The Middle Ages

Amiens Cathedral (France)

About 300 AD, Turkic and Mongol people in Central Asia began moving out of Central Asia in all directions - west into Europe, and south into West Asia and China. When the Huns arrived in eastern Europe, the Indo-European people living there fled further south, into the Roman Empire. The Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, the Franks, the Slavs, and the Saxons all moved into the Roman Empire between the 300s and the 700s AD and divided it up into smaller kingdoms that were the beginning of the modern countries of Europe. At the same time, Semitic people moved north from the Arabian peninsula to conquer most of West Asia, Egypt, North Africa and Spain as the Islamic Empire.

The Indo-Europeans found themselves squeezed into just Western Europe, but they soon began to push back, trying to regain some of the land they had lost. By 800, the Medieval Warming period improved the weather in northern Europe and made it easier to feed people. Everyone got richer and more powerful. Charlemagne established the Holy Roman Empire covering most of Europe, and pushed the (Turkic) Avars back to the East. In Spain, Indo-Europeans began to push the Umayyads south. In 1096 AD, the Crusaders began to push into West Asia.

Still the Turkic and Mongol people continued to increase their power in Eastern Europe and Asia. By 1100 AD, Turkic/Mongol people controlled pretty much all of Central Asia and West Asia, and in the 1200s the Mongol Empire united all the land from Eastern Europe to China in one huge empire. The peaceful empire encouraged long-distance trade along the Silk Road, and Europeans were able to trade wool cloth, iron, olive oil, wine, and silver for silks and spices from China and India, and gold and ivory from Africa. Europe got richer from this trade. Everybody built castles and cathedrals, and wealthy trading families in northern Italy began to hire artists and writers, who began the Renaissance. Kings began to build partnerships with traders, weakening the feudal lords and the Popes and strengthening the power of the kings and the trading families in cities.

There were setbacks: in the 1300s a Little Ice Age brought cooler weather to Europe again. People went hungry. Then in 1328 the Black Death travelled to Europe on the Silk Road. Everyone was angry, and millions of farming families began to riot and demand more political power. But in the 1400s, Europe recovered as farmers adapted to the cold and rain. Kings and the new middle class got more power, while the feudal lords and the church had less. Soon Europe's Indo-Europeans began expanding their land again - this time to the west, across the Atlantic Ocean to North America and South America.