[smacktoward]

> The true “dark age,” of course, was the early 1940s when, simply as a side effect of industrial killing, great swathes of the past disappeared. One small yet major example—the extraordinary series of paintings of the visions of Hildegard of Bingen, made in the 1170s either by the saint herself or under her supervision, disappeared in the general catastrophe that unfolded in Dresden in early 1945. We only know what they looked like (except from black‐and‐white photos) through accurate and beautiful copies painted by a group of nuns, by sheer chance, in the 1930s.

This feels like a weird argument. Yes, the paintings were lost. But we have tons of documentation about them! We have records of their creation by Hildegard of Bingen. We have photographs and reproductions to tell us (imperfectly, but still) how they looked. We know they were taken to Dresden, and we know when -- 1945. We know that Dresden suffered a devastating firebombing by the Allies in February of that year, and we know that nobody has been able to locate the paintings since that firebombing occurred. In other words, we may not have the paintings themselves anymore, but we can construct a pretty reliable history of them -- what they were, how they were created, and when they were (sadly) destroyed.

That's a very different situation than we're in regarding post-Roman, pre-Carolingian Europe. There are hundreds of years in there where we have practically no documentary evidence for anything. Kingdoms rose and fell, wars were won or lost, languages and faiths adopted or abandoned, and we can't even begin to tell any of those stories today, because nobody was keeping records. Who can say how much art was created and then destroyed in this period that we'll never even be aware existed? Who knows how many geniuses there were whose insights have been lost forever?

None of this is to say that what happened in Dresden in 1945 isn't a tragedy; it absolutely was, and for lots of reasons beyond just the loss of some paintings. But the loss of something that we know existed (and can even look at photographs of!) is very different than destruction so total that it even obliterates the possibility of remembrance.

[acqq]

> That's a very different situation than we're in regarding post-Roman, pre-Carolingian Europe. There are hundreds of years in there where we have practically no documentary evidence for anything.

It is even more specific. Eastern Roman Empire remained functional until it fell to the Ottomans in 1453 AD.

But in Britain there were not even coins between the years 410 and 600 AD:

http://www.numsoc.net/darkages.html

"History has proved time and time again that when money is in short supply – the people turn to a token or obsidional coinage, no matter how base, rather than do without money as a medium of exchange completely. This has been demonstrated by siege coinages, lead tokens, brass farthings and merchants’ tokens over the millennia."

But there was nothing for these two hundred years. Not even foreign coins, and not any kind of substitute.

That's why these years are considered completely dark there. And that's why it looks like a real collapse there. So whenever we speak about some dark ages we have to be aware also about which land area we talk about.

[fallingfrog]

David Graeber’s book “debt: the first 5000 years” has some passages on this. I think they just bought everything on credit, and continued to give prices in denarius even though nobody had any. Then periodically they would settle debts in a circle, so to speak. They also had a system of debt sticks where they would snap a stick in half, each party getting one, then when the debt was settled the “stock” and the “foil” were matched together and discarded. It’s a fascinating system but basically the point of the book was that during large sections of human history coinage wasn’t the method people used to buy things, and right now we’re moving away from coinage again as most people use credit cards and so forth for purchases.

[Balgair]

The Dark Ages were very much regional, with separate areas undergoing their own eras of 'darkness' and losing communication with the rest of the world.

Interestingly, Ireland during the 400's to 600's was something of a bastion of Catholicism and 'western/classical' thought in their monasteries. Even though Britain was very pagan and 'dark', Ireland remained 'enlightened' at this time (though the populace was still very 'dark' and pagan in Ireland).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland_(400%E2%80%...

Under this regional definition of 'dark ages', even today they occur. Lost tribes in the Amazon, the populace of North Korea, very rural towns in Alaska, etc. all can be considered to be in 'dark' ages to some degree or another.

[acqq]

> Even though Britain was very pagan and 'dark', Ireland remained 'enlightened' at this time (though the populace was still very 'dark' and pagan in Ireland).

Do you happen to know something about the coinage in Ireland in that period? Also, searching for the survived original sources in that entry, they are either first half 400, written outside of Ireland, then some written later than 600 AD? Maybe I missed something?

[Balgair]

Sorry, coinage isn't an area of expertise for me. I'd just be googling for any info.

[rgblambda]

In Ireland we were taught in school that coinage was introduced by the Vikings and previous to that was a primitive system of cattle trading.

[z3phyr]

Pagan does not constitute dark. Most of the pagans recorded history when they were in power.

[acqq]

Yes, the term is problematic: "pagan" was traditionally just a derogatory term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism

"The notion of paganism, as it is generally understood today, was created by the early Christian Church. It was a label that Christians applied to others, one of the antitheses that were central to the process of Christian self-definition. As such, throughout history it was generally used in a derogatory sense. - Owen Davies, Paganism: A Very Short Introduction, 2011"

[acqq]

And another quote from the same Wikipedia page:

"The term pagan is not attested in the English language until the 17th century.[24] In addition to infidel and heretic, it was used as one of several pejorative Christian counterparts to gentile as used in Judaism and to kafir ('unbeliever') and mushrik ('idolater') as in Islam.[25]"

[coliveira]

The so-called dark ages are not much worse than other periods of human history when there is were no large government institutions. With the end of the Roman Empire in the west, Europe came to be ruled by local tribes, in the same way that happened throughout history. Europeans demonstrated to be as barbarians as any other group of people in the world that had no strong institutions to protect society from their immediate power urges. It took centuries for larger government institutions to form again.

[wallace_f]

This seems so overly simplistic, and perhaps misleading. Not just because, as evidenced in the article and is consensus among scholars, that the pejorative term, Dark Ages, itself is misleading. But There seems to be so much other blatant evidence which calls your premise into question. After all, Caeser made his name as he led a conquest with what was not fundamentally different to a warring tribe, and marched it back into Rome as a final affront to Cato and the state of Rome.

[UnhelpfulYoda]

Meh, this is just the latest fad with 'scholars' ...the whole thing about how The Dark Ages weren't really dark, has been going on for about 20 years now... there are good reasons that this period is called the dark ages.

I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick.

[wallace_f]

>I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick.

The dark ages I seem to have a more-clear picture of: derth of historical record, rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, technological progress, and unfortunate disease, all each contributed, and amalgamated into the public conscious of defining the era as 'dark.'

The civil war thing is really confusing. I grew up on slavery as the reason, then in uni had a prof tell me it was really about states rights. I've talked to others who had the exact opposite experience. Anyways, it's a super political and emotionally sensitive topic to people... But I had the impression the states rights narrative was not a recent thing.

[gmiller123456]

The idea that the civil war wasn't about slavery is mostly the view pushed by the North before the war. Before the war, there was a balance of slave and non-slave states, and any time they were added, that balance was preserved. Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states, and that would have tipped the balance in congress to anti-slavery. After Lincoln was elected, the states began to succeed, and in their succession documents, they quite clearly stated that it was about slavery. The public position of the North was that they fought to prevent the South from succeeding, and they didn't want to end slavery (followed with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge). And its that attitude that allowed the South, after the fact, to promote the idea that it wasn't about slavery, and the North wasn't about to correct them.

[zaccus]

>Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states

He may have taken a more moderate stance for his presidential campaign, but for most of his political career Lincoln was a hardcore, outspoken abolitionist. Nobody at the time seriously thought Lincoln was OK with slavery; that's why southern states immediately started seceding.

[DFHippie]

This is a speech Lincoln delivered well before he was president:

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper....

This is the Dunning School:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_School

It is Confederate apologia, not Union. It is the origin of the states' rights theory of the Civil War.

[DavidSJ]

The states' rights narrative isn't recent, but my understanding is that it's a very selective reading of history that ignores many of the stated rationales and events leading up to and throughout the war. Yes, war is complicated and slavery wasn't the only factor, but I understand it to have been the predominant one.

Remember that the back-and-forth over federalism and states' rights has been ongoing since forever, and the same people tend to be on opposite sides of that question depending on the matter in question. Thus it's reasonable to ask: states' rights to do what? In the context of that time, the answer was clear.

It does make for a nice fairy tale, though, for whitewashing the past, and it's one someone might believe because their parents told them, and their grandparents told their parents, etc., all the way back to the vanquished generation rationalizing their conduct post-hoc, much as many Nazis did after World War II.

I'm no historian, so take with 0.017 mol NaCl.

[throw0101a]

> Yes, war is complicated and slavery wasn't the only factor, but I understand it to have been the predominant one.

From Mississippi's declaration of secession:

> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.

* https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...

Doing a Ctrl-F and searching for "slavery" gives quite a few complaints (by most of the states) against the Federal government and the North on the subject.

[Marazan]

The state's right they were fighting for was the right to keep slaves.

It is super clear, the states say it in their succession documents.

Claiming it is about abstract states rights and not slavery is Lost Cause revisionism.

[wallace_f]

The Southern States were fighting to keep slavery and they would agree to a ceasefire and to join the union if the north alllowed a constitutional amendment making this clear.

However, people like Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson famously said northern aggression towards the south wasn't about slavery.

So the issue seems to be obviously oversimplified in these internet and media debates.

[pesmhey]

The ‘Obscure’ Ages

[Bayart]

>Europe came to be ruled by local tribes, in the same way that happened throughout history. Europeans demonstrated to be as barbarians as any other group of people in the world that had no strong institutions to protect society from their immediate power urges.

It really wasn't. As Roman imperial faded in, agents that were Roman auxiliaries filled the void with the support and help of local authorities, chiefly senatorial families and the Church (filled with members of senatorial families), which kept being a structuring force for society during lulls in civil government.

Stable government recovered relatively quietly and frankly certain areas were better off in terms of peace after the Western part of the empire « collapsed » than during the strife preceding it. Areas that were really worst off got ravaged by civil war, not tribal violence (such as is the case with Italy).

I recommend Karl Ferdinand Werner's books on the subject, the transition between Imperial Roman Gaul and Frankish(-Roman) Gaul. But his paper La "conquête franque" de la Gaule : itinéraires historiographiques d'une erreur (The "Frankish conquest" of Gaul : historiographical itineraries of an error) is enlightening and short, if you can read French.

The narrative of the Late Antiquity/Early Medieval "barbarian invasions" is known to be complete rubbish, don't fall for it.

[ardit33]

Not correct. They were much worse indeed.

Remember, Romans had a fairly advanced society, and buildings, architecture, and infrastructure. Roads crossing whole regions, (the highways of the time), aqua-ducts, ways to dispose sewage, etc...

This all slowly degraded and eventually disappeared with the fall of the empire.

Stone building were replaced by mud huts, and I don't know about you, but not having running water in your town, or paved roads to the next town or port seem like huge drawbacks to life quality.

The first Anglo-saxons that came in Britania, after the Roman left lived in what you would call downright primitive huts made by either mud or wooden planks with mud in them.

That and the constant warring, in many ways, it was a huge set-back for the people there.

[scarmig]

You can't compare Britain in the post-Roman area with Rome at the height of empire.

London in the "Dark Ages" didn't have aqueducts. But Londinium was part of the periphery of the empire, and it also never had aqueducts. There's not that much information to be gained by cherry picking the elements of the central core of the Roman Empire and asking why they weren't present in far flung areas in the post-Roman era.

Skeletons show that people were relatively healthier (at least in the periphery) after Rome had fallen than when Rome had dominated these regions.

[agent008t]

The more primitive the society, the healthier skeletons you will find. Because in a primitive society only the healthiest and the fittest can survive. Whereas an advanced society can take care of the weak and the sick.

[luk_hol]

That's interesting. But do you have some data to back up your claim or is this just your guess? Because there are two effects at play here: on one hand a kind of a survivorship bias that you mention and on the other hand a positive effect of a healthier environment on a human body. These go against each other and I don't find it obvious to see which one is stronger.

After a quick search I would say the latter is more important here: what we observe from the bones are things like a quality of nutrition (e.g. vitamin deficiencies) or effects of some illnesses. Inadequate nutrition signals poor living condition and illnesses affect even the most "gifted" individuals (don't forget that hardship selects also for other traits than just a good immunity).

[orthoxerox]

I'd wager that if the modern globalized economy were destroyed, people everywhere would become healthier, going from single-crop intensive farming, garment working and assembly lines back to localized farming and manufacturing. The populations would dwindle, of course, but the survivors would be healthier and happier.

[atoav]

It was always my impression that the term “dark ages” was never about quality of life, but created in opposition to the enlightenment (partly because we don’t know much about that age, partly because of the role superstition and belief held in documented cases).

In Austria and Germany most people descripe the Nazi era also as “dark times”, despite there beeing roads built (although the Nazis were so in debt at the beginning of the war already that you can hardly call this a success).

So dark has multiple definitions. I thought the most.common one was about a time where rational thought and humanism didn’t really win, but tribal rivalry (on any scale) and radical beliefs did

[scarmig]

The concept of the Dark Age was, indeed, invented in the Enlightenment, and contemporaneous rhetoric did use it to portray the Enlightenment project in a favorable light as a break from a benighted past.

The issue is that the Enlightenment wasn't a project to move human beings to some better plane, but to rationalize society and its members in a way that made it more amendable to control and planning. And so centralized power could use Enlightenment ideology to eliminate alternative power centers, centralizing power in the hands of a single state that could reorganize society for its own ends.

That itself had pros and cons, with the biggest con being the newfound ability for states to execute projects of mass violence more effectively.

[Gibbon1]

> Stone building were replaced by mud huts, and I don't know about you, but not having running water in your town, or paved roads to the next town or port seem like huge drawbacks to life quality.

I read somewhere that skeletal remains show people got taller after the end of the Roman empire. And then started getting shorter through the Renaissance right up till the agricultural revolution in the early 20th century.

[Bayart]

That's the thing with urbanization : it's great for production and capital but it's terrible for your health. The industrial revolution was very much a low point in human welfare.

[_jahh]

they no longer paid their Roman taxes and could eat more of their own harvest

[ido]

Yet somehow the population still declined significantly[0]?

    The Early Middle Ages saw relatively little
    population growth with urbanization well below
    its Roman peak...Estimates of the total population
    of Europe are speculative, but at the time of
    Charlemagne it is thought to have been between 25
    and 30 million

Where as at its peak the Roman Empire alone had a population of 70 million.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography

[llukas]

> This all slowly degraded and eventually disappeared with the fall of the empire.

BULLSHIT. How on earth you can present blatantly false presumptions as information?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Romanesque_art_and_archite...

"In most of western Europe, the Roman architectural tradition survived the collapse of the empire. The Merovingians (Franks) continued to build large stone buildings like monastery churches and palaces."

BTW we still have Roman aqueducts, roads and bridges all over Europe.

[ardit33]

Read my comment. I specifically mentioned Britannia. The Franks (i.e. Merovingian), had less than 20% of the former Roman Empire in control. About 18%. The rest of Europe was extremely fragmented, and territories changing hands often (and always through war).

Mentioning that there were plenty of building and construction happening in some part, doesn't negate that the rest (80%) was being ravaged and in continuous decline to the point of whole populations being displaced.

Only the Eastern Roman Empire (aka. Byzantine empire), had a unified government structure, yet it was struggling with the Slavic invasions/incursions from the north, and the wars with the Sassanid empire and the succeeding caliphates.

They did attempt to re-unify the empire with the Justinian Restoration (with Belisarious being the main general re-conquering vast territories), but that didn't last long either. As the economy was lagging the region was ravaged by the Black Plague, where it is estimated that 25–50 million people in two centuries of recurrence died, equivalent to 13–26% of the world's population at the time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian

To me, late Antiquity end, and the true dark ages begin after the death Justinian, and the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire to the point that it couldn't defend or keep its territories from the Slavic invasions.

[jschwartzi]

Yeah, I mean it's not as if people haven't learned new things from their conquerors throughout the ages. For a modern example look at Japanese society now versus Japanese society pre-WWII. The US completely remodeled their society. While we have long since handed over control of their government to the Japanese people they continue to have strong Western influences in their buildings, fashion, and culture. It has a distinctly "Japanese" tint to it but if you visit Japan you'll observe largely the same social mores around commerce as exist in the US.

Within that context it's hard to believe that the European tribes simply forgot how to build roads or monuments or architecture after Rome ceased to influence them.

[ghaff]

I think you misread the parent: "The so-called dark ages are not much worse than other periods of human history when there is were no large government institutions." It's not a comparison to the Roman Empire.

[diminoten]

Has anyone else here heard of the historical conspiracy theory (I don't know how else to describe it) that the european dark ages literally never happened, and the Gregorian calendar simply skipped those years entirely?

It's pretty fascinating as a concept, though it hits many obvious pitfalls (what about all the stuff that's said to have happened during those years?!?!) and I'm not versed enough in the "theory" to give it justice.

It's certainly fun to think about, even if it's complete nonsense!

[jonjacky]

You might be thinking of Fomenko's New Chronology, presented in a series of books that were popular in Russia in the 1990s. It sounds very far-fetched:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko)

[nonbel]

I actually thought this on my own after watching some history channel series about the first millennium AD, roman empire, whatever. I was struck at the similarity of some events that were supposedly separated by hundreds of years, almost as if it was the same story told from a different perspective.

Then I found Anatoly Fomenko, Gunnar Heinsohn, Herbert Illig, etc had investigated this.

I'll add another link to the two already shared by sister responses: https://www.q-mag.org/the-1st-millennium-a-d-chronology-cont...

Definitely a fascinating topic. I emerged from that rabbit hole unconvinced but definitely with far more doubt about the reliability of the mainstream chronology.

[edgarvaldes]

The Phantom time hypothesis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis

[drb91]

This is a very specific, narrow interpretation of the dark ages. It is not a good term to use in any circumstance, which the article illustrates well.

Secondly, in the event of societal collapse, I'm not exactly looking for a great work of art. I image we lost far more texts through preventable destruction and lack of preservation than we lost novel texts written during the post-roman european collapse. I think the quote illustrates a meaningful parallel.

> But the loss of something that we know existed (and can even look at photographs of!) is very different than destruction so total that it even obliterates the possibility of remembrance.

Categorically different maybe, but consequentially equivalent. I can rattle off a ton of lost texts, but that's mostly meaningless and these works hold virtually no cultural value compared to works we can actually read and engage with.

[admax88q]

> but that's mostly meaningless and these works hold virtually no cultural value compared to works we can actually read and engage with.

You've basically defined away the problem. If its lost then we can't read and engage with it and therefore has no cultural value.

I mean sure, things we don't have by definition can't contribute to culture today. But that is a useless tautology when talking about lost works.

[chc]

I think you've misinterpreted their point. They were pointing out that whether or not we know the thing existed doesn't change the fact that we don't have it, and it's the fact that we don't have it that prevents it from contributing to culture today.

[drb91]

My point is that it’s the existing that contributes to culture, not knowledge that something once existed.

[UnhelpfulYoda]

San Francisco disproves this thesis. It's impossible to build anything new, because of inane historical significance given to even the most decrepit cow palace or laundromat. I can only pray that San Francisco experiences a "Dark Age" where ugly old crap is replaced with shiny new towers.

[vanderZwan]

Easy there, Le Corbusier[0]. That may be your preference, but others, like me, have seen enough giant glass monoliths to last a lifetime.

Also, are you aware that you're implicitly saying that you would love it if San Francisco was bombed or suffered a big earthquake or some other horrible disaster like that just because you don't like its architecture? I doubt you intended that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier

[z3phyr]

A "Dark Age" means a time where the stuff which is happening is not recorded or documented. It does not mean "Starting from scratch"

[cocochanel]

The Dark Ages are only dark to us.

[z3phyr]

And hence the name. Because there is only us who can name.