No doubt most medieval people held this view. Most people still hold this view. But in any age, the people who are genuinely curious have sought knowledge by many means.
It postdates the ancient world, but there’s a lovely poem called The Ruin from early medieval England in which the speaker contemplates what are obviously Roman ruins, with an attitude that mingles admiration of the Romans’ achievements with somber contemplation at what has been lost.
I’m aware that the silk road was active during Roman times. Hence, a decent exchange occurred between the east and the Mediterranean. (I think the reference to India sailing was in de Camp’s Ancient Engineers written in the 1960’s).
Yes most old civilizations had oral history that was moderately comprehensive. But as we see from the Bible, for example - the time before Abraham (so 1,000 years or more before) is mre apocryphal and legendary than factual. Stories of giants roaming the earth, ambiguous creation stories, people like Noah doing fantastick thinges and people living into multiple hundred years… We barely have mention of some of the peoples they displaced, like the Caananites, now a forgotten footnote. Or their rivals across the Jordan…
Presumably, the same applies of Phoenicians, or Hellenistic settlers. They came, saw, conquered, and overran current occupants. It’s left to modern archeologists to dig out who and what. We can infer what the Basques, Lapps and other isolated people are, but the correct details are lost in time. the conquerors didn’t care. We have only what they wrote in passing about what they found.
Plus, the disruption of darker ages. The Trojan War was apocryphal only 700 years after; the civilization of Crete (likely destroyed by a volcano) was the stuff of legend rather than facts. They could name the few heroic figures, but not a detailed chronology of rulers or anything like that. Presumably the Egyptians had a better grasp because their history was etched in stone on old buildings - although they too were not above stealing old stones for new construction, destroying the past. (Not to mention deliberate revenge obfuscation like erasing Ankhaten’s record when he died. Or Hapshepsut’s)
Heck, we can’t even be sure what happened with Robin Hood or King Arthur (or if they existed), despite the existence of writing and deep dives into historical records. The same level of uncertainty no doubt existed for Romans and their contemporaries.
And - my main point is that we have wikipedia and a huge collection of writings from people who have done in depth studies. the average Roman nobleman might have a few dozen books, and maybe some oral history from someone who was there and saw something; but their ability to check facts, and the level of verified detail someone else had written and disseminates was lacking. Would they even recognize cave drawings as being incredibly ancient, and not recent graffiti? Would they bother to inspect for pottery shard details when diffing a foundation for a house? Were stories of hippos and giraffes as real to them as unicorns and mermaids?
One detail i recall about discussions of the scientific method… the Greeks considered manual labour and trade work beneath themselves for educated people. So they avoided actual hands-on work that might be involved in experimentation. The classic complaint was that Aristotle said women had fewer teeth than men, but never asked his wife to say “Ahh” so he could check. All through medieval times, his texts were copied and treated like gospel (as wer heliocentric writings) and it took a bit of courage for someone in late medieval times to say “Hey wait a minute! The great legendary philosopher is wrong! I’m right!”
It was a world of legends, some urban.
You seem to be relying on very outdated views.
Our understanding of the ancient and medieval periods has changed considerably in recent decades, but the new understandings and insights are only gradually starting to filter into public awareness.
I suggest you read some modern books by reputable academics, rather than relying on 1960s pop-history or school history.
GreenWyvern
They weren’t ‘confounded’, they simply had to update their ideas of the extent of ancient trade.
“Trained” archeologist speaking, and thank you. Historians OTOH love being confounded.
It was a long while back but I do remember reading a book on Ancient East Asia of which much of the historical source material came from the Records of the Grand Historian
The Records of the Grand Historian , also known by its Chinese name Shiji , is a monumental history of ancient China and the world finished around 94 BC by the Western Han Dynasty official Sima Qian after having been started by his father, Sima Tan, Grand Astrologer to the imperial court. The work covers the world as it was then known to the Chinese and a 2500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author’s own time.
Some write that the idea of historical progression wasn’t common in ancient times. That is, each generation was largely the same as the ones before and after. Today, everyday life has major differences over as little as a generation or less. My grandfather didn’t have automobiles, electricity, or telephone in his life when he was little, to say nothing of live streaming video on his phone – and I remember him.
The idea of the cycle of life, ashes to ashes and so forth, fit better a thousand years ago.
The idea that people in ancient times didn’t have a concept of progress was discredited by the 1960s and 1970s, at least among professional historians.
For a good discussion see:
Idea of Progress: A Bibliographical Essay by Robert Nisbet
Scroll down to Classical Antiquity and the Idea of Progress
The thesis that pagan-classical antiquity was bereft of belief in man’s material and moral progress has been utterly destroyed by such authoritative works as Ludwig Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Antiquity (the most comprehensive and thorough); W.K.C. Guthrie, especially his In the Beginning; E.R. Dodds, The Ancient Concept of Progress; and F.J. Teggart, Theory of History and his anthology, The Idea of Progress. The late Professor Edelstein speaks for them all when he tells us that the ancients “formulated most of the thoughts and sentiments that later generations down to the nineteenth century were accustomed to associate with the blessed or cursed word progress.”
See also Christianity and the Idea of Progress
But, as with the Greeks and Romans, a substantial and growing body of scholarship demonstrates quite the opposite. Such impressive studies as Gerhard B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers; Charles N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture; Karl Löwith, Meaning in History; and Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages make it certain beyond question that a very real philosophy of human progress appears almost from the very beginning in Christian theology, a philosophy stretching from St. Augustine (indeed his predecessors, Eusebius and Tertullian) down through the seventeenth century.
And a lot of that old vision of stasis or stagnation among the ancient peoples was derived from looking at them from the cultural biases of later observers, and from followers of later philosophies and ideologies exalting themselves as the true representatives of progress (and of course based on their own idea of what “progress” should look like).
I think you’re talking about something different than what we think of as progress in the modern sense.
Most societies in ancient times certainly didn’t think the future would be a better place. The general feeling was that the present was already a step down from a Golden Age that had existed in the past. And that the future would probably be even further away from that Golden Age and hence worse than the present.
Christians may have believed in the idea of progress but they meant it in a spiritual sense. Society would progress by becoming closer to God - and closeness to God was based on standards that had been set long ago. There certainly was not a mindset calling for new ideas about the meaning of life.
Um… did you even bother to read the article I cited? 
Very obviously you didn’t.
I suggest that you actually read it before continuing to repeat the outdated crap that you heard in high school 40 years ago, or something.
You don’t seem to have realized that there’s progress in our knowledge of history, just as there’s progress our knowledge of the sciences.
Old ideas about the past get disproved. Our knowledge of history grows and changes with more data and more careful and rigorous analysis. History doesn’t stay the same, any more than the sciences stay the same.
You wouldn’t think of insisting on outdated scientific ideas, without reading about what the latest science says, so why do that with history?
Yes, I did. And I know enough history to recognize that Nisbet’s argument is weak. He cherry picks his cites and ignores the majority of evidence. His references to Hesiod and Augustine, for example, ignores the overall scope of their works and pulls a few passages from them out of context.
Cite?
What did ancient people think of “the ancients? Maybe they referred to them as Luddites.
Moderator Note
Let’s dial it back. You can make your point without the snark.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
You want a cite for Hesiod and Augustine?
Read Works and Days. Hesiod describes the history of mankind (and in his case it’s definitely mankind) as a series of different human races, each of which was worse than the previous one. But Hesiod faced a problem with this scheme of human decline; there were numerous existing legends of heroic figures doing heroic deeds. People were sure to ask how all this heroism fit in with Hesiod’s long downward trend.
So Hesiod wedged in an extra age - the Heroic Age. He grudgingly conceded the heroes had been pretty impressive in their day. But he made sure to say that the heroes were all gone now and mankind was back on the path downwards.
Nisbet turns this around. He acts as if this Heroic Age was the centerpiece of Works and Days and Hesiod’s overall theme was one of advancement. Which is pretty much the complete opposite of Hesiod’s premise. The Heroic Age was an attempt by Hesiod to explain away an apparent period of advancement.
Augustine was confronting a specific problem that Christians were facing in the fifth century. Christianity was on the rise but the Roman Empire was falling apart - and a lot of people were connecting these two events. They were saying that things had been going downhill in the world since Christianity showed up and this was a sign that Christianity was a bad idea.
In The City of God, Augustine’s central theme is that human history has consisted of two different trends; the City of Man (although Augustine himself doesn’t use this term) and the City of God. Humans have always focused on the City of Man - the one based on day-to-day existence in this world. This is the world where people are involved in science and technology and business. But the City of God was really the important world - this was the world that dealt with souls and eternity.
So Augustine was telling people that yes, the City of Man was in decline. But don’t worry about it. The City of Man isn’t what’s important. The City of God is what matters and things are going great there. So be happy that Christianity is on the rise and ignore the way secular society is falling apart.
Nisbet again singles out Augustine’s message about society heading towards a better place. But he downplays exactly what this better place is. Most people in the modern world feel that progress means conditions are getting better in the secular world. But Augustine’s definition of progress is that things are getting better in the spiritual world. Augustine certainly isn’t arguing that conditions in the secular world are getting better or need to get better.
So I stand by what I wrote. Nisbet was cherry picking evidence from the sources he cited and ignoring their overall themes in order to claim they supported his argument when they do not.
You mention only Hesiod and Augustine. I assume that means that you accept that all the other numerous ancient writers quoted did have a concept of progress.
Hesiod was clearly and unarguably talking only about moral degeneration through the four ages, not knowledge, technology, and society.
The Golden Age was an age of peace, harmony, justice, happiness, etc., but living conditions were said to be very basic and primitive. Ancient authors, including even Hesiod, generally accepted that there had been progress in knowledge, technology, and social organization and that such progress would continue. However, there was a general tendency to feel that morally the human race was worse than in ancient times.
So with regard to Hesiod you are doing exactly what you are accusing Nesbit of doing with Augustine, confusing spiritual change with secular change.
As for Augustine, in The City of God he praises secular creativity, even in Man’s sinful state, as being the gift of God, and says that more such progress will be possible in a less sinful state.
From Book XXII, section 24:
Has not the genius of man invented and applied countless astonishing arts, partly the result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant invention, so that this vigor of mind, which is so active in the discovery not merely of superfluous but even of dangerous and destructive things, betokens an inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent, learn, or employ such arts?
What wonderful — one might say stupefying — advances has human industry made in the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation! With what endless variety are designs in pottery, painting, and sculpture produced, and with what skill executed! What wonderful spectacles are exhibited in the theatres, which those who have not seen them cannot credit! How skillful the contrivances for catching, killing, or taming wild beasts!
And for the injury of men, also, how many kinds of poisons, weapons, engines of destruction, have been invented, while for the preservation or restoration of health the appliances and remedies are infinite! To provoke appetite and please the palate, what a variety of seasonings have been concocted! To express and gain entrance for thoughts, what a multitude and variety of signs there are, among which speaking and writing hold the first place! What ornaments has eloquence at command to delight the mind! What wealth of song is there to captivate the ear! How many musical instruments and strains of harmony have been devised!
What skill has been attained in measures and numbers! With what sagacity have the movements and connections of the stars been discovered! Who could tell the thought that has been spent upon nature, even though, despairing of recounting it in detail, he endeavored only to give a general view of it? …
And since this great nature has certainly been created by the true and supreme God, who administers all things He has made with absolute power and justice, it could never have fallen into these miseries … had not an exceeding great sin been found in the first man from whom the rest have sprung.
Augustine says that if the human race has achieved all this in a sinful state, just imagine what can be achieved in a perfected and sinless state!
He expected an age to come when human beings would be spiritually perfect, and therefore able to able to progress to full knowledge.
In what condition shall the spirit of man be, when it has no longer any vice at all; when it neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to any, nor has to make war against any, but is perfected, and enjoys undisturbed peace with itself? Shall it not then know all things with certainty, and without any labor or error, when unhindered and joyfully it drinks the wisdom of God at the fountain-head?
No. As I wrote, I was just using them as examples.
There’s a story (perhaps apocryphal) of a group of scholars holding an academic meeting in the middle ages. The subject of animals came up and a debate started over how many teeth a horse had. The various scholars addressed the issue in the standard practice of their age; they began offering different cites by ancient authorities.
One scholar would quote a passage by Parmenides and say it implied a horse has thirty teeth. Another scholar would quote a passage by Anaximander and say it proved that a horse has thirty-two teeth. A third scholar would offer a passage by Aristotle and say that it supported the argument that a horse has twenty-eight teeth. This argument went back and forth with different numbers being offered with different cites by classical authorities being interpreted in favor of them.
One young scholar made a suggestion. He pointed out that they had all ridden to the meeting. Why didn’t they just go outside and everyone could count how many teeth their horse had.
The other scholars looked at the young man in astonishment and then told him he should probably leave. It was obvious he didn’t belong here because he had no idea how science worked.
Asimov used this story as a jumping off point in one of the sections of “Foundation” (the first story written: “Foundation” now known as “The Encyclopedists”), featuring Salvor Hardin, Asimov’s hero, suggesting that Lord Dorwin (who is interested in finding humanity’s original homeworld) go to various planets and dig up artifacts. Dorwin, a much more sophisticated researcher knows that the right way to come to an answer is to read all the old authorities, balance their arguments and come to a conclusion in the comfort of his own home.
"It seems an uncommonly woundabout and hopelessly wigmawolish method of getting anywheahs. Look heah, now, I’ve got the wuhks of all the old mastahs—the gweat ahchaeologists of the past. I weigh them against each othah—balance the disagweements—analyze the conflicting statements—decide which is wobably cowwect— and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. At least”—patronizingly—“as I see it. How insuffewably cwude it would be to go to Ahctuwus, oah to Sol, foah instance, and blundah about, when the old mastahs have covahed the gwound so much moah effectually than we could possibly hope to do.”
Lord Dorwin has an over-refined accent.