A Very Short Look Back at Year 1000

We may or may not have entered the 21st century and the Third Millennium on the night of what we now call December 31, but we most definitely have turned over a bunch of zeros! - a concept basically unknown in Europe until some time around the "year 1000", which, of course, could not have looked like that until the ZERO came into use!

ZERO was thought to have been a concept of the Arabs, but was recognized as important and significant by Sidhara in India in about 1000. (Our numerals are from Arabic numerals. Roman numerals were too cumbersome. And they didn't have a zero!)

The year that we write as "1000" saw the schism between the Church in Rome and Constantinople, the siding of the infant nation of Hungary with the Pope in Rome, and the building of major cathedrals in Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy, eastern Europe.

See Mainz Cathedral, Mainz, Germany. (Be sure to get the entire URL, long as it is, if it goes to 2 lines). This was begun in about 980. Romanesque. Red sandstone.

http://www.tulane.edu/lester/images/Earl...

San Marco

The cathedral of St. Mark's in Venice had been started in about 976, to receive the remains of St. Mark the Evangelist, taken from the Holy Land. Just think of it - 976. Romanesque.

http://www.doge.it/smarco/basi.htm

To think of our history as a nation only since 1776 is amazing. The Plymouth Colony was established in 1620. (Remember PILGRIMS?) We are very young as a culture here in the U.S. and we show it, all too often.

And here in the "Old West" we are going back only 150 years for our history, the Gold Rush, the settling of the West. It is no wonder to me that Europeans and Asians look at us as though we are kids. We are!

Some major events around 1000 were: the Chinese invention of gunpowder; Leif Ericson dropping anchor somewhere on the east coast of North America; the major shift of the spiritual center of Judaism from Mesopotamia to Spain; and major improvement on the concept of systematic musical notation. The peak of Mayan civilization on the Yucatan peninsula occurred right around this time.

Writing and reading were known only by the best educated people, nearly always men, and nearly always high members of the church(es). Ideas and concepts were communicated in VISUAL ARTS (mosaic pictures, paintings, illuminations on manuscripts). Writing was done by the few, and the written word and painted illuminations went together.

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