[ivanhoe]

Those were the dark ages because previously there was a highly developed civilization with its sophisticated culture, art, science, technology and liberties, and then the western world sunk into an era where almost all of it was temporarily forsaken. It fell into the darkness and chaos (at least from the point of people who lived in the Roman empire). Barbaric tribes raided the lands, many local wars again started since there was no central rule anymore, Catholic church imposed insanely strict rules - pushing art and science knowledge and skills of humanity hundred of years back. Ideas of health and sanitation and hygiene that Romans cared a lot about were practically non-existent, so diseases ravaged the population. And then came the plague and killed more than half of the population and the rest mostly fled to country-side leaving many fortified cities completely uninhabited. It doesn't mean that people were stupid or that they didn't craft pretty things back then, of course they did and the conquering tribes also had their primitive culture and crafts, but it was very limited and heavily sanctioned by church, unlike before, and almost all art was reduced to just religious themes or simple decorations. In Byzantine Empire there was even a brief period of iconoclasm, when it was forbidden to show any humans in paintings, like in Islam. So, yes, maybe it wasn't the world from Mad Max movies and there was no Orcs, but it wasn't that far away from it as the author makes it sound. Just compare it to the renaissance (which was still lagging behind classic era) and you'll see how dark it really was.

[betterunix2]

To be clear, the science, knowledge, and skills of humanity continued to advanced during the European dark ages. Outside of Europe there was the Islamic Golden Age and the Tang Dynasty period of China. The scholarship and science of the Islamic Golden Age actually continued the intellectual development of the Romans (which is why we still have the Elements and other Greek works), probably because the Caliphate had conquered so many important Byzantine urban centers.

[ivanhoe]

Absolutely, Dark Ages is the event local to Western Europe, although IMO the rise of church power had negative impact on the Byzantine Empire too. They've kept the culture and knowledge of Ancient Greece and Eastern Roman Empire, but contributed very little to it, unlike Arab scholars who made a significant progress under the Omayyad caliphate.

[baud147258]

Regarding the catholic Church, one could make the argument that it helped preserve and translated Antic texts in the monasteries. And there are a few point on which society regressed in the Middle Ages: human trafficking for slavery disappeared in the Middle Ages (but not slavery, since one could argue that serfdom is a form of slavery) and reappeared in the age of enlightenment; the place of women improved during that time too.

[ivanhoe]

Church also played important role as a base for scholars, giving smart people the basic education and a chance to live without having to work hard to survive, so they had time to study and learn and think. However, in the beginning monasteries did preserve some knowledge, but severely filtered and censored selection. Also there wasn't that many books there as one might think. When Toledo fell back into the hands of Christians in 11th century its library had (significantly) more books than all of the West Europe together. Only after that the effort on translating books really took off, the first Universities started forming, and the shapes of new civilization started to take shape again.

[ApolloFortyNine]

I agree completely.

Perhaps it could be argued that the Roman Empire was simply ahead of their time, but we went from engineering marvels (of their time) such as the Roman aqueducts [1], the Pantheon [2], or the Colosseum [3], which held 50-80k spectators in 72AD, to very little of note for 100s of years following.

What I find intriguing is that the Roman Empire even 'discovered' steam power in the first century [4]. Unfortunately, they seemed to have only saw it as a toy, rather than realizing its full potential. It's fascinating to me to think about how far ahead we could be had the Roman Empire not fallen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

[hetman]

Roman metallurgy was really not at a point to make practical use of steam power on a scale that made it more effective than using slaves. Crucible steel, a bare minimum, wouldn't come to Europe for over a millennium. They simply did not have the materials engineering to build useful pressure vessels.

People get weirdly romantic about how easy these ideas would have been to implement; there's this weird conception that we should have been able to go from late antiquity Rome to early industrial revolution England in a matter of a couple centuries.

This ignores two things. First executing seemingly simple ideas can still require incredible expertise in a range of fields. Nuclear bombs are conceptually simple but building them still seems to require the economy of a nation state.

Second, Roman knowledge wasn't lost. It was all still there in the Byzantine Empire yet strangely they weren't sending rockets to the moon in the 1200's. The centres of knowledge simply migrated, and in every place knowledge grew and expanded. Whether work by Byzantine or Muslim scholars, science wasn't put on pause and without their contributions, we would not have advanced to where we are today.

[ApolloFortyNine]

Nowhere did I say it would be easy.

Just as far as anyone can tell, they never realized the 'toy' could have a real world use.

Had they thought of an application, they could work on making it possible. They thought it was just a parlor trick.

>Second, Roman knowledge wasn't lost. It was all still there in the Byzantine Empire yet strangely they weren't sending rockets to the moon in the 1200's.

Seriously, what the fuck, why are you attacking me.

[baud147258]

> very little of note for 100s of years following.

I'd say that the cathedrals are something of note.

[Bayart]

What "held science back" was the obsession with sticking to Greek dogma.

Health and sanitation degraded with the Renaissance more than anything (which WAS a regression in many aspects). Before that the general practices hadn't much changed since Roman times, save for infrastructure gradually getting worse.

And it's not like the Ancient world was immune to massive plagues, it's just not part of our collective imagery anymore.