Your average peasant had the IQ of an extremely rotten tree stump and the common sense of a very small lump of mud....
—Top Ten Horror Stories
Medieval people are morons.
No, really. Whenever you see medieval people in fiction, particularly peasants, they will always be depicted as stupid, small-minded, xenophobic, savage but cowardly, superstitious, gullible, and primitive - the Old World equivalent of American rednecks. And of course, all men treat all women
like crap all the time.
In reality, this is
subjective of course. Medieval peasants had the potential to be about as smart or as dumb, as nice or as cruel as people from any other time or place. The thing is that beside our accumulated knowledge of age and literate population, vast
amount of easy accessible information; intelligence has
actually evolved with each generation. Not only in the sense of better nutrition, medicine and quality of life, but since the advent of the Scientific Method, the way people react to the world has shifted in ways that would
seem impossible or insane for ancient societies.
In other words, our Cultures are better suited for comprehension, studying and analytical thinking.
On the other hand, the general conditions of living, while not nearly as appalling as they're
made out to be were considerably more demanding, and just surviving required not only more physical but also more mental readiness than the Medieval era is given credit for. Conversely, while we certainly have access to more information nowadays, most people
don't exactly take full advantage of this, and even then, we have to keep in mind that "knowledge" is not synonymous with "intelligence". If anything,
studies tend to show that being saturated with information faster than you can process it can actually
impair cognitive function.
As for the studies showing that intelligence evolved with each generation, they should be taken with a grain of salt. Not only do they only go back a century and half at most, but they're also extremely culturally specific: these are the same studies that consistently show
Europeans consistently outsmarting Africans. What we see as intelligence in our own, modern, western society is a very biased view: it would be downright moronic to apply most of our behaviours, mores and even thought processes in most situations outside our own
incredibly complex and specific society, while a lot of our knowledge is not only completely useless but also completely unverifialbe without the vast social and technological infrastructure we have. There's a reason why "normal" behaviour being completely useless in a survival situation is such a big point in military training.
This problem arouses the ancient question... Who would win:
Astronaut vs
Caveman? Each has a fierce Fandom who will fight tooth and nail for their choice. While history had shown that having more "advanced" society and better weaponry/gadgets doesn't mean you are invincible or cunning, the problem is that when people think of Peasant/Medieval/Underdeveloped, they instinctively give them the label of Middle Class/Average Joe and everyone knows that the
Underdogs Never Lose.
Also remember that the great people of the past are
exceptions to the rule, extremely rare and bound by the very society and situation they live in. Using them as examples is quite...
wrong
While of course, most people today
think they know everything about the universe (just like back then) and naturally peasants always had great practical expertise in areas few modern European or North American humans would bother to learn any more, this lead to
Crippling Overspecialization in a single area that would not make them very flexible thinkers or cunning per se. Intelligence isn't necessarily knowing everything at all times and cunning doesn't mean being a
mastermind manipulator. This works both ways.
Finally, since the question of religion
will crop up sooner or later: The unwillingness of people to change their situation was somewhat justified by their faith. The argument would've gone like this: Our life on Earth takes 70 to 80 years max (at least today it does
*) - but our afterlife forever. Hence it makes sense to care more about living according to your religion than trying to change your fate in this very world.
Time travelers are advised to avoid
The Middle Ages at all costs. Or as we call it,
The Dung Ages.
Compare:
Humans Are Morons.
Examples:
Film
- Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. No matter where they went in history, no matter which historical figure they abducted, nobody really seemed to care that they'd fallen out of the sky in a phone booth and absconded with Beethoven. That is of course until they ended up in medieval England, where they were put on the chopping block to the sound of a man screaming that they came from the sky, and just barely escaped with their skins. Also subverted in the fact that neither Bill nor Ted are the sharpest knives in the drawer...
King: Put them in the iron maiden.
King: Execute them!
Bill and Ted: Bogus.
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail both showcased this ("We've found a witch; may we burn her?") and averted this:
Dennis (peasant): We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major...
- According to the Aluminum Christmas Trees article, anarcho-syndicalist commune did actually exist.
- But they were usually religious in nature and tended to get conquered, with the exception of a couple in Italy which developed into Republican city-states.
- Note that the executive officer is chosen weekly, while the meetings to ratify the decisions of the executive officer is held every two weeks, meaning that said leader stands a good chance of no longer being in office when his decisions are brought up at the meeting, and has no idea if his decrees will stick. So Dennis' system might not be as well thought out as it seems.
- Bi-weekly can also mean twice a week.
- Army of Darkness saw the zombie-fighting hero Ash thrown back in time with a chainsaw in one hand (or, as one hand) and a shotgun in the other. The peasants were not amused, though they were rather impressed with his "boomstick".
"Don't touch that! Your primitive intellect wouldn't understand alloys, and compositions, and... things with... molecular structures..."
- And again, Ash is often shown to be on the dimmer side of the various characters around him, not understanding such simple concepts as "When the mage-guy tells you you need to say something exactly right, you need to say it exactly right."
- The peasants from the movie Just Visiting. Upon seeing the displaced villain from the present time, they gaze at him with stupid wonder while wielding crosses. They flee in terror when the phone they took from him starts ringing.
- in the original, the temporally shifted heroes utterly destroy a van, thinking it to be a devil-powered cart driven by a Saracen.
- They do that to a VW Beetle in the remake.
- Subverted in The Navigator. While the time-displaced villagers are understandably disoriented and frightened by much of what they encounter — and when it's a construction site full of mechanical earthmovers, who could blame them? — they make quite a few reasonable deductions and plans, within the limits of their knowledge and faith.
- Played straight In The Name Of The Rose, the film version. Everyone but the narrator and the hero William of Baskerville is a moron or a fanatic or both.
Literature
- Averted in Michael Crichton's Timeline. In this book, the time travelers are often outwitted and outmatched by the natives. A consistent theme is that while the time travelers possess modern knowledge, they do not have the skills to survive in the more primitive environment.
- Of particular note is that Crichton specifically details the natives' sanitation practices. Lack of awareness of bacteria did not prevent them from attending to hygiene, averting the stereotype of "living in filth".
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a major offender. Of course, it was new when Mark Twain did it (making this Older Than Radio), and he was trying to portray the evils of aristocracy. Still, it's exaggerated and unhistorical, with most of the characters just generally acting Too Dumb to Live. He was also satirizing the excessively poetic and romantic portrayals of Arthurian legend that were popular at the time—by pointing out that, had Arthur and his knights actually behaved as they were typically portrayed, they would have had to have been absolutely childlike morons.
- Subverted in the Poul Anderson novel The High Crusade. A high tech alien empire is brought to its knees by a 14th century English army. The Medieval characters naturally view things through a Medieval lens (the aliens are initially mistaken for demons), but are very capable and clever. In fact not only do the Crusaders end up conquering the aliens, they convert them to both feudalism and Christianity by the end. Unfortunately, the movie played this trope nearly completely straight.
- Poul Anderson further subverted this trope in his short story "The Man Who Came Early", in which the titular man Trapped in the Past fails to impress medieval Icelanders. They aren't even particularly fazed by his handgun.
- Subverted in the book 1632, in which the doctor of a time-displaced modern American town has to consult with his "downtime" counterpart. It becomes clear that the "local" doctor not only doesn't use leeches and ground bat's wing, but has a medical library in nearly a dozen languages (English being one of them) (all of which he speaks fluently, against the US doctor's... just English). The high school history teacher who is also present breaks down laughing and says "you didn't actually think you were smarter than him, did you?"
- In addition, although they have their initial fears, the
medieval early modern characters are extremely quick to recognize and appreciate American technology instead of writing it off as witchcraft and even logically deduce why it cannot be magic.
- Of course not. It is transdimensional Eldritch Abominations toying with spacetime for their inscrutable amusement. You didn't actually believe in witches did you?
- Truthfully, the leads in the story (even by Eric Flint's "Middle man" policy) are simply incredibly smart/intuitive, even by modern standards to the point it can come quite unbelievable and tend to adapt with incredible speed to change. This can be Justified that they had come from living in a literal Hell and explained by Gretchen Richter as "There are worse things than going insane."
- Averted in George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. We don't see that many peasants, but those we do are just people. Some are smart, some are stupid, most are fairly level-headed. In The Sworn Sword, Dunk even tells Egg (who is royalty) to be respectful to them. They might not be able to read or argue about the politics of the realm, but they know when to plant their crops and how to deliver a calf.
- And then there are the members of the aristocracy like Littlefinger or Tyrion who could possibly be smarter than anyone ever.
- Taking place as it does in a quasi-medieval mishmash of an era, Discworld plays around with this trope quite a bit. That said, even towards the more peasantry, circa 1400 mindset parts, people tend to just be people.
- In The Sword Of Truth one of the morals is "People are stupid" and boy does it show. From the first book, there's a crowd of people being moved to tears by Michael's impassioned speech about the evils of fire. The Mud People, despite living for generations in a place where it rains all the time, have somehow never figured out how to make roofs that don't leak. And there's the group of peasants sent by Darken Rahl to attack Zedd on the belief he's a witch. First he tells them the term is warlock. Then he talks the angry mob into having a brainstorming session about all the terrible things warlocks can do until they get scared and give up.
- In the Time Scout series, this is how downtimers are initially portrayed, but the portrayal becomes more nuanced and positive as the story progresses.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- The Orc and Human builder units in Warcraft III are a shining example of this trope, if the lines they speak when clicked are any indication (the humans have a Cockney accent while the orcs have a You No Take Candle speech pattern). They even have the Human Peasants occasionally using the Monty Python quote above...
- Given the cultures involved both believe heavily in advancement by merit (and face serious manpower shortages), it's possible that the only people who get jobs as laborers are the ones too incompetent to do anything else.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Time Squad. In one particular episode, they manage to quickly convince Copernicus to stop being a farmer and write about how the Earth moves around the sun, he promptly agrees and goes to research under the basis that "That sounds important!" only to be seen in the end of the episode running back to where the Squad had just gone, screaming, "Wait! I forgot to ask! WHAT IS THIS 'SUN'?!"
- The "what is this 'sun'?" line likely was more poking fun at the area they showed him to be farming in, looking grey, bleak, and a few bits of brimstone away from Mordor. Probably closer to The Dung Ages, though the first line would still be this trope.
- Parodied in Futurama. characters from the future commonly refer to the 20th century as "The Stupid Ages."
- Leela even tells Fry that being a drop-out of a 20th-century college means nothing in their time, so Fry ends up enrolling in a college in order to drop-out properly.
Real Life
- During the Middle Ages in Europe there was an epidemic of cretinism in parts of the Swiss Alps due to iodine deficiency. Nutritional deficiencies in the general population could lead to other forms of mental retardation and physical disability.
- Nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy were probably much more common during times of famine, and the effects both lead and alcohol poisoning were unknown at the time. This could lead to substantially lowered IQ and developmental disabilites.
- It's also been shown that the average intelligence level is rising, so a few hundred years back the average intelligence level was lower, Although perhaps not to the extent seen in fiction.
- Also, this wasn't a blanket increase; it seems to be concentrated
in those with the lowest IQs, "and negligible in the top half." There seems to be no effect on those with very high IQs. And this is not an increase across the board with the tests: it is limited to certain subtests. In fact, the average scores in some subtests have decreased slightly (though overshadowed by large increases in the scores of other subtests).
- Leadership and occupation medieval societies were much more dependent on random factors, like what family they were born into. In today's industrialized countries, people are generally are able seek qualifications and apply for jobs they are talented in and that follows their interests. Therefore, in the everyday working world, the people you run in skilled positions are more likely to be competent and skilled. This does not apply as much to many developing countries. For example, it was only after their humiliating performance in the 6 days war that political generals were replaced by ones trained in military leadership.
- but than again there is some indication that giving out leadership based mostly on who has the biggest mouth isn't the best way either. and obviously having leaders who had been trained as such from earliest childhood had some advantages. and that's not even taking into account that leaders would always have employed aides who could have come from very humble origins.
