It’s interesting, isn’t it — nearly a millennium is quite a timescale to consider in terms of potential political, cultural, technological and scientific developments and changes (good or bad...!).
Arguably, the changes to the general experience of day-to-day life for most of the people on Earth between 1000 BCE and 0 CE, or 0 CE and 1000 CE, were actually not all that huge. Various centers of political power and control came and went around the world, with varying rates of growth from rapid burst to slow and steady, and longevity that ranged from decades or less to many centuries. Various cities grew and declined but the basic technology and agrarian way of life was not dissimilar for the large majority of the population.
The changes between 1000 CE and 2000 CE, however, were huge! There was significant acceleration from the second half of that millennium and even more so from fourth quarter of that period. The final century saw previously unimaginable changes which are still ongoing.
What happened between the time of Picard, c. 2400, and the time period that Discovery is now entering? Was there a cultural and technological plateau? We know there was some form of cataclysmic event but that’s not even half the story compared to the events that obviously followed and how societies and systems coped (or didn’t!).
