Context: I recently learned that the commonly repeated claim that classic Greece and Rome was scientifically and technologically stagnant is not the historic consensus and has not been so for decades. It is a common knowledge today that no serious historian believes the middle ages to be stagnant but I feel the claim that Greece and Rome was technologically locked in time is still fairly prevalent, even in academic circles. Of course, among historians not specializing in the antique world.
Wait people think of Rome of all places as technologically stagnant‽ Sure they weren’t producing the wonders of China, but they were breaking ground in construction and metallurgy. The republic began with bronze spears in huts, and ended not long after the snapshot we have in Pompeii with aqueducts and steel. By the fall of the western empire (beginning of European middle ages), the equii of Caesar’s childhood had become more like knights (hell, cavalry was an early classical innovation, though Scythian not Greco-Roman).
And the medieval period picked up from there and ended with early clockwork, castles, plate armor, early firearms, cannons, and the spanish found America. This was a thousand years and each century was distinct in its cultural and technological position.
The actual point is that the periods are similar in advancement, with an edge to the medieval period if anything. If you damn the medieval period for stagnation you’re absolutely dunking on Romans spreading their advancements over literally a thousand years, or the Greeks and Persians getting their minds absolutely blown by the idea of “what if phalanxes, but with longer spears”