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By the way, do you have anything to do with the article you've linked? Because the "when Europe was experiencing its dark ages, these collections were already w
by gngeal 13y ago
By the way, do you have anything to do with the article you've linked? Because the "when Europe was experiencing its dark ages, these collections were already well established" is complete nonsense. "The Dark Ages" refers to a period in the European history that ends with the end of the 10th century and that is commonly referred to as Early Middle Agen in modern historiography. Wikipedia claims that Timbuktu became a permanent settlement in the 12th century. By then, Europe had at least a few fledgling universities. So no, no Dark Ages here.
Obviously, that doesn't diminish the value of the effort (and, I hope, the eventual schievement), but whenever I see claims like that I cringe. So many people have so little notion of history... (I blame in on the Renaissance people, they were the ones who tried to blacken (pun intended :-)) the previous centuries so that they could feel good about the world they remade for themselves. And then the term got stuck.)
- scarmig 13y agoI'm getting a bit off topic here, but the Dark Ages is a deeply interesting invention. It simultaneously allows for linear, teleological progression, from a dark pit of despair to the brilliant shining world of today; while also allowing for a Roman-ticized past that we can imagine ourselves as having fallen from. But most people were probably better off in the "Dark Ages" than in Roman times. And perhaps the darkest period of European history isn't something buried a thousand or two thousand years ago but something that happened in living memory.
- gngeal 13y agoIt's sort of nicely ambiguous. If you hate the period (some people do, the Renaissance guys obviously did), you can interpret it as "the time when people were in the dark (about stuff)". If you love it (I do, for a plethora of reasons, as do many contemporary historians, now that our reconstruction shows that the life of the people in that period was as rich and study-worthy as any other historical period), the obvious interpretation is "the the time we've been in the dark about for quite some time (i.e., due to scanty records)". To me, it always seemed that in the provinces, quite little has changed after the end of the 5th century from the POV of your ordinary peasant. The more remote provinces have never been that much urbanized to begin with, and the non-Roman east of Europe didn't notice a thing anyway.
- bmmayer1 13y agoI am volunteering my time to build the site and manage the tech, payment processing, etc. Thanks for the note, I'll pass it on.