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Most of the time historians use the phrase 'Dark Ages', nowadays, they mean the time from roughly the mid-sixth century to about Charles Martel, where there are
by caiocaiocaio 7y ago
Most of the time historians use the phrase 'Dark Ages', nowadays, they mean the time from roughly the mid-sixth century to about Charles Martel, where there are only a handful of written and architectural records remaining, almost all from the margins of Europe. His examples are mainly before or after that time period.
But even accepting his much more broad time period - and one of his examples is more than 100 years after the time period he himself defined at the beginning - he offers very little evidence that isn't extremely well known to anyone with a passing knowledge of that time period. Plus, his examples are literally hundreds of years apart. It's pretty disingenuous to claim the society that produced the tomb of Childeric I is the same society that produced some paintings roughly 800 years later.
- astrodust 7y agoThere's probably more records remaining than we realize because of the rampant recycling of old parchment.
- FabHK 7y agoPalimpsests are well understood and mostly accounted for, I'd have thought? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest
- astrodust 7y agoI'm not sure you can fully account for them, that would involve a staggering amount of specialized scanning.
- ganzuul 7y agoOr they started using papyrus, which does not age well. AFAIK the 'Dark Ages' refer to our lack of records only, and the rest is misunderstanding.
- astrodust 7y agoWhat was the prominent writing material in that age? Parchment has been around since basically forever since, like vellum, it's just animal hide.