'Marketa Lazarová'

All I could think about while watching this Czech film set during the ruthless and unforgiving Middle Ages is how North America never had a time like this. Also, how has that shaped the United States.

Sub-sub-question, is it possible that right now is the United States' Middle Ages and we've simply swapped out savage violence … well, for savage violence (that by gangs in Chicago or teenagers on video game consoles).

Are there ages any more? Ages always recorded some advancement in culture. Point being, is the United States in one age and will that transition to a new age where things are better, where science and understanding rule? Or, are we beyond ages? As things evolve they also tend to devolve in a lot of ways.

There is no real history of North America in the Middle Ages. The Europeans hadn't come over yet except for some Vikings. Otherwise, the indigenous peoples that traveled over the Bering land bridge centuries inhabited the free land. It would take several lifetimes for anyone of a  different skin tone to set foot on the continent and begin to really screw shit up.

There were North Americans during the Middle Ages, but it takes fragments of pottery and weapons to really understand a fragment of their culture. We don't know their lives quite like we know that of the Europeans. Chances are, the lives of the North Americans during the Middle Ages probably wasn't too drastically different than those centuries before or centuries after.

Let's hope that the worst of the Middle Ages is Facebook.
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