Between 900-1300 the greatest increase in living standards in history, excluding the period 1870-present, occurred in Medieval Europe and only in Medieval Europe. This was a period of a general 'warming' of the climate, which would now be declared the end-of-the-world [but remember today 'science' and 'reason' reign supreme, not superstition]. Instead of bemoaning the end of Gaia, self-flagellating, and sacrificing [aborting] children to appease the earth mother; Medieval man and woman simply got on with improving their station in life. A general 'warming' [due no doubt to non-existent 'greenhouse' effects], opened up trade, lengthened and improved the growing season, and stimulated manufacture and technology, not to mention commerce and exploration. Endless wars, civil strife, and the usual lust for power and totalitarian control which informs the deformed, notwithstanding, this age was a remarkable one of progress.
Importantly and rarely emphasized by the post-modern Phd historian is the crucial fact that Medieval European man had won the wars against the 'barbarians'. Without these victories there is no modern civilization. Moslems were stopped at Covadonga in 722, then at Tours in 732. The reconquista of Spain, a slow and deadly process, was largely completed by 1250. Avars and Magyars were defeated and finally extinguished in the early 11th century. Vikings, who had linked up with Moslems to sell white flesh in a burgeoning white-slave trade [never mentioned or investigated by post-modern 'historians'], were defeated, stopped, Christianized and assimilated by 950 AD. Exogenous annihilation was thus thwarted preparing the path to technological and agricultural improvements, not to mention learning, school development, university creation and a thousand appliances apparently unknown to the modern Marxist historian. From blast furnaces [11th century Sweden], to chimneys, windmills, watermills and advance mining, the terms of trade and capital lengthened, deepened and improved life. But you will never hear about it.
In France and elsewhere we see that [Britannica]: “....farming methods in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods were primitive and crop yields too low to permit any recovery. As early as 800 and more dramatically after 950, improved climatic conditions, the disappearance of deadly diseases, and the development of improved agricultural techniques set the stage for the development of a new, more prosperous civilization. All indicators suggest growth—e.g., expansion of old towns, founding of new villages, the rising price of land..”
Of course before 900 AD agricultural practices were not nearly as primitive as main-stream history contends. The so-called 'dark ages' were Moslem-inspired contractions in wealth and trade as the Meccan moon-cult feasted upon the benefices of more advanced Greco-Romano and Christian civilizations around the Mediterranean basin. In spite of the Moslem depradations [slavery of whites, pillaging, plundering, the neutering of trade], across Europe the peasant was much better off in 800 AD under Charlemagne's reign, than he would have been in 'classical' Rome or Greece where most likely he had a good chance to die of starvation or be liquidated in wars of power. The Medieval man was fitter, stouter, better-fed and part of a society that was able to mass produce products ranging from high-tech armour to iron shoes for horses. This was clear even by 900 AD.
Post 900 AD the European economy takes off. In this time of growth and development the monasteries were mainsprings of invention and capital deployment. The oldest stock owning firms in the world date from the 11th century and they were monastic firms. Windmills, watermills, advanced engineering to construct cathedrals and other monuments, extraordinary fortifications and military weapons, ships and mining technology; town-planning, formations of constitutions and political-plurality, academies of science and math, were all prevalent during this period – and only in Medieval Europe.
Long before the apocryphal inventions of Galileo, gravity, heliocentricity and Gaia's rotational speed and axis were known and in the main proven. The conflict between science and religion, or between 'progress' and 'tradition' exists only the minds of those with a philosophical world-view that the so-called Enlightenment 'saved' the world. This is a rather ignorant and purblind view of material reality. We know this to be a fact, because few historian's are willing to admit that the basis of modernity was really set between 900-1300 AD.