Dark Ages : The idea that the decadence and "Fall of the Roman Empire" led to 1000 years of European social and cultural decline and stagnation, in which Christ

Dark Ages : The idea that the decadence and "Fall of the Roman Empire" led to 1000 years of European social and cultural decline and stagnation, in which Christianity and feodalism have played a large part. It goes with "people only bathed once a year etc". You might have seen a largely shared picture showing "Scientific Progress in the West" which shows "progress" vs time. It goes dramatically up during Antiquity, dramatically down between 400 and 1500 and exponentially up afterwards. Even without the ideologies on both sides it's easy to see that defining an entire millenium (and the Renaissabce) as underpinned by a single concept is simplistic. It's a lot of teenage atheists vs people with alt-right-like views and right-wing Catholics. Interesting is that a similar debate was already there at the time ("back when we were pagans we didn't have troubles with Germans pillaging Spain and Tunisia", vs the positive retelling of the Fall of Rome in a Christian light by iirc Augustine). Another factor here is the lack of sources, making a lot of things hard to understand. Wars and political instability are one reason, but also for example the fact that a lot of less-important paperwork was written onto some kind of papyrus, which generally doesn't age well outside of dry deserts, contrary to the better, but much more expensive parchment.