Science Forums 2

[Michaelangelica]

Maybe, but you had to stay the night at somewhere friendly from 300-1,000 AD & that was not that easy.

One of the reasons the Jewish people got into commerce and international trade as they could move from one settlement to another and have a common language and culture.

I think the Renaissance happened because of the weakening of Catholic Church power,(printing of the bible helped) the plague making labour scarce and expensive, and the Medicis' discovering money, banking, money lending (previously prohibited by the church) and international trade. Latin was a "world" language from about 200BC at least.
The Arab numerical system also helped. Try adding 10% interest to IX +IV+ XXIV=??

Certainly the rescue and translation of many Greek books by the Arabs helped too; as did their prostelysing of the Muslim Religion; which led to Arab expansion along north Africa into Spain; where Europeans again made contact with these early scientifc /mathamatical texts.

Printing & Chinese paper helped make the texts more readilly afordable and available too.
(Some century the 14th!
Barbara Trucman (sp?)has an interesting, very readable, book on it )