, where you can watch a video about the knight in 1540 on your touch-screen phone wherever you happen to be, the difference between a mail hauberk and compression lames on the plate harness protecting the inside of the 1540 knight's elbows and knees doesn't seem as proportional a leap in technology, but from the perspective of the knight in 1540, I would argue that it certainly was. So for us to lump him in with the Norman cavalry is to ignore the context of their time.

As you go further back in time, the tech advances are slower, but to the person in that time, they are still riding that ever-increasing wave crest of technological advancement, so when they look back it may seem more accelerated to them than it does to us. In 1,000 years they will probably consider our most advanced automatic rifles on par in technology with a ca. 1380 handgonne because I suspect technology will continue to increase at an exponential pace. To them they may think 'a firearm is just a firearm' as we tend to think a 'polearm is just a polearm.' When we don't use these tools every day, no matter how much we study them, we may never appreciate the advancement from a Dane Axe to a late 15th century Pollaxe as much as Sigismund of Tyrol did. To the person in their own time, the distant past always seems more compressed than the recent past. We should try to appreciate the human element in all of this, which inevitably drives our perception.

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