3 ms·
Why Was 900 Years of European History Called ‘The Dark Ages’?
- webmobdev 5y agoI remember reading that one of the reasons Genghis Khan ignored Europe was because he considered it an economically and culturally backward region. And in many ways that might have actually helped Europe to emerge out of the "dark ages" as they didn't lose a section of their population to him, and still got access to knowledge and technology through trade with the Mongol empire that didn't care about them. While western history doesn't like to acknowledge it for political reasons, compared to the flourishing science, culture and statecraft that was seen with the rise of the Islamic empire, Europe was then more like a "developing" nation than a "developed" nation (to use modern economic parlance).
- WalterGR 5y agoThere are some pretty fun conspiracy theories about the Dark Ages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko) A variant, or generalization, of the Phantom time hypothesis (to be clear, a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact) is that the reason 'so little' happened during the Dark Ages is that they didn't actually exist. That is, some number of centuries between the 5th and 14th were added to the calendar, but didn't actually happen.