For more than 200,000 years, humans have been trending toward technological innovation. We can see a common thread that starts with Paleolithic hunter-gatherers sitting around the hearth, sharing advancements in tool development and controlling fire, to our modern-era technologists brainstorming the next world-changing invention. However, this trajectory hasn’t been linear. The path has been marked by ebbs and flows in cultural, technological, and scientific advancements. Just like we can claim the profound cultural and technological advances from the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Information Age, we also own the relative stagnation of the European Dark Ages. Read the article.