9 ms·

Were There Dark Ages?

54 points by megaman22 9y ago

HarryHirsch 9y ago
In the West we must give thanks to the Irish monasteries, where manuscripts were preserved that were lost in the rest of Europe to the chaos of the Völkerwanderung, and to Charlemagne, whose advisor Alcuin brought the knowledge back from his Islands. Heinrich Böll called Ireland "Europe's burning heart". Nonetheless, the amount of literature lost in Late Antiquity is staggering.
MichaelMoser123 9y ago
it did take several centuries to create a framework for economic cooperation that works for large geographic areas and that was not based on the classical Greek regime of slavery (that might work as a summary). For an individual of low birth serfdom seems preferable to slavery, however it must be more difficult to organise a 'big' economy on top of that The western Roman empire needed grain from North Africa and the Middle East - it needed ships to transport all that and would pay with silver from Spanish mines - you need a slave regime to maintain all that. A system with more independent actors that achieves the same level of trade / cultural exchange is inherently more complex (needs more complex system of laws, finances, everything) , but is in turn more scalable. I think Europe 'won' because it was a distributed system. A country/ruler can go bad, but as a whole connected by trade and cultural ties it kept going further (each ruler had to keep up if not to be swallowed by the neighbours) . However big unified realms like China or Russia all rise and fall as one entity - and it takes longer to recover from a big crisis.
vacri 9y ago
Meh. In Roman times, France, Germany, Spain, and the British Isles were all relative backwaters (Germany not even that) that didn't have much innovation anyway, so considering those places 'darker' in 500-1000CE is somewhat misleading. Culture, money, and learning was in the central mediterranean and eastern Roman empire.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  >so considering those places 'darker' in 500-1000CE is somewhat misleading Standards of living declined dramatically, war and violence were more widespread. Most people would call that darker.
benbreen 9y ago
Disclaimer: am an historian and agree with the basic premise of OP. Without a doubt, it would be preferable to have been born in 100 CE as opposed to 800 CE, in most parts of Christian Western Europe. But I think he dismisses point #1 far too hastily. Go a little bit south of the Visigoths, and you have one of the world's largest libraries to date and a city to rival ancient Athens in size (Muslim Cordoba). The point I try to make when I teach this stuff is not that there was no period of decline in Christian Western Europe after the fall of the Western empire. That's a given. But the culture of the Greeks and Romans also had a home in places like Morocco, Afghanistan and Egypt. Those places were doing great during the "Dark Ages" and were just as much the inheritors of the Classical world as, say, Germany and Ireland. In other words: fixating on a Dark Age that only befell something like 1/4 of the zone of Greco-Roman influence gives a misleading impression because it imposes much more modern geographic boundaries. Many of those "lost" classical texts rediscovered in the Renaissance were still readily available in places like Isfahan and Shiraz. Likewise with population: I would wager that, taking a century-level view, the regions encompassed by Alexander's empire increased steadily in urbanization and GDP from his time to that of the Mongols.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  > I would wager that, taking a century-level view, the regions encompassed by Alexander's empire increased steadily in urbanization and GDP from his time to that of the Mongols. There is evidence of a medeival decline, even in those areas, although obviously not as bad. In "Why The West Rules, For Now", Ian Morris defines "The West" very broadly, and definately includes everything you are talking about. He then comes up with various metrics which are not averages, but which focus the most successful part of the region (e.g. population of the biggest city). Not surprisingly, the most successful parts of the west by his reckoning, were in the Islamic world during the middle ages. But even then his overall metric shows a medeival dip for the west, which his "east" (aka China) did does not see.
  - benbreen 9y ago
    Before the Mongol invasions? That would surprise me, if so. Would be interested to see his evidence, if anything from the book is online.
Taniwha 9y ago
To be fair WW1 wasn't invented until WW2 came along, before that it was mostly the "Great War"
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
boomboomsubban 9y ago
"The Dark Ages" is one facet of the extreme Western Europe focus on history taught in much of America and presumably Europe. I had lessons on Greece and Rome, then on the Norman invasion. Everything I was taught has this extreme slant, but combined with learning almost nothing about anywhere during the Dark Ages you're left thinking nothing happened. So yes, if you're goal is an exclusively Christian Western Europe focused view of history, the term is fine. If that isn't your stated goal, why use it over Early Middle Age?
- smsm42 9y ago
  That sounds like saying "well, if you only care for Russia, Ivan the Terrible is surely an appropriate term, but he wasn't particularly terrible for Africa or Americas, so using this nickname betrays you are exclusively interested in only Russian history and don't care about the rest, otherwise you'd call him Ivan the Fourth Vasilyevich!". Doesn't sound very convincing to me.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    You're arguing from a position of someone with some history knowledge, which is not the problem. Knowing that Ivan the Terrible was a Russian Tsar is uncommon, and if he comes up you probably will be exclusively focused on Russian history. People don't know a ton about the Dark Ages either, but "Rome collapsed leading to the Dark Ages," and "The Discovery of America/the Renisance/The Scientific Revolution led us out of the Dark Ages" are often things you will have heard. And given the context you can hear them, it's not clearly referring to Western Christian Europe.
    - pwinnski 9y ago
      That non-historians often misunderstand the shape and scope of the Dark Ages doesn't seem like a problem of definition, but of widespread ignorance. People who elevate the discovery of America, the renaissance, or the scientific revolution to the degree you describe are not going to be dissuaded by any sort of renaming, because those views aren't factually based in the first place.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
otabdeveloper1 9y ago
Ctrl-F "Byz..." Ctrl-F "Consta..." No offense, but this dude should stop posting anything history-related. Historical memes aren't history.
- AndrewDucker 9y ago
  The linked article explicitly makes this point: "Every other historical age name is instantly understood by everyone to refer to both a time and a place. [..] let’s just agree to call it the Western European Dark Ages, as long as we can also agree it existed and was bad."
  - otabdeveloper1 9y ago
    No, let's not. Talking about the Dark Ages and failing to mention the Eastern Roman Empire is like talking about the Cold War and failing to mention the USA. It means that the article is a kaleidoscope of mismatched, unconnected memes instead of something holistic and grounded in reality. Some reality-based facts: a) The western part of the Roman Empire collapsed a few centuries prior to the fifth century. b) The southern shore of the Mediterranean and the Middle East collapsed during the Muslim invasions. (And never recovered, even to this day.) c) The eastern part of the Roman Empire only started collapsing during the 13th century, give or take. d) The flow of civilization from the eastern part to the western parts of the Roman Empire was blocked by Muslim piracy. (There is no overland route between Italy and Greece.) e) The German-speaking parts of Europe were never any part of any Roman Empire, and saw no collapse. (Only improvement.) f) Spain has its own history and its own historical cycles.

54 points by megaman22 9y ago

In the West we must give thanks to the Irish monasteries, where manuscripts were preserved that were lost in the rest of Europe to the chaos of the Völkerwanderung, and to Charlemagne, whose advisor Alcuin brought the knowledge back from his Islands. Heinrich Böll called Ireland "Europe's burning heart". Nonetheless, the amount of literature lost in Late Antiquity is staggering.

MichaelMoser123 9y ago

it did take several centuries to create a framework for economic cooperation that works for large geographic areas and that was not based on the classical Greek regime of slavery (that might work as a summary). For an individual of low birth serfdom seems preferable to slavery, however it must be more difficult to organise a 'big' economy on top of that The western Roman empire needed grain from North Africa and the Middle East - it needed ships to transport all that and would pay with silver from Spanish mines - you need a slave regime to maintain all that. A system with more independent actors that achieves the same level of trade / cultural exchange is inherently more complex (needs more complex system of laws, finances, everything) , but is in turn more scalable. I think Europe 'won' because it was a distributed system. A country/ruler can go bad, but as a whole connected by trade and cultural ties it kept going further (each ruler had to keep up if not to be swallowed by the neighbours) . However big unified realms like China or Russia all rise and fall as one entity - and it takes longer to recover from a big crisis.

vacri 9y ago

Meh. In Roman times, France, Germany, Spain, and the British Isles were all relative backwaters (Germany not even that) that didn't have much innovation anyway, so considering those places 'darker' in 500-1000CE is somewhat misleading. Culture, money, and learning was in the central mediterranean and eastern Roman empire.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>so considering those places 'darker' in 500-1000CE is somewhat misleading Standards of living declined dramatically, war and violence were more widespread. Most people would call that darker.

benbreen 9y ago

Disclaimer: am an historian and agree with the basic premise of OP. Without a doubt, it would be preferable to have been born in 100 CE as opposed to 800 CE, in most parts of Christian Western Europe. But I think he dismisses point #1 far too hastily. Go a little bit south of the Visigoths, and you have one of the world's largest libraries to date and a city to rival ancient Athens in size (Muslim Cordoba). The point I try to make when I teach this stuff is not that there was no period of decline in Christian Western Europe after the fall of the Western empire. That's a given. But the culture of the Greeks and Romans also had a home in places like Morocco, Afghanistan and Egypt. Those places were doing great during the "Dark Ages" and were just as much the inheritors of the Classical world as, say, Germany and Ireland. In other words: fixating on a Dark Age that only befell something like 1/4 of the zone of Greco-Roman influence gives a misleading impression because it imposes much more modern geographic boundaries. Many of those "lost" classical texts rediscovered in the Renaissance were still readily available in places like Isfahan and Shiraz. Likewise with population: I would wager that, taking a century-level view, the regions encompassed by Alexander's empire increased steadily in urbanization and GDP from his time to that of the Mongols.

adrianratnapala 9y ago
> I would wager that, taking a century-level view, the regions encompassed by Alexander's empire increased steadily in urbanization and GDP from his time to that of the Mongols. There is evidence of a medeival decline, even in those areas, although obviously not as bad. In "Why The West Rules, For Now", Ian Morris defines "The West" very broadly, and definately includes everything you are talking about. He then comes up with various metrics which are not averages, but which focus the most successful part of the region (e.g. population of the biggest city). Not surprisingly, the most successful parts of the west by his reckoning, were in the Islamic world during the middle ages. But even then his overall metric shows a medeival dip for the west, which his "east" (aka China) did does not see.
- benbreen 9y ago
  Before the Mongol invasions? That would surprise me, if so. Would be interested to see his evidence, if anything from the book is online.

Taniwha 9y ago

To be fair WW1 wasn't invented until WW2 came along, before that it was mostly the "Great War"

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

boomboomsubban 9y ago

"The Dark Ages" is one facet of the extreme Western Europe focus on history taught in much of America and presumably Europe. I had lessons on Greece and Rome, then on the Norman invasion. Everything I was taught has this extreme slant, but combined with learning almost nothing about anywhere during the Dark Ages you're left thinking nothing happened. So yes, if you're goal is an exclusively Christian Western Europe focused view of history, the term is fine. If that isn't your stated goal, why use it over Early Middle Age?

smsm42 9y ago
That sounds like saying "well, if you only care for Russia, Ivan the Terrible is surely an appropriate term, but he wasn't particularly terrible for Africa or Americas, so using this nickname betrays you are exclusively interested in only Russian history and don't care about the rest, otherwise you'd call him Ivan the Fourth Vasilyevich!". Doesn't sound very convincing to me.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  You're arguing from a position of someone with some history knowledge, which is not the problem. Knowing that Ivan the Terrible was a Russian Tsar is uncommon, and if he comes up you probably will be exclusively focused on Russian history. People don't know a ton about the Dark Ages either, but "Rome collapsed leading to the Dark Ages," and "The Discovery of America/the Renisance/The Scientific Revolution led us out of the Dark Ages" are often things you will have heard. And given the context you can hear them, it's not clearly referring to Western Christian Europe.
  - pwinnski 9y ago
    That non-historians often misunderstand the shape and scope of the Dark Ages doesn't seem like a problem of definition, but of widespread ignorance. People who elevate the discovery of America, the renaissance, or the scientific revolution to the degree you describe are not going to be dissuaded by any sort of renaming, because those views aren't factually based in the first place.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

otabdeveloper1 9y ago

Ctrl-F "Byz..." Ctrl-F "Consta..." No offense, but this dude should stop posting anything history-related. Historical memes aren't history.

AndrewDucker 9y ago
The linked article explicitly makes this point: "Every other historical age name is instantly understood by everyone to refer to both a time and a place. [..] let’s just agree to call it the Western European Dark Ages, as long as we can also agree it existed and was bad."
- otabdeveloper1 9y ago
  No, let's not. Talking about the Dark Ages and failing to mention the Eastern Roman Empire is like talking about the Cold War and failing to mention the USA. It means that the article is a kaleidoscope of mismatched, unconnected memes instead of something holistic and grounded in reality. Some reality-based facts: a) The western part of the Roman Empire collapsed a few centuries prior to the fifth century. b) The southern shore of the Mediterranean and the Middle East collapsed during the Muslim invasions. (And never recovered, even to this day.) c) The eastern part of the Roman Empire only started collapsing during the 13th century, give or take. d) The flow of civilization from the eastern part to the western parts of the Roman Empire was blocked by Muslim piracy. (There is no overland route between Italy and Greece.) e) The German-speaking parts of Europe were never any part of any Roman Empire, and saw no collapse. (Only improvement.) f) Spain has its own history and its own historical cycles.