4 ms·
> It saddens me greatly if it's all been whitewashed down to "Dark Ages wrongspeak, Early Middle Ages rightspeak" and "Middle Ages backwards, Renaissance forwar
by Chathamization 3y ago
> It saddens me greatly if it's all been whitewashed down to "Dark Ages wrongspeak, Early Middle Ages rightspeak" and "Middle Ages backwards, Renaissance forwards" today because that is so grossly worthless.
It always is alarming how often you see people say "smart people don't say X anymore, smart people say Y now," and a large segment of people jumps on board without any critical thought. It's not that criticism of the term is entirely without merit, but such criticism could be applied to all simplistic labels for historical epochs. Yet you don't see people take such issue with terms like "Bronze Age Collapse," because these comments aren't coming from a consistent intellectual framework, but rather from people mindlessly repeating a shibboleth.
- ummonk 3y ago> Yet you don't see people take such issue with terms like "Bronze Age Collapse," because these comments aren't coming from a consistent intellectual framework, but rather from people mindlessly repeating a shibboleth. And because medievalists are personally invested in pushing the relativist notion that the early medieval period was just as sophisticated as the Roman Empire that preceded it.
- Apocryphon 3y agoThe Dark Ages were dark for a segment of Europe. The Roman Empire was still going strong in the east. The Bronze Age Collapse happened across a much larger area.
- Chathamization 3y agoYou seem to be confused. The Bronze Age Collapse refers to events mostly centered in the Eastern Mediterranean, even though there were impacts elsewhere. The Dark Ages refers to events mostly centered in the Western Mediterranean as well as Western Europe, even though there were impacts elsewhere.
- Apocryphon 3y agoBronze Age Collapse includes the Near East all the way to the Caucasus.
- Chathamization 3y agoRoughly the area of the Bronze Age Collapse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#/media/File:Bronze-age-collapse.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#/medi... Roughly the area of the Dark Ages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period#/media/File:Invasions_of_the_Roman_Empire_1.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period#/media/File:I... If anything, the area of the Dark Ages looks to be larger than that of the Bronze Age Collapse. But either way, they're both referring to events that happened within a specific geographic area.
- ummonk 3y agoWell, the Assyrian Empire was doing better than ever after the Late Bronze Age Collapse.