> Dice are very rare between 400 and 1100, corresponding to the Dark Ages.
How dark these ages weren't. I'm always a bit sad to see such an obviously polemical term used to describe the period.
How dark these ages weren't. I'm always a bit sad to see such an obviously polemical term used to describe the period.
Some people see something fashionable about rejecting this term because relativism is 'in' these days, but it's perfectly fitting considering the reality. Some times are bright. Some are dark.
Western culture comes from the Western Roman Empire.
In the end, the modern name of "Byzantine" seems to be misplaced - these people were the Romans.
And in Italy that's not the Dark Age, it's Medioevo / Middle Age. No negative connotation in the name even if it's felt as a slump (I'm from Italy) compared to the Roman Empire period and the centuries from 1200 when Italy became again one of the centers of the world. Then the discovery of the Americas didn't play well with being in the center of the Mediterranean Sea.
I’ve always been curious as I studied the Classics (Greece and Rome) and then European History (which in American high schools is 1400AD+).
I have no insight into that intermediate period.
> As the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars began restricting the "Dark Ages" appellation to the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th century),[6][7][8] and now scholars also reject its usage in this period.[9] The majority of modern scholars avoid the term altogether due to its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate.
Relevant excerpts:
> The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's "darkness" (lack of records) with earlier and later periods of "light" (abundance of records)
> As the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars began restricting the "Dark Ages" appellation to the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th century),[6][7][8] and now scholars also reject its usage in this period.[9] The majority of modern scholars avoid the term altogether due to its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate.
Apparently recently there's an aversion to using terms like "dark ages", because they imply the period between antiquity and the renaissance was poorly recorded or objectively worse, and historians shouldn't make value judgements, they should just accurately account for what happened in any given period.
I do get that, and I'm no expert, but... It sure seems to me like things were a whole lot objectively worse during the dark ages. Literacy, trade and all kinds of other objectively good things were replaced by more or less complete chaos, constant fighting between countless warlords, plagues...
Like yes the large empires of antiquity did their own share of fighting and other bad things but regular people within any given empire seem to have had better lives than more or less anyone during the dark ages.
Would love to be corrected because I love learning about history!
We know a lot happened in those times but very little detail - e.g. the location of Brunanburh
It was actually an interesting time to be in Asia around then.
John Green does an excellent "Crash Course History" video on the topic if you're interested.
I guess "The Dark Ages" evoked a more universal idea that there was no progress anywhere while the "Warring States" period is understood to be more local.
But personally, I was bringing to light arguments I've heard against calling it the Dark Ages.
Don't have a personal axe to grind either way.
At the other end of the spectrum of historical imbecilities is the idea that nothing interesting happened between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, which is horse shit of a different nature. The 1200s, right before the black death were an obvious peak of European civilization. They invented all manner of things, started the Cathedral schools, invented the scientific method, made amazing, great and beautiful art, the population of the continent was never larger (until 1840s/industrialization basically) and there was all manner of trade, literature, territorial expansion (reconquest of Iberia, Christianization of the North) and so on. Noticing this makes many people buttmad, I guess because it's so .... Christian. They like to think it's a straight line from Galileo to smug yutz New York Times columnists I suppose.
Most people's views of history is pretty cartoonish; even educated people, and the cartoon they carry around is generally a basket of political ideological nonsense.