[xg15]

So, I know the meme that the European middle ages were some time of great civilizational downfall ("dark ages") is itself pretty much debunked by now.

But there must have been some kind of change between antiquity and middle ages that caused so much knowledge and international exchange to simply vanish.

I really wonder what exactly went on there.

[chrisco255]

Probably a number of things: the Roman empire collapsed so infrastructure fell to ruin and it became much more difficult to travel and trade across long distances. In addition, with the collapse came a lack of protection from an organized military, Rome itself was sacked multiple times but communities would regularly get invaded and raided by bandits and various tribes and gangs. That's perhaps why we see the development of castles in the middle ages, as a defense mechanism for an age in which each community was more or less on their own.

There was also a major volcanic winter in the 500s that triggered global cooling and caused droughts and starvation.

There was also the Justinian plague in the 500s which was supposedly worse than the Bubonic plague.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536

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

Plagues and droughts have killed off more than a few civilizations, but seeing that these occurred in the wake of the collapse of the Roman empire, it probably accelerated the gradual decline that would have occurred and maybe prevented any sort of recovery.

[manoDev]

Doesn't the fall of the Roman Empire explain it?

At its peak it was a huge unified empire, it should be expected a lot of commerce and knowledge would move freely within its borders. The (slow) fall of the Roman Empire would be like watching the end of civilisation, a dystopian fiction of the survivor-apocalyptic kind.

The following centuries, all the way to our modern age, rulers tried to claim the title of Cæsar (Kaiser, Czar, ...), tried to claim a continuity of the empire (e.g. Nazi's III Reich) or even invoked past roman imagery (the roman eagle ["aquila"] is also present as a symbol of power in the USA [american eagle], in Russia [romanov coat of arms], in Germany [both the nazi's eagle and the bundestag's eagle]).

It's as if the world is still trying to "get over" the end of the Roman Empire.

[xg15]

Yes, that's the "root cause" - but from what I understand, the fall of the roman empire was not a singular event but rather some gradual development. Which is why it seems to be so difficult to define a specific point in time at which the middle ages began [1][2]

I wonder if one could define e.g. an "elephant horizon" - some point in time where, before, how an elephant looks was common knowledge (among the educated) and after which the knowledge was lost or replaced by myths so we got depictions like in the OP.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_antiquity

> Precise boundaries for the period are a continuing matter of debate, but Brown proposes a period between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD.

[2] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ende_der_Antike (German only unfortunately)

[dragonwriter]

> even invoked past roman imagery (the roman eagle ["aquila"] is also present as a symbol of power in the USA

Perhaps even more clearly than the adoption of the American bald eagle echoing the Roman eagle is the bronze fasces in the House rostrum, a direct replication of the Roman symbol of authority from which, also, Italian fascism derives its name.

[3minus1]

I remember a college lecture on this topic and the professor mentioned that Catholic clergy always retained knowledge of reading and writing, but there was 1 or 2 generations in France where the aristocracy couldn't read. I think Charlemagne famously learned to read as an adult. And of course slaves/peasants/serfs never really gained the ability to read until public education came around much later.

[dnautics]

I recommend David Hackett fishers "the great wave" for one take

[xg15]

Sounds interesting. Thanks!