you really are clueless. try history 101…in your case 000001

right4life

I believe MB4 is handling the evolution issue just fine, but I have to address this. DaveS is quite correct. The term “Dark Age” was originally coined by Petrarch in the 1330’s to describe the state of literature compared to the height of Greco-Roman output. That term was borrowed by historians of later eras who regarded the whole period as backward and uncivilized.

However, in the last few decades, historians specifically use the term Dark Age in reference to the way the period seems “dark” to us because so few records survive from the time. Across Europe from about 500 AD to around 800 AD (the rise of the Caroligians), very little is known about the realities of life, or how the last of the independent Roman manors fit into the new society, or how the barbarian tribes settled and began the process of becoming tied to the land. We know generally what happened on a large scale, but as there was almost no written output or major works of art that have survived, the details escape us. In those terms, when studying European history, it basically “stops” shortly after the acension of Odoacer, and resumes again with the coronation of Charlemagne, expands with the Norman conquest of England, and the breakup of the Carolingian Empire into more modern shapes… but when historical records resume in force, Europe is a wildly transformed place.

E1701 on June 28, 2008 at 6:44 AM

I doubt the people of that era, who produced things like the book of kell, would agree. and how did those poor simple barbarians found Oxford university…while at the same time fighting a muslim invasion from the south, and a viking invasion from the north?

Did you even bother to read what I wrote? Your whole demeanor in this thread suggests you approach other people’s arguments from an “I reject your reality and substitute my own” angle. I *repeat*:

Historians from the Renaissance onward tended to regard the interregnum after the fall of Rome as a “dark age” because they saw it as a barbarous period of decline and stagnation.

*However*, modern historians do *not* regard the period as such, but in fact do consider it an interregnum between the fall of Rome and the rise of medieval European societies. Works such as the Book of Kells, and other illuminated manuscripts, as well as the construction of many of the basic forms of medieval castles argue that the era is much more complicated than that. Therefore, when referring to the period as the Dark Age in the last several decades, the reference is to the lack of evidence and records that survived from the period, *not* from some elitist standpoint.

Do read for comprehension please.

And I would not recommend you start on Muslim invasions and Viking invasions – “viking” is actually more of an occupation than a specific group of people, and essentially referred to pirates and corsairs. Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and British vikings struck all along northern Europe, and sailed up rivers as far as Paris. And when they stayed in a place, they were the first city-builders since the Romans in the North Sea – do some research on the founding of the major Irish cities… Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, Cork… all Viking settlements. And the Muslim world is not included in the Dark Age, including Spain and southern Italy, because it was *not* a dark age for them, and they again were the major city-builders and society builders in those regions while central Europe was just setting the groundwork of formalized feudalism.

the people who view that era as the ‘dark ages’ do so because of the influence of the church, which they hate.

right4life

Repeat: They refer to it as a dark age because our knowledge of the era is *dark* thanks to a lack of records. What little does remain is in the form of monastic preservation, material stored in the relative safety of the Vatican, and scraps of information about royal bloodlines and a few battlefield testimonies (many of which come from the Muslims, not the Europeans).

and as far as ‘dark ages’ I wonder what people from the so-called dark ages would think of our era?

Uh, they’d desperately rather be here, for the most part. Treating the Dark Ages as though people of the period were inferior and as though anarchy reigned in simply inaccurate and simplistic. But do not for a second think this was a pleasant period of history.

As Rome gradually failed in the West, barbarian tribes closed about it, themselves seeking to escape the dreaded Hun. And in the process, they picked up fragments of what Romans considered civilization, along with Christianity – which, with a message of salvation, acceptance, and love, appealed to a lot of people scrounging their lives out in the ruins of fallen Rome. In 475 AD, the last Roman emperor, the usurper Augustus Romulus, was deposed, and for the first time in Roman history, not succeeded. The German officer Odoacer claimed the title Patrician of the West, but this was a legal fiction, and King of Italy, which was not. What remained of Rome were the great estates of the Roman nobles, where people congregated for defense, support, and food. These estates became the foundation of feudalism and the lord/vassal/serf relationship. The Eastern Empire reconquered Rome briefly around 550 AD, but it was short lived, and did not survive the reign of Emperor Justinian.

By 700 AD, Europe was the world’s largest backwater. Africa was divided into several powerful kingdoms, notably Christian Ethopia under the Axumites, Arabia’s scattered nomads had been united by Islam, and were beginning their long push across north Africa and out towards the Indus. Several major Indian empires ruled beyond the domain of Islam, and Byzantium dominated the near East and the Balkans, and preserved much of Greek and Roman knowledge and culture. Europe, by contrast, was the armpit of the world – barbarian squatters amid the bones of Rome, petty lords and kings, and a handful who aspired to more, but did not yet have the means, and all overseen by the scattered but waxing power of the Bishop of Rome and a religion that was shared across most of the continent (exempting the pagans of Lithuania).

People survived as virtual slaves to their lords, barely scraping by on subsistence farming, and with none of the agricultural innovation Rome had possessed. Technology had regressed more than a century, Greek and Roman science simply did not exist in Europe (except in a handful of generally Church-owned regions, and then as texts, not in practical application). It was a brutal, short, and uncompromising life for 95% of Europeans.

when millions of unborn babies are slaughtered in the name of ‘convenience’

At that period, infanticide was more common than you’d like to think. The Church officially disapproved, but did nothing about it until establishing the first orphanages and allowing monasteries to raise children in the 1300’s. Accounts surviving from the period *after* the Dark Ages suggest that infanticide was widely practiced… abortion was not, because it generally was not possible. Infanticide as common practice in Europe only drew to a close when the Black Death swept through the continent, culling the population so severely that *every* child gained automatic value. I could go into great detail on this if you’d like, but somehow I don’t think you’d listen or care.

and the old are just another inconvenience, to be ‘put out of their misery’ with euthenasia laws?

As opposed to the Dark Ages, where the average life span was so short that you were dead long before you got to be what we would consider “old”, and where those who *did* survive to become old, unless clergy or royals, would at times be driven into the forests for the wolves, or starved to death if the family couldn’t support them without starving themselves.

not to mention the slaughter of millions, because they are somehow less than human or enemies of the state.

Yes, rather than slaughtered by the millions for the petty feuds of minor lords, or for lack of sanitation, or because the Pope decided Jerusalem belonged in Christian hands, or because you weren’t the right type of Christian (I suggest reading up on the sack of Constantinople).

we benefit from the work of our forefathers, and yet we sneer at them, call them ‘barbarians’ when it is really our generations that are the barbarians and are living in dark ages….

right4life

Your grasp of history is both frightening and sad at the same time. By any standard, those of us in any first-world nation live in a Golden Age. The fact that we have the luxury to debate these issues is all the proof any rational person would need on that score.

E1701 on June 28, 2008 at 2:23 PM