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Both ancient and modern historians have often conceived the existence of civilizations and historical periods in terms of the biological stages of human life: birth, development, maturity, and decay. Once the Middle Ages was identified as a distinct historical period, historians in the 15th and 16th centuries began to describe it as enduring in a sequence of stages from youthful vigour to maturity (in the 12th and 13th centuries) and then sinking into old age (in the 14th and 15th centuries). Much of the evidence used to support this view was based on the series of apparently great disasters that ...(100 of 156573 words)