The More Things Change...

It's Sunday morning and I find myself in a reflective mood as I eat my palak paneer (yes, I eat palak paneer for breakfast) and catch up with BBC News and various blogs before heading off to work.

Thanks to a tip from Dr. Virago, I've been following a fascinating and sometimes hilarious discussion about summing up the Medieval World in Seven Words or Less over at Got Medieval. A recent post mentioned a 13th century scholarly dude named Michael the Scot, and cited his travels and translations of important manuscripts as underappreciated contributions to history.

It made me think of Ibn Battuta and other Arab merchants and scholars who saw the world and recorded much of it, of Vikings who found employment in Istanbul, and founded Russia in their free time, of Mongols who showed up in Syria and Egypt and then decided eh, too hot, we're going home (ah, would that the Crusaders had felt the same way!). I was always taught in school that, pretty much until the Industrial Revolution, nearly everyone lived their little lives in the same little village where they were born and were ignorant of the outside world unless invaded.

At the same time, we like to think oh, we're so much more advanced and aware and world-savvy than they were in olden days of yore! We have cheap plane travel (ok, we have... plane travel)! We have the Internet! We have educational systems that stress diversity!

And yet, on the BBC Olympics Blog I checked out right before going over to Got Medieval, assorted mooks and blokes and other "learned" 21st century folks had hijacked a post about a Georgian bronze medal winner in pistol to gripe about which players from their beloved football/soccer/sport you don't use your hands for/Beckhamball were or were not at the Games.

So, contrary to what many of us were taught and what many of us like to think, back in the day when fuel was wind and hay*, a fair number of people traveled and knew more of the world than many moderne folke, who have the Internet but use it to follow their favorite sports team and who might go to Cancun or Ibiza (to vacation at an English-speaking resort, of course, and drink the imported beer of their native country... I still think of the American I met on the train to Gatwick once complaining about how he had to pay $12 for a can of Budweiser at his hotel... you're in England and you're drinking Budweiser??? I wanted to make a citizen's arrest and revoke his passport, but I digress.), but sit in the same metaphorical village where they were raised.

Jus' sayin'.

(*my inner rapper tends to come out when I am feeling both reflective and annoyed with society. Which is almost always.)