Well, I'm through the first episode, which makes me one seventh civilized, I suppose. There have actually been a few other Eternal Orders that fell in the Mediterranean world: the end of the Minoan Mediterranean and the end of the Carthaginian/Magna Grecian/Roman Mediterranean at least. And the barbarians the Romans encountered a few miles to the north of the Mediterranean were not the first peoples who lived there, either, though without written records, we know less about them.
When civilization collapsed, it seems to have taken around 500 years for something new to rise up, usually something that a member of the old civilization would not find familiar---different languages, gods, population centers, etc. Poul Anderson wrote a novel (don't remember the name) set in a world that had gone through an ice age, which left Polynesia as Top Nation. They worshiped a trinity of Tangaroa, Lesu Karisto (Jesus Christ) and something else.
Since this documentary talks about the northern barbarians, I would like to mention a work called Heimskringla, a collection of sagas about the kings of Norway. Interesting record of a barbarian nation that ended up turning civilized. There are many examples of barbarians refusing to become civilized, of course, but there is this as well.
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Well, I'm through the first episode, which makes me one seventh civilized, I suppose. There have actually been a few other Eternal Orders that fell in the Mediterranean world: the end of the Minoan Mediterranean and the end of the Carthaginian/Magna Grecian/Roman Mediterranean at least. And the barbarians the Romans encountered a few miles to the north of the Mediterranean were not the first peoples who lived there, either, though without written records, we know less about them.
When civilization collapsed, it seems to have taken around 500 years for something new to rise up, usually something that a member of the old civilization would not find familiar---different languages, gods, population centers, etc. Poul Anderson wrote a novel (don't remember the name) set in a world that had gone through an ice age, which left Polynesia as Top Nation. They worshiped a trinity of Tangaroa, Lesu Karisto (Jesus Christ) and something else.
Since this documentary talks about the northern barbarians, I would like to mention a work called Heimskringla, a collection of sagas about the kings of Norway. Interesting record of a barbarian nation that ended up turning civilized. There are many examples of barbarians refusing to become civilized, of course, but there is this as well.
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