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Comment by jlawson | Hacker News Reader

Make a list of philosophers, writers, thinkers, playwrights, storytellers, and inventors from western civilization. Chart them out according to their date of writing. See that big gap between the end of the Roman Empire and the middle ages? That's the dark ages, and that's why it's called dark.

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.

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A dark age for a small part of Europe. Italy sure took a hit. Spain maybe (can anybody from there confirm / refute?). France probably not (Charlemagne). Germany probably not (the Holy Roman Empire.) Anything south or east of western Europe kept going on unaffected or profited from the sudden weakness of the former powerful neighbor.

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.

Basically anywhere that was the frontier of the roman empire benefited when it collapsed since the Roman empire intentionally spent a lot of effort limiting development of other states on its borders lest they become enemies.

Only because we somehow don't count the Byzantine empire (actually the Roman Empire) as western.

It’s called the Eastern Roman Empire for a reason.

It's not because it's not part of western culture. Is Eastern France part of the west?

Every place is west of somewhere else.

Western culture comes from the Western Roman Empire.

I don't think the genealogy is that convenient - the Eastern Roman Empire arguably has a stronger claim to being the successors of "The Greeks" that are often claimed to be the root of "Western" civilization than any place in Western Europe. Constantinople became the capital of the entire Roman Empire by 324 and the importance of the West (and Rome itself) for the empire dwindled already hundreds of years before the official "fall" of the Western Empire (which is arguable, among other things, because the "Gothic" king Theodoric received the official Western imperial regalia from the Eastern Emperor, after Odoaker had sent them to Constaninople when he deposed Romulus Augustulus). The Gallic provinces even spent some time as an independent Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century.

In the end, the modern name of "Byzantine" seems to be misplaced - these people were the Romans.

They were Romans... but that doesn’t make them Westerners. It’s true that the notion of Occidental culture is not purely geographical (see Al-Andalus, which had nevertheless some influence in Spanish culture). Should we consider “occidental” the Bulgarian or Roman Empires from one thousand years ago? You may want to do so, but then you may be surprised that they are “somehow” not usually considered as such.

or The Arab Scholars

The term applies to Europe. It does not apply to the Middle or Far East, or the rest of the world. And even then it mostly only applies to Western Europe.

Not dark, double plus un-bright.

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