During the High Middle Ages the processes of depopulation, urban regression, and barbarian invasions initiated during Late Antiquity are observed. The barbarous occupiers form new kingdoms, relying on the structure of the Roman Empire of the West. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East, which had been part of the Eastern Roman Empire, became Islamic territories after their conquest by Muhammad?s successors. The Byzantine Empire survives and becomes a great power. In the West, although there have been significant changes in political and social structures, the rupture with antiquity was not complete and most of the new kingdoms incorporated as many pre-existing Roman institutions as possible. Christianity spread throughout Western Europe and there was an outbreak of new monastic spaces. During the 7th and 8th centuries, the Franks, ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, established an empire that dominated much of Western Europe until the ninth century, when it would crumble before the onslaughts of northern Vikings, Magyars of the East, and Saracens of the South. During the Late Middle Ages, which began after the year 1000, there is a marked increase in population in Europe and a revival in trade, as technical and agricultural innovations allow greater productivity of soils and crops. It is during this period that the two social structures that dominate Europe until the Renaissance are initiated and consolidated: seigniorialism - the organization of peasants in villages that pay rent and lend a vassal to a nobleman - and feudalism - a political structure in which knights and other nobles of inferior status render military service to their masters, receiving as compensation a landed estate and the right to collect taxes in a given territory. The Crusades, first announced in 1095, represent Christendom?s attempt to reclaim Muslim domination over the Holy Land, having even established some Christian states in the Middle East. Cultural life was dominated by scholasticism, a philosophy that sought to unite faith to reason, and to found the first universities. Thomas Aquinas?s work, Giotto?s painting, Dante?s and Chaucer?s poetry, Marco Polo?s voyages and the building of imposing Gothic cathedrals are among the most outstanding feats of this period.
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