Exactly... 1050 a.d. is still considered to be the dark ages. When Rome fell, Europe languished for hundreds of years, while the Arab world made scientific and technologial advances. Not a pleasant thought or premise, but it is the truth.
It also goes to show that the development of knowledge is a human endeavour, not the special purview of some subset of humanity, and that, at different points in time, most major cultures have contributed to the advancement of the human species, even though, at the same time as they were making their contribution, the same culture engaged in other activities that were less than admirable. For example, at the same time that they were developing the administrative state, and things like mathematics, literature, and art, the Persians and the Turks were engaged in substantial slave-holding and slave trading, as well as castration. The interesting thing is that the development of the eunuch caste was, in part, a way of responding to the wayward-agent problem and ensuring that those individuals entrusted with running the high levels of the sultan's government did not have the familial incentive to divert state resources to the aggrandizement of their offspring - by making it literally impossible for them to have offspring.
