[beat]

It's not that simple, though. A lot of people - a lot of people - have no idea that during the "Dark Ages", huge swaths of the rest of the world (larger than Western Europe) were going through a Golden Age. It took me rather a while to realize that myself.

And, since WWI was fought in large part over colonial resources and Japan was involved, and since Japan was a major power in WWII (and China was involved as well, if only as Japan's victim), I'm pretty satisfied with "World War" as descriptors.

[losteric]

When you read that chapter in K-12, the textbook was no doubt very clear to put the Dark Ages in context of European history... you, and many other students, simply forgot. An elaborate or nuanced name wouldn't have helped retain time/location.

To be fair, other regions of the world have never heard of "the Dark Ages". History is too big for the layman to avoid simplification.

(although, renaming it "the Lost Ages" seems like it would help clarify things)

[HeWhoLurksLate]

> It's not that simple, though. A lot of people - a lot of people - have no idea that during the "Dark Ages", huge swaths of the rest of the world (larger than Western Europe) were going through a Golden Age. It took me rather a while to realize that myself.

I am one of those people, too- I only found out while watching James Burke's Connections series a few years back, and then reading way too much Wikipedia.