Comment by littlestymaar 4 days ago
Given that the printing press was the root cause for the century of religious wars that soaked Europe with blood, and was key in the revolutions that overthrown absolute monarchies all over Europe, I don't think it's as good as an example as you think it is.
Death of a civilization doesn't mean disappearance of mankind or even overall regression on the long term.
Have you heard of the Protestant Reformation and the following 120 years of war? The entire Protestant <> Catholic blow up that consumed Europe was pretty directly attributable to the printing press.
(To be clear, nothing is solely and exclusively caused by any one thing. Causality is a very fuzzy concept. But sans printing press, those wars certainly wouldn’t have happened when/where/how they did, if they ever happened at all).
Do you know Hussites? [1] The Hussite Wars (1419–1434) predate printing press and Luther told: "We are all Hussites without knowing it."
This is common enough knowledge that “read, like, any history” is an appropriate response. However, if you’re genuinely curious, here’s a random link:
https://ehne.fr/en/encyclopedia/themes/european-humanism/eur...
An interesting one I read was public schools and their creation of a national identity. Before public schools there weren't really standardized languages forced upon an entire nation, etc. The countryside was more one country/people/language morphing into the next, not clean delineated lines where country/language switched instantly. It was also said borders were much more open/abstract before the resultant shift as well.
While they didn't have trains, the Napoleanic wars did feature the first use of canned food to aid in logistical supply of armies. You could argue that the lack of trains (and can openers) probably meant that they jumped the gun on starting giant wars. We Americans fixed that in the Civil War, to great and deadly effect.
Appertization was invented in 1804 but Appert did not sell his technology to the French army before 1810 so it's fair to say that most of the Napoleonic wars were run before canned food was even a thing. Maybe it has seen mainstream use in the Grande Armée in the end of his reign, but it was definitely not a deciding factor in Napoleon's logistics for most of his campaigns.
Without trains, the logistics of canned food isn't much better than the logistics of any bread-based food you give to your soldiers. It doesn't solve the weight problem which is the key problem with preindustrial army logistical issue.
See my second paragraph. It can be ultimately positive while still being civilization-ending.
Do you have a source for that? I don't think the printing press was the cause of religious wars any more than bullets were the cause of WWII