Gold coin minted by King Euric,with the name of the Roman Emperor on it The Visigoths established a kingdom for themselves within the collapsing Roman Empire in 418 AD. They took over most of [...]
Ostrogothic helmet By 476 AD, the Ostrogoths were still living north of the Black Sea, but the Roman Emperors no longer had any practical power in the West. In that year, the last Roman Emperor [...]
Early France: A Merovingian fibula (a pin to hold a cloak on) from the 500s-600s AD Early France: the Franks invade Gaul Who were the Franks? The Franks had been [...]
Ural mountains In the Early Middle Ages, Turkic and Mongol people in Central Asia were moving westward, pushing out Indo-European people - and other people - who had been living there. The Magyars, who [...]
The Lombards: a Lombard Christian altar (700s AD) (University of Alabama) Where did the Lombards come from? In 568 AD, a Turkic people, the Avars, pushed the Indo-European Lombards out of their home in Central [...]
Medieval feudalism: Harold swears an oath to William (Bayeux Tapestry, about 1077 AD) What is feudalism? Feudalism is a way to govern a large state when the king is poor and not very powerful, [...]
Medieval games: Women playing chess Early medieval games: Dice, checkers, chess The games of medieval Europe were mainly the same as those of Egypt, Greece, and Rome: dice, knucklebones, marbles, checkers. But there were some new games, too. [...]
Medieval food: A man ladles porridge from a large pot over a fire Poor people's food was boring! In the Middle Ages in Europe, what people ate depended a lot on [...]
Medieval tapestry (Cluny Museum, Paris) - medieval weather Early Medieval cold period Some people say that the cause of the fall of the Roman empire in the West around 400 AD was [...]
Medieval peasant clothing, from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1400s AD, now in Chantilly) What did medieval people wear? In Medieval Europe, as in the Roman period, most people [...]
