How was life in the Iron Age different from life in the Middle Ages?
score:24
England in 400BC was a broadly Celtic culture with Pictish remnants in the North; 1600 years later it had gained a lot of influence from Roman, German, French, and Norse invasions. Language, food, architecture, laws, and so on were much different. These are the obvious changes.
Your middle age Englander transported to Iron Age England would perhaps guess he was in the land of the vikings. The Celts of the time were warlike, tribal, proud and primitive people that practiced a pagan religion, all of which would have looked barbaric in comparison to the medieval commoner. While the Celts had urban settlements and hillfort citadels, neither would come close to comparison with the vibrant self-governed towns and stone castles of the Middle Ages.
Celts had a hierarchical society with nobles, commoners and slaves, but the middle ages saw more political stratification and legally stronger ties to the land. The Celt's lord would have been a king who directly controlled his land and was directly related to most of the people he ruled, whereas the Englishman's lord could have been a mere knight or baron who held the land in the name of a superior noble, ultimately traced to the king, and often was a foreigner given the manor or territory with no particular relationship to the people he ruled.
The Celts had trade networks and practiced agriculture, but the average Celt would be more oriented towards cattle raising, whereas the typical Englishman would be more focused on cultivating his farm. Yet farming is farming; animals need fed and slaughtered, crops planted and harvested, and tools mended. Assuming the Englishman was a typical farmer, he could easily have slipped into a similar role in 400BC.
In 1100-1200 A.D. farming technology had made some significant advances. The Englishman would have been able to improve the yield of his farm through the new 3-field rotation system, the heavy plow, and use of draught animals. He could have demonstrated cheese making to take advantage of the Celts' huge cattle herds. Crops and domesticated animals in Celtic times were less diverse and farm plots generally smaller in size. Farming practices in Celtic times also included religious practices which our Englishman would find odd. Yet he might have things to learn from the Celtic farmer. Pliny noted that the Celtic plough superior to the Roman type, and remarked at their use of chalk fertilizer.
Upvote:1
Actually you should specify which medieval society do you mean. Middle ages saw very different societies co-existing. The difference was so high that while some societies had access to extensive literature and philosophy the others even had no writing and no laws.
If you compare say 800AD East Slavic society you possibly would not find much difference with Iron Age. At the same time comparison with Italian cities such as Venice or Genoa would make completely opposite impression.
The main source of the difference is of course writing.
The medieval society had
- Extensive written laws and institutionalized government bodies
- Complicated court system
- Extensive property relations
- Extensive academic publishing (even before the invention of printing press thousands of books were issued each year)
More post
- 📝 History of Moti Masjid
- 📝 Did John Wesley pray because he had not been persecuted in three days?
- 📝 What was the point of the Babylonian captivity?
- 📝 During the Chola dynasty how extensive was the use of Sanskrit in government and by the people?
- 📝 Where was Arielis?
- 📝 Did S. Korea choose petroleum refining as part of WW2 reconstruction?
- 📝 Why did non-monarchic rule meet with so little success in ancient China?
- 📝 Who were these two 1961 Soviet pilot defectors?
- 📝 What day and year was the first public & general confession held in the Church of England?
- 📝 Why is the snake or asp the primary logo of medicinal organisations?
- 📝 How would the Germans have sent the Zimmerman telegraph if the German-American telegraph line was cut?
- 📝 What was considered an epoch by the Phoenicians?
- 📝 How would Chess have been played in England in 1450-1600?
- 📝 How democratic was Imperial Germany?
- 📝 U.S. biplane Identification
- 📝 Is there still controversy among historians and archaeologists about the exact date of the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD?
- 📝 Why was the Budjak annexed to Ukraine in 1940?
- 📝 Did any native US-Canadian tribes have written language before the advent of the Europeans?
- 📝 Is it true that George Washington was Offered Kingship?
- 📝 Was Heinrich Himmler's death a suicide?
- 📝 Were there military operations that targeted individual enemy commanders?
- 📝 How have terms of English governance of Ireland been viewed in history?
- 📝 Were there U.S. weapon restrictions during 19th century?
- 📝 How did Hussars change from heavy cavalry into light cavalry?
- 📝 Is the scarlet letter 'A' a real historical thing?
- 📝 Did the Germans have enough bombers to conduct "strategic" bombing of the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Were there historical examples of "citizen's arrest" concept in history independent of British common law?
- 📝 Did the Soviet Union know when DEFCON levels changed?
- 📝 How many Jews lived in Rome in the period immediately before (and during) the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE)?
- 📝 What is the race of Iranians?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How was life in the Iron Age different from life in the Middle Ages?
- 📝 How difficult was to escape from a naval battle after engaging into one during the Age of Sail?
- 📝 Was the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age violent?
- 📝 How close would a peasant from middle ages England ever come to interacting with the king?
- 📝 What kinds of documents were forged in the middle ages and how common was forgery?
- 📝 How does the cost-benefit relationship of owning a horse differ today from the Middle Ages or Early Industrial Revolution?
- 📝 Was hay invented only in the Middle Ages in Europe?
- 📝 How significant was the Fall of Constantinople as an event leading to the Age of Exploration?
- 📝 Which European monarch of the middle ages died furthest from home?
- 📝 How common was marriage between nobles and peasants in the Middle Ages?
- 📝 How stable was the Middle East under Ottoman rule?
- 📝 How did the Roman army go from constantly losing battles in the middle of the 3rd century to winning almost everything?
- 📝 How was the transfer of personnel from British women's military services managed?
- 📝 What was the first documented mention of American English different from British English?
- 📝 Life in the middle ages for ordinary people?
- 📝 How dependent was Nazi Germany on iron ore from Sweden?
- 📝 How "religious" was the average person in the Middle Ages?
- 📝 How did the Nuremberg Trials decide whether a guilty defendant was to be sentence to death or life imprisonment?
- 📝 How widespread was dueling in the United States from its formation to 1860?
- 📝 How were de jure lands determined during the Middle Ages in Western Europe?
- 📝 How was debt handled in the change over from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian?
- 📝 What was the aftermath of a battle in the Middle Ages? How did wounded soldiers proceed?
- 📝 Who were some of the specific people in the Renaissance who wrote about their period being different from the Middle Ages?
- 📝 How is the "Blitzkrieg" different from the "glubokaya operatsiya"
- 📝 How were political factions in the late Roman republic different from political parties today?
- 📝 In the Middle Ages, adultery was strictly condemned by the Church. How did Kings justify their extra-marital affairs?
- 📝 What was Income Disparity like in the Middle Ages of Europe?
- 📝 Was there an alcohol abuse problem among monks and priests in the High Middle Ages in England?
- 📝 Adapting clothes, weapons, tools and customs from other nations in the middle ages - judging plausability
- 📝 What was the age distribution in the Bronze Age? How do I find out?