Rank your favourite European historic era/century from best to worst

**MinervaItalica** · 03-31-2017, 05:35 PM

Put in order picking from these:

Prehistory - Classical Antiquity - Late Antiquity - Middle Ages - Renaissance - 1500/1600 - 1700 - 1800 - 1900

Mine:

Middle Ages
Late Antiquity
Classical Antiquity
1700
1800
Renaissance
Prehistory
1500/1600
1900

**HERK** · 03-31-2017, 05:40 PM

For me, More modern times = better, mainly beacause of Medical and Scientific achievements, i bet you it wasn't easy to be sick in the middle ages.

**Ryujin** · 03-31-2017, 05:41 PM

1800 - Reneissance - 1700 - Classical Antiquity - Late Antiquity - 1900 - Prehistory - 1500/1600 - Middle Ages

**Seya** · 03-31-2017, 07:35 PM

Classical Antiquity
Late Antiquity
1700
Renaissance
1500/1600
1800
Prehistory
1900
Middle Ages

**MinervaItalica** · 04-02-2017, 09:28 AM

Bump.

**♥ Lily ♥** · 04-02-2017, 09:39 AM

I've not experienced life in another historic era of time to feel what daily life was like for most people.... but I feel damn lucky to live in the modern era of time after the Industrial Revolution, and I appreciate and value all the benefits and luxuries of life in the 21st century.... such as having the convenience of electric showers, washing machines, vaccuums, refrigerators, cars, commerical airflights, the convenience the internet and mobile phones, being able to have an anaesthetic before an operation, life-support machines, better healthcare and longer lifespans, and having the advantages of modern technology, etc.

I'm grateful we have all these luxuries available in this current era that people often take for granted. I think other eras of time prior to the Industrial Revolution are often glamourised in paintings, books, and movies.

Life in the Tudor era, for example, wasn't glamourous for the vast majority of people when most peoples teeth were black and rotting, and the streets were full of rats and diseases as people poured their sewage and waste out their windows onto the streets with no weekly refuse collection which would have smelt horrible.

Imagine living through the eras of the Bubonic Plague in Europe and the Black Death that wiped-out 1/3 of the planet when loads of people across Europe were dying and dead bodies were dumped in unhygenic plague-pits. I read in an interesting book about death once, and during a cholera epidemic that caused a panic in Europe, people in France with cholera were rapidly shoved and nailed inside coffins and were buried while they were still alive.

Prior to the modern era of time, many people had to do back-breaking long hours of handwashing all their bedding and hand-scrubbing all their floors and having little time for pleasure or much else in life. People had to carry heavy buckets of water heated over a stove or fire in order to have a warm bath.

Most people weren't able to try-out a variety of different cuisines in modern restaurants, and had no cinemas and movies and documentaries to watch. They had no access to up-to-date news to know what's currently happening in the rest of the country and world, and little access to world knowledge.

Without CCTV, fingerprint, and DNA evidence, criminals like Jack-the-Ripper could evade identification, capture, and justice. No burglar alarms and security cameras were available for your home. No phones and emergency services for people during an accident, crime, or fire. People couldn't take high-quality photographs and make clear video recordings, nor share and express their views by interacting with audiences on the internet.

They had no supermarkets available. Childbirth would've been a lot more painful and it's no surprise that more females died during childbirth in the past than in the current era.

Prior to the age of factual science replacing superstitious beliefs in society, innocent people who were accused of a crime weren't given any representation, or a fair trial and court hearing, and would be subjected to a religious Trial by Ordeal instead, where they would be tortured to confess, and burned alive and beheaded in public executions. In the Victorian era, people with a mental health problem would be locked behind the walls in asylums and subjected to horrific treatment in those places.

The past 1000 years of Europe had a lot of bloodshed and wars too. I wouldn't like to have lived through any of that. (We have the occasional terrorist bomb attack today, but even that's not as scary as living through constant battles and wars between protestants and catholics over religion and territory.)

People in the past had poorer hygiene due to a lack of sanitation facilities, and often suffered in pain with their teeth and receding gums and bad breath, and suffered with other health problems and had few options of pain-relief and a lack of adequate medical treatment available. No x-rays and MRI scans were available to see inside a person to know if they have a tumour, cancer, etc. Imagine having to walk around in society during the hot summers in suffocating long clothes that people heavily perspired in that doesn't let your skin-pores breathe naturally in the fresh air.

Imagine having no central heating during freezing cold winters or air conditioning in the baking summer months, having to hand-make all your clothes, having no electric tools to save time, not being able to send emails or use phones to communicate as much with relatives and friends, having fewer opportunities to study and travel, not being able to buy the music you want to listen to whenever you want to hear it, having to strain and damage your eyes in the dark evenings by reading in the candlelight, etc.

Anyway, looking at the average quality of life in other eras of time just makes me appreciate being alive in this era even more! The past is dead and I like to live in the here & now and embrace the present moment of time.