Nations, Crusades, and Mongols

1
Nations, Crusades, and Mongols
Creativity Rekindled
2

• The difference between human and animal
  evolution is that human beings evolve externally
  to their bodies as well as internally through the
  process of natural selectionWe are extending
  ourselves outward from our bodies onto our
  environment, at the same time changing the
  environment within which we are operating in
  order to suit our own purposes. If it is too
  hot, we create refrigeration. If it is too cold,
  we learn to control fire, to build the hearth and
  chimney. Each extension increases our ability to
  adapt to change and to react to alterations in
  the environment that we may encounterHumankind
  does evolve. We do adapt to changing
  environments and changing conditions. But it is
  accomplished through the creation of artifacts,
  by a manipulation of the environment and an
  understanding of natural law that enable us to
  improve and re-create the environment in the form
  we find most advantageous.
• Paul A. Alcorn, Social Issues in Technology, 3rd
  Ed.

3
1000 AD
Climate changes
Note Colors are data by different researchers
4
1000 AD

• Agriculture
• Curved metal plow
• Horse instead of ox
• Horse collar
• Stirrup
• Three field system

5
1000 AD

• More food meant increased population
• Rise of towns
• Specialized laborartisans
• Guilds
• Control of trade (Hanseatic League)
• Technology and science (agriculture and industry)
• Water wheels
• Windmills

6
1000 AD

• Quantifications of life
• Dark ages had no precise measurement
• Triangulation (needed for land ownership)
• Standardized money (needed for trade)
• Statistics (needed for business)
• Trial of the pyx (box with minted coins)
• Number system (needed for business)
• Fibonacci, Arabic/Indian number system
• Beginning of modern accounting systems
• Interest calculations
• Conversions of weights and measures

7
1000 AD

• Creativity rebuilds society
• External elements (like weather and social
  stability) bring more food
• More food brings population increase
• Population increase brings diversity
• Diversity brings creativity
• Creativity brings progress
• Progress requires more creativity

8
France

• After Charlemagne
• Kings lost power to local lords
• Many invasions
• Lords desired to have a coordinator (king)
• Defense against invasions
• Capetian dynasty
• Hugh Capet (about 1000 AD)
• Beginning of the French nation
• Ile de France

9
France in 1300

• Stability in succussession gave strength and
  allowed for dominance
• France was divided but gradually consolidating

10
Germany

• Otto the Great
• United Lords in Germany and Italy
• Defeated many principalities to create an empire
• Crowned as 2nd Holy Roman Emperor
• Conflict with Pope over Papal States

11
Germany

• Church vs. State clash
• Henry (Heinrich) IV
• Succeeded Otto the Great
• Ruled under a regent (weak)
• Gained power with adulthood
• Pope Gregory VII
• First pope selected by the college of cardinals
  (new rules because of boy king)
• Insisted on freedom of the church
• Used the Donation of Constantine to support
  "Papal Church"
• Lay investiture (king chooses bishops)
• German bishops supported Henry
• Nobles supported the pope

12
Germany

• Church vs. State clash (cont.)
• Henry continued appointing bishops
• Gregory excommunicated Henry
• Henry lost "feudal" support of nobles and gave in
  to the Pope
• Henry reinstated
• Henry attacked Rome and deposed Gregory
• Substitute pope not supported by the nobles
• Gregory named new Emperor
• Henry was attacked by nobles and forced to
  abdicate
• New king forced to accept election and limited
  powers

13
Germany

• After Henry IV
• Lost central power
• No central territory to get money
• No direct succession (election by set of German
  princes)
• Frederick I (Barbarossa)
• Tried to unify the empire
• Efforts diluted by involvement in Italian wars
• Led the 3rd crusade
• German/Pope conflicts continue for many years

14
England

• Alfred the Great (Anglo-Saxon)
• Wars against the Vikings
• If defeated, English language would not exist
• Danelaw
• Overthrown
• Unified kingdom
• Division of the kingdom

15
Use of Norse Words in English Language
(Enriching the language)

• English Word
• Shirt
• Rear
• Want
• Skill
• Skin
• Church
• Foxes

Norse Word Skirt Raise Wish Craft Hide
Kirk Vixen
16
England

• Canute II
• Edward the Confessor
• No heir
• Harold Godwinson
• William I (the Conqueror)
• Leader of Normandy
• Conquest of England
• 1st invasioncontrary winds
• Invasion by Norway
• Battle of Hastings
• Bayeux tapestry

17
England

• Built castles for security
• Norman royalty/clergy
• Domesday book

18
England

• Williams death
• 3 sons (William II, Richard, Henry)
• Henry I
• Gained both kingdoms
• Named Matilda as the heir
• Gave kingdom to her son, Henry II

19
EnglandHenry II

• Married Eleanor of Aquitaine
• Together they controlled many provinces in France
• Created English common law
• Trial by jury, habeas corpus, etc.
• Fought with the church
• Thomas Becket
• "Becket" (O'Toole and Burton)
• Fought with Eleanor
• "Lion in Winter" (O'Toole and Hepburn)
• Which son to inherit
• Richard led the 3rd Crusade
• Robin Hood
• Prince John becomes King John
• Loses land in France
• Fights with church
• Magna Carta

20

• "JOHN, by the grace of God King of England, Lord
  of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and
  Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops,
  abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters,
  sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his
  officials and loyal subjects, Greeting."
• Magna Carta, Preface

21

• "FIRST, THAT WE HAVE GRANTED TO GOD, and by this
  present charter have confirmed for us and our
  heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church
  shall be free, and shall have its rights
  undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired. That
  we wish this so to be observed, appears from the
  fact that of our own free will, before the
  outbreak of the present dispute between us and
  our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter
  the freedom of the Church's elections - a right
  reckoned to be of the greatest necessity and
  importance to it - and caused this to be
  confirmed by Pope Innocent III. This freedom we
  shall observe ourselves, and desire to be
  observed in good faith by our heirs in
  perpetuity."
• Magna Carta, Article 1

22

• "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or
  stripped of his rights or possessions, or
  outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing
  in any other way, nor will we proceed with force
  against him, or send others to do so, except by
  the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law
  of the land."
• Magna Carta, Article 39

23
England

• Origins of Parliament
• Anticipated in the Magna Carta (25 elected to
  insure peace and liberties granted)
• Nobles created Provisions of Oxford (regular
  meetings of Parliament)
• Kings had to support in order to receive money
• Kings eventually removed provisions but precedent
  was set
• Limited monarchy growth

24
Italy

• Emergence of trading cities (Venice)
• Responsible to Ravenna and then to Byzantine
  Emperor
• Venice became a inpendent
• Marco Polo and China
• St. Marks Cathedral is Byzantine

25
Italy
Doges Palace, Venice
26
Italy

• Other Italian cities grow
• Genoa
• Florence
• Pisa
• Naples
• Papal States

27

• "The foundation of the Pope's political claims
  was the Donation of Constantine a document by
  which the Emperor Constantine the Great had
  allegedly divided the Roman Empire in two,
  transferred imperial authority over the Western
  Provinces to bishop Sylvester of Rome and his
  successors, and reserved for himself only the
  Eastern empire, governed from his newly-founded
  capital of 'Constantinople'. By the 1430s, the
  authenticity of this document had been accepted
  without question for more than five hundred
  years in mediaeval political thought it had
  occupied a place like that of the Declaration of
  Independence in the American constitution today.
  Scholars now believe that the Donation was
  counterfeited during the eighth-centurypossibly
  at a time when Pope Paul I was anxious to cut his
  ties with the iconoclastic authorities of the
  Byzantine Empire."
• Toulmin, Stephen and June Goodfield, The
  Discovery of Time, The University of Chicago
  Press, 1965, p.104-105.

28
In the year 1202, a book titled Liber Abaci, or
Book of the Abacus, appeared in Italy. The
author, Leonardo Pisano, would receive the
endorsement of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick
II. Leonardo Pisano was known for most of his
life as Fibonacci, the name by which he is known
today. While on a trip to Algeria, an Arab
mathematician revealed to Fibonacci the wonders
of the Hindu-Arabic numbering system. When
Fibonacci saw all the calculations that this
system made possible calculations that could
not possibly be managed with Roman
letter-numerals he set about learning
everything he could about it. To study with the
leading Arab mathematicians living around the
Mediterranean, he set off on a trip that took him
to Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence.
The result was a book that was extraordinary by
any standard. Liber Abaci made people aware of a
whole new world in which numbers could be
substituted for the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman
systems that used letters for counting and
calculating. The book commanded an enthusiastic
following because Fibonacci filled it with theory
and practical applications. For example, he
described and illustrated many innovations that
the new numbers made possible in commercial
bookkeeping, conversions of weights and measures,
and he even included calculations of interest
payments. Peter L. Bernstein, Against the
Gods The Remarkable Story of Risk, 1996, XXIV
29

• Statistical sampling has had a long history,
  and twentieth-century techniques are far advanced
  over the primitive methods of earlier times. The
  most interesting early use of sampling was
  conducted by the King of England, or by his
  appointed proxies, in a ceremony known as the
  Trial of the Pyx and was well established by 1279
  when Edward I proclaimed the procedure to be
  followed. The purpose of the trial was to
  assure that the coinage minted by the Royal Mint
  met the standards of gold or silver content as
  defined by the Mints statement of standards.
  The strange word pyx derives from the Greek
  word for box and refers to the container that
  held the coins that were to be sampled. Those
  coins were selected, presumably at random, from
  the output of the Mint at the trial, they would
  be compared to a plate of the Kings gold that
  had been stored in a thrice-locked treasury room
  called the Chapel of the Pyx in Westminister
  Abbey. The procedure permitted a specifically
  defined variance from the standard, as not every
  coin could be expected to match precisely the
  gold to which it was being compared.
• Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods, 1996, 74

30
Europe in 1100AD
31
The Crusades

• Grew out of Seljuk Turks gaining the Holy Lands
• Pope Urban II called for crusade against Turks
• Indulgences as incentive
• Battles in the Holy Land
• Eight crusades

32
(No Transcript)
33
The Crusades

• 1st Crusade
• Successfully recaptured Jerusalem
• Holy Grail
• Slaughter of residents
• 2nd Crusade
• Defeated by Saladin
• 3rd Crusade
• Kings Richard the Lionhearted, Frederick
  Barbarosa, Phillip of France
• Fought separately
• Agreed to abandon fight

34
The Crusades

• 4th Crusade
• Lacked funding
• Sacked Constantinople (entered by deception)
• Ruled for 50 years
• Constantinople retaken by ousted group

35
The Crusades

• Childrens crusade
• Disaster
• 30,000 children sold into slavery
• Later crusades
• All failed to gain objectives
• Some against Christian heretical groups
• Diluting the purpose of the crusades

36
The Crusades

• Knightly orders
• Templars, Hospitaliers, etc.
• Took vows of loyalty and warfare
• Chivalry
• Orders were rewarded with land after victory
• Their power threatened the King
• Non-order knights
• Subject to barons
• Tournaments
• Heraldry

37
The Crusades

• Castles
• Built in Holy Land with stone and concrete
• Defense
• Trap doors, moats, draw bridges
• Attacking
• Crossbows, catapult, battering rams

Krak des Chevaliers
38
After the Crusades

• Economic changes
• Food, number system, medical ideas shared
• Italy became wealthy from supplying the crusades
• Byzantine Empire greatly weakened
• Trade in Mediterranean Sea
• Desire for luxury items
• Hanseatic League
• Amber trade
• Teutonic Knights

39

• "Existing things leave something to be
  desired. But whereas the shortcomings of an
  existing thing may be expressed in terms of a
  need for improvement, it is really want rather
  than need that drives the process of
  technological evolution... Luxury rather than
  necessity is the mother of invention. Every
  article is somewhat wanting in its function, and
  this is what drives its evolution."
• Petroski, Henry The Evolution of Useful
  Things, Vintage Books, 1994, pp. 22.

40
Mongols

• Genghis Kahn (great leader)
• Born Mongolia, named Temujin
• Father was poisoned
• Family was abandoned by tribe
• Made friends by helping others
• Yuan Dynasty
• Brought several tribes into alliance
• Nothing was allowed to block vision

41

• His Strange genius lay in his immense strength
  of will. This will was directed to one end, to
  overcome all opposition. He once asked his
  companions and commanders what they had found to
  be the greatest satisfaction in life. They
  thought it over and answered to ride out to
  hunting on a swift, good horse when the grass
  turns green and hold a falcon on your wrist.
• No!!, the Mongol Kahn said a mans highest
  joy in life is to break his enemies, to drive
  them before him, to take from them all the things
  that have been theirs, to hear the weeping of
  those who cherished them, to take their horses
  between his knees, and to press in his arms the
  most desirable of their women.
• -Lamb, Harold The Earth Shakers

42
Mongols

• Genghis Kahn (cont.)
• Warriors and warfare
• Tartarsthose from hell
• Used intimidation
• Promoted according to skill
• Mounted messenger system
• System of flags
• Compound bow development
• Attack on Krakow, Poland
• Captured the silk road
• Controlled trade throughout Asia

43
Mongols

• Later Khans continued westward attacks
• Kublai Kahn, grandson
• Attack on Japan (Kamikaze)

44
Creativity in the Middle Ages

• Weather made a big difference in how people lived
  and in their leisure and, therefore, in their
  creativity
• Cities helped spur creativity
• Nations (kings) helped spur creativity
• Vikings and Mongols used creativity in warfare
• Quantification of numbers and measures
• The Crusades brought knowledge to Europe and
  helped creativity

45
Thank You