The Verge

Metadata

Highlights

Bleary-eyed and barely dressed, stumbling through the streets, thousands of Romans shaken out of bed — location: 99

Really?


All of them were lean and dirty. — location: 105


Around 1490, four decades before the Sack of Rome, Europe was a backwater. Paris, London, Barcelona, and Venice were all impressive enough locales by European standards, but an alien visitor looking for the high points of human achievement in that age would have much preferred to travel to Istanbul or Beijing; a contrarian might have chosen the charms of Tenochtitlan, Delhi, Cairo, or Samarkand. — location: 205

Not braudel view. Eg the champagne fairs and erosion of byzantium


Nobody looking at the world in 1490 would have thought that future likely. — location: 220

What future wd they have done? What did future mean?