The dark ages were anything but dark.
Ancient Europe was anything but primitive.
And yet it’s so rarely discussed in the mainstream.
So you're not really filling me with confidence about your idea here. Perhaps you can provide some sort of evidence?
Would you mind being a little clearer about what it is you’re saying here?
The period is only called dark age in English for what it’s worth, that should make it pretty obvious it’s not a universal understanding of that era
After the fall of the Roman empire primitive religion came to rule Europe. The science the Greeks gave Europe were lost or stagnated, and literacy was almost exclusively the domain of the church. Europe regressed, while the Islamic world preserved the Greek science texts and China thrived (inventing gunpowder and money to start with).
Everything is named by comparison, and we compare that age to the age of enlightenment. I don't care how unpopular it is to say it out loud, it's the literal, provable, and easily verified truth that Europe during that time was an age of intellectual darkness.
I get that you want to bash Christianity, but... it's not like it was less progressive than worshipping force-of-nature gods with a propensity for rape and petty revenge.
Not at all. The dark ages were dark. Pretending like they weren't because of your religious choices is just intellectually dishonest, regardless of your faith.
Were they dark because religion was in charge? Yes.
Atheists have perpetrated their fair share of horrors (and then some) as well. So have most/many other religions.
Using weak language to avoid having to consider the horrors of the past helps no-one except those who wish to repeat those horrors.
My objection is not to Christianity, it is to revisionists who want to pretend like Christianity didn't already have a go at being in charge or forget the monstrosity of what happened when it was.
Some people also interpret some symbols on mammoth tusks going back 50k years as writing but that's a stretch IMO.
It's clear by the number of symbols it's a writing system of sorts (proto-writing). It could definitely be pictograms (probably IMO), but then again, cuneiform, hieroglyphics and Chinese writing all started as pictograms as well.