I'm having trouble understanding the thrust of your argument

Think of it as a rebuttal to the claim that Medieval Europe was "one of the most regressive periods of human history".

One definition has the Medieval period spanning the 5th to the 15th century. In the approximately thousand years before that, you have the destruction of the Temple, the Babylonian exile, one pillow talk away from annihilation under Xerxes, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Great Revolt, the Bar Kokhba revolt, the destruction of the Second Temple and the depopulation of Judea. The 500 or so years after that require little introduction, except to note that the reemergence of Islamic fundamentalism in response to Ottoman setbacks against European powers (and later the formation of the state of Israel) resulted not only in mass killings and expulsions of Jews, but also in the drastic decline, bordering on eradication, of Jewish communities in the Muslim world.

The Medieval period was preceded by despotism and succeeded by absolutism and totalitarianism, so it just sounds weird and perhaps a little hyperbolic (even from a Jewish perspective) to hear it described as "one of the most regressive periods of human history". Most means >50%, so I guess I'm just wondering which two or more periods it's more regressive than:

• 1500-500

• 500-500

• 500-1500

• 1500-present