Is this Medieval?

 

is this ancient history (alexander etc) or medieval...?

Medieval history is characterised as the period between the loss of Roman art, architecture, culture and technology (around 500 AD) until it is regained in the 1500's Renaissance). It's divided into three major sections

 

>early middle ages (this is characterised by the last of the great invasions by the Goths and others and the begining of an individual, unified state for most modern european countries, not to mention the development of Islam as a world religion. The basis for traditional legendary European culture is created by the invasions of the Franks, Angles, Normans and Saxons, and the Islamic attack into Frace and Spain (the Indrikids and the Saracens at Tours, for example) first begin.)

 

>middle middle ages (this is characterised by a vast fall in the population, due to the black death and other such issues and the development of what me would consider to be traditional middle ages warfare and states. This period also shows the destruction of many of Rome's lingering provinces - the Gothic Roman emperors such as Odacer had been deposed and the last remnants of Roman culture more or less gone, the Byzantines were defeated in 1071 at Mazikurt by the Seljuqs under Alpaslan and more or less crumbled from then and the final schism between the eastern and western churches occured in 1054 )

 

>the high middle ages (this is the traditional middle ages, where chivalry and many of the other stereotypes we assosiate with the period as a whole were developed. It is in this period that many of the great battles of the era occured - Poiters, Agincore, Crecy, etc.)

 

...It's still in dispute of course, when the divide between the middle ages and ancient history actually is, but more people use 476 AD as a perfectly reasonable starting point.

 

Oh, okay - sorry. As you guys probably know (I reckon Elenos anyway...) it's mainly ancient history that's my forte...

 

I find the most facinating period of the middle ages the early antiquity periods in Northern europe - after ancient history, my interest moves north to western Europe in Saxon and Carloingian times. I also find the Abbasids (not enough to make an article- my one on the Abbasids failed dismally!) and, Ummayads Indrikids interesting, though! However, I've completely gone off the Byzantines- my Grandfather and I have both read Gibbon - and we both stopped at Justinian - we just weren't interested.