Medieval Military

La enorme cantidad de combatientes que periódicamente zarpaban hacia el Cercano Oriente para luchar contra los musulmanes son una prueba de la popularidad generalizada del aventurerismo en el extranjero en ese momento. La idea de una cruzada, en la que grandes ejércitos procedentes de varias regiones de Europa se reunían con el fin de luchar contra los musulmanes turcos y árabes, quedó tan arraigada que se amplió para incluir a las cruzadas contra las sectas cristianas europeas heréticas.

It could be said that European kings and nobles in the Middle Ages were Crusade mad. The enormous amount of fighting men who periodically sailed off to the Near East to do battle with Muslims are evidence of the widespread popularity of overseas adventurism at the time. The notion of a Crusade, in which large armies assembled from various regions of Europe for the purpose of doing battle with Turkish and Arab Muslims, became so fixed that it was expanded to include Crusades against heretical European Christian sects.

It would be hard if not outright impossible to overstate the impact Roman Emperor Constantine I had on the history of Christianity, Ancient Rome, and Europe as a whole. Best known as Constantine the Great, the kind of moniker only earned by rulers who have distinguished themselves in battle and conquest, Constantine remains an influential and controversial figure to this day.

Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century, and the Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today, but of all the world’s civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people. In the past decade especially, there has been a renewed focus on the Mayans, whose advanced calendar led many to speculate the world would end on the same date the Mayan calendar ended in 2012.