[hodgesrm]

The Dark Ages are something of a misnomer but there does not seem to be any question that levels of literacy, trade, and social organization were lower than the preceding Roman era and than even the latter part of the middle ages after 1200 or so. Indeed much of the 'darkness' is the result of so few written records surviving from the era, which in turn points to far fewer of them being generated in the first place.

The question for anyone trying to roll back the use of the term 'Dark Ages' is what would you call it instead?

[jcranmer]

Early Middle Ages is common, generally dating from "the fall of the Roman Empire" (which is itself a very ambiguous term) to around 1066.

The collapse of the Roman Empire from the 3rd to the 7th century (the process is somewhat more gradual than depicted in popular culture, and the timing depends on where you lived in the Roman Empire) resulted in a serious loss of administrative capability and economic and military coordination within the former empire. The only organization that remained for the Western Roman Empire was the Church, and even this was quite attenuated and didn't have the same reach the Roman Empire enjoyed at its height. The Carolingian dynasty did manage to piece together a successor empire that could have became a revival of the Roman Empire, but the succession practice of divvying up the lands between sons meant that the union didn't last long. On top of this, the Viking raids provoked a challenge that the nascent empires were unable to cope with.

The term Dark Ages arises from the very real decline of writing within Western Europe during this time, given that historians have historically been very biased towards surviving written accounts. Furthermore, for the Protestants in the Renaissance, the fact that the Catholic Church was the primary remaining artifact of Roman rule and therefore the dominant factor throughout most of this era caused them to emphasize the notion that nothing of cultural importance happened in this era, extending it to encompass the entire Medieval period until the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance. In more recent historiography, the Dark Ages has been more compressed in time to encompass parts of Late Antiquity and Early Medieval, with the exact time period more dependent on which region you're talking about.

[btilly]

The Roman Empire's collapse was more drawn out than that.

The Empire split into Eastern and Western empires under Constantine. The Eastern half got renamed to the Byzantine Empire and it lasted until the successful Ottoman conquest in 1453.

This is not to be confused with the Holy Roman Empire which was not holy, nor Roman, nor a true empire. But which survived until Napoleon conquered it in 1806.

[jcranmer]

It's even more complicated than that. The Byzantine Empire was conquered by a group of crusaders in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, with several rump states cropping up. The Empire of Nicaea reconquered Constantinople in 1261, so people usually call it the continuation of the Byzantine Empire. By the 1400s, this Byzantine Empire quite literally existed at the whim of the Ottomans, even if they only entered Constantinople itself in 1453. The third rump state of the Byzantine Empire was the Empire of Trebizond, whose last bastion in Theodoro held out against the Ottomans until 1479.

And, by the way, practically none of these countries were so named to their contemporaries. Basically everyone I've mentioned here considered themselves the Roman Empire.

[HeWhoLurksLate]

so is "the one true UNIX" just history repeating itself?

[bregma]

Not until my hard drive was sacked and some invading license terms started spreading their emacs apostasy.

[_emacsomancer_]

That reminds me of Charlie Stross's metaphor of UNIX as religious sects: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/metaphor...

[heraclius]

The Byzantines not call themselves Byzantines; they considered themselves Roman. See a helpful answer on Reddit¹ which notes an episode in which the Byzantines imprisoned an envoy for calling their emperor that of the Greeks. It would of course be obtuse to call the Byzantine Empire the Roman Empire, but the renaming was after 1453.

¹ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ak435w/did_t...

[rgblambda]

During the Greek war of Independence I believe, children on a small island in the Aegean ran out to see the Greek soldiers who landed. A reporter asked them "why do you want to see them". The children replied "to see what the Hellenes(Greeks) look like". The reporter confused said "but you are Hellenes". The children laughed and said "no, we are Romanes".

[HeWhoLurksLate]

This reminds me a lot of bigger companies (IE Microsoft and their "lost decade") that lose time and experience and product margin to their competitors but that get back after a while- the Romans had so much consolidated power that, if it weren't for people jockeying for power, they could've survived in a shrunken, but still pretty huge form.

[coliveira]

> The Eastern half got renamed to the Byzantine Empire

That's not correct, Byzantine Empire is the modern name we give to that empire during the Middle Ages. They called themselves just Roman Empire, in their minds they were just the same original Roman Empire but headquartered in Constantinople.

[Amezarak]

To be clear, we're the ones that renamed it the Byzantine Empire. As far as the people who lived there were concerned, they were living in the Roman Empire, and they would not have understood in the slightest why anyone would think otherwise. Constantine moved the capital, and there was no disruption in the government and administration of the empire until the Fourth Crusade, although they did lose a tremendous amount of territory in the early Muslim conquests.

[mjw1007]

I think "Late Antiquity" is common.

[hodgesrm]

Late antiquity generally refers to the period around and after the emperor Constantine when the Roman empire started to fray around the edges. It includes writers like St. Augustine who IMHO was as good as any thinker before or after. Not to mention artistic creations like the churches of Ravenna and the laws of Justinian. It's quite different from the period that set in after the invasion of the Lombards (568 AD) and more particularly the Moslem invasions of Africa (630s AD), which severely disrupted communications in the Mediterranean.

[heraclius]

The Pirenne thesis is superficially plausible. However, McCormick’s Origins of the European Economy, which represents perhaps the most innovative approach in dealing with a paucity of evidence to date, suggests otherwise.

“About one in seven eastern travelers I have uncovered set out from the Arab world (49: 14 percent of 340). They were mostly Christian and Hellenic. That so many appear from research geared to the Byzantine and Latin source materials—presumably the least rewarding for the Arab world—challenges the conventional wisdom.” [p. 217]

“Another, less obvious characteristic of some other eastern travelers further undermines the notion of interrupted intercourse, at least between Byzantium and the Arab world. Beyond the travelers who came directly from the Arab world to the west, another substantial group of eastern voyagers (28: 8 percent) also traveled to the Arab world at other times. In all, nearly a quarter of all eastern travelers also came from or went to the Caliphate (77: 23 percent of all eastern travelers).” [p. 218]

Moreover, though I shan’t here give references, a substantial portion of the European economy was driven by the supply of slaves to the Caliphate. But a few more things to note: the Arabs are just as important as the Byzantines insofar as the numismatic evidence is concerned; one writer during this period wrote of relief when arriving in the areas ruled by the Arabs, which were far more orderly—all that was needed was a simple bribe, a welcome prospect compared to the banditry common in other areas; Arab piracy was certainly widespread, but in McCormick’s analysis “very few of our travelers had their voyage interrupted by violence” [170] overall, whether by Arab pirates or other actors.

[hodgesrm]

Thanks, McCormick looks like a really interesting source. This seems to support the notion that however you define 'Dark Ages' the darkness was in Europe, especially the north and west, not necessarily elsewhere.

Conditions were quite the opposite in many lands conquered by Moslem forces, as shown by the art, mathematics, literature, military technology, economics and other evidence characteristic of highly functioning societies. It's not surprising travelers felt safer there. I'm thinking for example of the Umayyad Califate.

[lazyasciiart]

I've never heard that and wouldn't guess that it meant the Dark Ages at all.

[ajross]

It's a real term of art. Some of the distinction is geographic. Taking about "late antiquity" usually means discussing what was happening in central Italy and the Eastern empire, where most people imagine the "dark ages" in western and northern Europe.

[blueline]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_antiquity#Terminology

/shrug

[AstralStorm]

Also "Middle Ages" or "Medieval period". Pretty common though a bit wide.

[FabHK]

In German it's "das Mittelalter", ie middle ages.

[andysomniac]

In UK archaeology, a popular term is "Migration Period"

[dstick]

Middle Ages? Or is that an even broader period?

[jedberg]

"The unrecorded ages"