The Redemption of Time (The Three-Body Problem Series Book 4)

by Baoshu

the year 1453, Constantinople fell to the forces of the Ottoman Empire, thereby extinguishing the Eastern Roman Empire, which had lasted more than a thousand years. As the fortress of Europe fell, the entire continent trembled before the might of the Ottoman invaders. “No one at the time could have thought that this tragedy would turn out to be the catalyst for the rebirth of Europe and the beginning of modern civilization. Many scholars from Constantinople fled to Western Europe, bringing with them the best that Hellenistic-Roman culture had to offer and facilitating the start of the Renaissance. Also, since the Ottoman Empire lay between Europe and Asia, European merchants had to find new ways to travel to India and China, thereby opening the Age of Exploration. Only a century later, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English explorers had already circumnavigated the globe, creating in the process a new civilization capable of wonders that would have been unimaginable to the Romans, let alone the denizens of the Middle Ages.