These days you can't even say the words 'Dark Age' without some historian (amateur or otherwise) telling you 'Well, they weren't really dark'. Some will say it because everyone else is saying it. Others will point to the archeological and written record discoveries of the last century that have forced most to re-evaluate the era. So its been rehabbed. But does it really deserve the extent of the current rehabilitation? I mean the way you hear it from some corners, there was no societal collapse throughout Europe at all.

But lets face facts: Literacy all but disappeared outside of the monasteries, urbanization receded drastically, trade was a fraction of its former levels, travel and cultural intermingling limited compared to other eras. Your peasants lived lives of chronic ignorance and the nobles received little better. The Greek and Roman Classics were nearly forgotten. Most never saw more than a few miles from their homes. The legal systems were irrational and unsophisticated. While Justinian was laying the foundation for Civil Codes centuries later, much of the rest of Europe had retreated to old tribal practices. Armies of antiquity could reach hundreds of thousands while anything over 10,000 would have been an enormous medieval army.

There was comparatively very little literature and other written records from the era. There was a demographic decline. Limited building projects and cultural and artistic achievements. Technological advances were almost all starting in the East and slowly trickling in. Cities didn't begin to approach the old population levels and sophistication til probably the 18th century. The East to West trend of cultural and technological advancement didn't begin to reverse til the 15th century.

Compared to the eras before and after it, compared to the Arab world, the Chinese Dynasties, the Byzantines...they were a backwater. It was a Dark Age comparatively. This mass academic aversion to the term seems more due to political correctness than actual reality. Recent archeology and unearthed records have helped us re-evaluate the era, but I don't really see where the initial conclusion changes all that much. Maybe it wasn't quite as 'dark' as we thought it was, but it was still pretty bleak.

But than again, I'm one of those amateur history buffs , so who knows. Figured there's alot of smart, learned people here, some of them may even study this shit for a career, so what's your take? Were they dark? How dark? Has all this 'Not so dark' stuff been taken too far? Do I just have a hardon for Rome?

QUOTE (Triskele @ Jan 27 2009, 20.11)

I always figured that "Dark Age" was to somehow contrast with "enlightenment." The pre-enlightened period in which life was more nasty, brutish, and short. Not to mention a very limited amount of education beyond the rich and the clergy who ran everything.

At least according to Wiki, the first written references to a dark age were by Petrarch in the 1330's who saw the period before him (and to some extent, the one he was still in) as a dark age compared to the major achievements of late antiquity. Writers of the early Renaissance thought they had achieved that new modern age and threw off the backwardness of the previous era. Many Enlightenment era writers had a dim view of even the Renaissance era and thought they were the ones ushering in the new age. Perspective I guess.

QUOTE (DanteGabriel @ Jan 28 2009, 20.08)

I suppose part of the question is: how good was daily life for the vast ruck and run of Europeans before the fall of Rome? Were Gaulish or German peasants better off? And I'm also curious how daily life was for citizens of Rome after the empire fell apart? Did civil services stop working? I am frankly very ignorant of those fields of study, and that speaks either to my education or to the lack of written records that EHK mentioned.

Its my understanding that those within the empire were usually pretty Romanized, with access to most of the learning and 'modern' conveniences of the day. Brits even had Baths! (sadly they've yet to rediscover that innovation) Those outside the empire, we're probably in the nasty, brutish, and short territory. But even if it was 'Rome or Barbarism' (no idea on this), Rome covered alot of territory, and one major group doing great works on a massive scale was better than the none that would characterize the post-fall period.

As for the fall, I think something approaching Roman lifestyle continued for a while under the various gothic/vandal kings, but eventually this did die out. I don't believe anything that could even generously be called a civil service continued to exist. Mostly self-sufficient, limited outside contact, basic necessities and little else villages became the standard. And the feudal order we all became familiar with slowly arose. Or something like that.

QUOTE (Ser Reptitious @ Jan 27 2009, 21.12)

I agree with you on the 'Dark Ages' thing. One thing that always baffles me a bit, though, is how the term 'byzantine' is used in a rather derogatory fashion these days, essentially being shorthand for 'outdated'. While the West was very much in the thrall of these dark ages, the Byzantines maintained a significant amount of their classical heritage, and it was in fact the very fall of Constantinople in 1453 that heralded the beginning of the Renaissance in Western Europe, as the fleeing scholars and others brought the classical texts from the conquered city to Italy and other places.

The West disparaging the East (and sometimes vice-versa) is almost as old as history itself. The Greeks thought the Persians (and others further east) decadent, corrupting and deceitful. The crusaders coming east were crude and nearly barbaric. They saw splendor and comfort of the imperial court and thought its leaders pampered and effeminate. They saw the use of politics and diplomacy rather than uncompromising force as duplicitous and untrustworthy. The elaborate sophistication of the empire and its great city were really quite a maze to these barely educated crusaders. To be fair there was a healthy dose of snobbery going back the other way as most Byzantines saw these Latins as uncouth, ignorant barbarians too. But later history that we would read was written by the West. And the stories of the Byzantines, true, untrue and half-true had already been enshrined in the Western European consciousness for quite a while. The Byzantines became a scapegoat for just about every Crusading failure and those stories were spread far and wide. There was just a mass cultural divide.

But perhaps the greatest blame in the modern era lies with Gibbon. Credited as the first modern historian, his Decline and Fall of the Roman empire was HUGELY influential for both our impressions of the era and our general approach to history for quite a while. And he was absolutely brutal in his very brief take on the Byzantines.

QUOTE

The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius [ie., Honorius and Arcadius] marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years in a state of perpetual decay. The sovereign of that empire assumed and obstinately retained the vain, and at length fictitious, title of Emperor of the ROMANS; and the hereditary appellations of CAESAR and AUGUSTUS continued to declare that he was the legitimate successor of the first of men, who had reigned over the first of nations.

There are even juicier quotes, but I can't seem to find them. In either case he's largely credited for stagnating further interest and study in the Eastern Roman Empire for quite a long time.

QUOTE (Zabzy @ Jan 27 2009, 21.29)

I wouldn't necessarily say that the period was devoid of artistic achievements either. Unfortunately, many of the architectural achievements were rebuilt or changed in later times. Again, looking to Byzantium, the Hagia Sophia is from the "dark ages" as is the sublime Mezquita in Cordoba (which was begun in the 600s as a Byzantine church and gradually reworked over the centuries into its present state). The incomparable "Capella Palatina" in Sicily was done under the Normans (in the 1100s). The austerely beautiful St. Germain de Pres in Paris was also begun in the 6th century (though admittedly modified much over the centuries). I hardly need mention the Book of Kells as well. If you include the period through to the Renaissance, you have the gothic cathedrals and various other important illuminated manuscripts.

Pretty sure I mentioned the Muslims and Byzantines. I'm not including them in this 'dark age' because they quite clearly didn't succumb to one. At least nothing on the level of the rest of Europe. They preserved much of their learning, engaged in massive building projects, traded heavily, generated great wealth and artistic, cultural, and technological achievement.

QUOTE (Zabzy @ Jan 27 2009, 21.29)

*I disagree with your original construct placing the Eastern Empire outside of "Europe." I would say one of the fundamental shifts of the "Dark Ages" was from a Mediterranean-based civilization to a continental-based civilization. However, the Byzantine Empire was very much a part of "Europe", up and until its sack by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th Century. The great schism started the divide, but during the time of Justinian, for instance, the schism was not final, and "East" and "West" both religiously and politically had a fair amount of cultural communication. To put it in perspective, Justinian's legal reforms are still used throughout Europe as in many ways they serve as the basis of "Roman" law.

It may have geographically been part of Europe, but I think it was splitting culturally long before the official schism or later Crusading disputes. Even by the time of Justinians attempted reconquest there were stark differences between East and West, from language, to arts, military structure, religious and cultural practices. And those divisions only continued to grow. By the first crusades most of Western Europe viewed the Eastern Empire much as the Greeks did the Persians in antiquity, as a bloated, duplicitous, decadent and effeminate culture. But unlike those greeks, your hairy, smelly crusader had very little reason for his cultural snobbery.

QUOTE (Blauerdrakken @ Jan 27 2009, 21.44)

I just realized that if you swapped a couple of words around in the paragraph I've quoted above, you would be fairly accurately describing present day (and more accurately the not to distant future) conditions throughout North America.

I'm really not seeing that many parallels. Even if America doesn't continue to be the global top dog, that hardly heralds the rapid decline of civilization.

QUOTE (tzanth @ Jan 27 2009, 23.06)

Great topic!

I don't think its merely "political correctness" that refrains historians from calling the period the dark ages. Using a value laden adjective like "dark" prejudices our view of the past and thus biases research into the era regardless of the factual nature of any collapse. Indeed, calling what happened during that time a "collapse" is also problematic as it promotes certain social values over others. Surely, you had a decline in centralized government, the depopulation of urban centers, a shift in trade routes, etc, all of which constituted a collapse of the Roman system. Plenty of individuals at the time, however, were perfectly happy with the changes as they occurred. Indeed, as mentioned by Zazby, some parts of the old Roman empire did perfectly well after its decline. I think its thus better to see the period of a time of changing social systems and shifting power structures rather than as a "dark" age of wide ranging social collapse.

That sounds like a whole boatload of post-modern relativist hand-wringing. Seriously, if Dark Age prejudices, than so does Golden age. But noone has a problem employing that term when appropriate. Historians shouldn't be afraid to cast value judgments when warranted by the research, so long as it isn't too driven by personal or cultural prejudices. And so long as whatever existing prejudices the historian might have going in are acknowledged and analyzed to the extent that it may influence those conclusions and judgments.

Simply calling it a change is insufficient I think. Sure there was a change, a change that resulted in less reading, less writing, less building, less trade and commerce, less art, less cultural achievements, less wealth, less security, less urban centers, less education, less literacy, less luxuries, less facilities, less rational and sophisticated legal system, etc. I don't think its unfair to say that the Roman system was replaced with something significantly inferior. Vast knowledge was lost. And it took a hell of a long time to relearn and eventually improve upon it.

I don't mean to go off on you, but it does seem that history has to some extent turned into a gold star parade. Every culture, people, empire and time period gets a sticker. None better or worse than the others. I'm sorry but not every culture is equally fascinating, relevant, or developed.

QUOTE (Brady @ Jan 28 2009, 23.46)

EHK, if you haven't read it, the book Millenium by Tom Holland is a decent read, dealing with Europe in the last centuries of the 'Dark Ages', focusing on the rise of the knightly class, the emergence of the Catholic Church as a unified force and the Christianisation of western Europe. It also makes the argument that the dark ages were a time of relative freedom for the underclasses, compared to what came afterwards.

I'll give it a look. Actually starting to read Gibbon right now, so it'll be a nice contrast once I finish. (which no doubt will be some time next year)

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 28 2009, 01.53)

But the point is that this change was what was required to create the modern world. The industrial revolutioon, and by extension our own world, is based on the developments of medieval patterns, not roman ones.

How do we know that? How do we know that without the post-Roman societal collapse (still sticking to that moniker) that we wouldn't have developed our modern world centuries earlier? That we wouldn't have had our industrial revolution in the 15th century instead of the 18th? Simply saying that 'these things were required to create our modern world' strikes me as a bit lazy and deterministic. It tells us nothing. Its quite possible that over 1,000 years of continued development, Rome or some other similarly developed successor state may have reached the same milestones in better time.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 28 2009, 02.02)

You really cannot overestimate the importance of this separation. The church creates the antecendant of International Law, it manages (quite successfully) to define marriage as a matter of consent and not something you can be forced into. The church (in both the West and the East) kept the ancient classics alive, the church laid the foundation of the university, the church created an international organization that connected all of western europe: A network that could function even in times of war.

Yeah the church kept some of the classics alives, but they didn't do much with them. In fact the large majority of ancient manuscripts of the Greek and Roman era classics were translated and transferred by Byzantine Greeks fleeing the decline of the empire, through contact with Arab Muslims and Moors in Spain. The Monasteries kept a flicker of learning alive, but it was really spread to the masses by the lands (and travelers to the lands) that had never lost this knowledge. The monks didn't bring these 'seeds of the Renaissance' to the people (at least not most of it), the Byzantine Greeks and Muslims did.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 28 2009, 02.34)

EDIT: It remains really amusing of course to see how differently "Dark Ages" are defined. You'd be hard pressed to find someone in Scandinavia calling the 700-1000 period a "Dark Age" for instance

No, they just helped perpetuate the continuation of a dark age in other areas by raiding the shit out of them. The Vikings were nice enough to gut alot of the progress Charlemagne and the Franks may have made.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 28 2009, 02.54)

Yeah, golden age is used very rarely and usually very specifically "The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic." I've never seen it used as a generalized term like people sometimes use "The Dark Ages".

Don't we have the Golden Age of Islam? I know I've heard the Golden Age of Greece. (back when they had all the great philosophers and the Spartans and Athenians still kicked ass) I also get a Golden age whenever I merge a great artist and great priest together, so there! smiley2.gif (also works when I build the Taj Mahal)

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 27 2009, 23.48)

Depends what you mean by technological advances. Many things that were known by the romans but never really used large-scale (like wind and water mills) became widespread in this period. There were multiple improvements in agricultural techniques and technologies (three-field system, horse collar, you know the drill)

Just doing some googling, but the horse collar was a Chinese innovation that eventually filtered into Europe around the 10th century. And the Romans actually developed the three-field crop rotation system, which was rediscovered by Europeans several centuries after the fall. I guess you can say (as you and others did) that the Romans didn't know these things and/or didn't make adequate usage of them, and they did contribute to the agricultural revolution of the 12th century or so, but they weren't really European innovations.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 27 2009, 23.48)

That is inarguably true. But then, is cities really a valid way to judge a society where the majority of the population (which was the case even in roman days) is rural?

I think it is to some extent. Cities were and almost always have been the centers of commerce, culture, engineering, art, education and learning, architecture, government, religion, bureaucracy, and administration. They generally are the heart of any given civilization. Where the great works are done and the great people migrate to. Just as a matter of sheer numbers, you're gonna have a better chance of great intellects mingling to produce great innovations than you are with thousands of tiny, barely connected villages with no urban centers. I do think a lack of urban-ness very well can (and often does) denote a significant degree of backwardness.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 27 2009, 23.48)

traditional legal systems were actually far more complex than is often imagined, and we got the first real attempts at international law in the church's Canon Law.

I did a course on it and we read many translated examples of Justinians Code versus the laws that became the standard in the post-Roman West. It was for the most part tribal and backwards in just about every sense. Monty Python's parody was close to being nothing of the sort. I was seriously waiting for a passage asking if the accused party weighed the same as a duck. There may have been complexity, but certainly not rational or well reasoned complexity. There was a canon law section in the course, but we sadly never got to it. Maybe I'll dig out the book. (That thing was a BEAST)

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 27 2009, 23.48)

This is the main point where discussion is incontrovertible: The question is how significant that really was for the people who actually lived there.

Is that really the right question though? People who know nothing, miss nothing. Modern history has been more concerned than in past eras for the lot of the common people under particular regimes, but the bigger questions still remain the same; What did they leave behind? And the answer for the period from the fall til at least the Carolingian Renaissance is 'not much'. Populations declined 20% during that period. Trade fell to the lowest level since the Bronze age. Building, writing? Very little. Systematic agriculture disappeared for a period as well. As did any form of large scale manufacture.

It seems I have to grant that Europeans pulled out of this dark age much sooner than I'd previously concluded, the developments of the mid-Medieval period certainly marked significant progress. But the first few centuries immediately after the fall (or however long it took Roman institutions, trade, bureaucracy, literacy and agriculture to disappear in various areas) til probably the rise of Charlemagne were as dark as dark ages get.

QUOTE (AndyP @ Jan 28 2009, 08.46)

No more or less inane than most administrative instructions issued by large organizations today and throughout history. On the issue of censorship, do you really think there would have been less had administration of the university remained in the hands of the state. Exactly how far would that lecture on the legitimacy on Monarchal rule would have gotten?

Fair enough point there, but monarchical rule is a simple enough concept with limited and usually obvious boundaries. There's much less one needs to steer clear of compared to centuries of superstitious church doctrine that insists on infiltrating countless areas of study that would be better left to science or philosophy. Discovering the world doesn't quite operate the way the Bible suggests does not threaten the monarch.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 28 2009, 09.27)

But you don't get it. The interaction between church law, monarchical law and various kinds of traditional (IE: Noble families) power groups is precisely what creates modern politics.

Andy:
Anything that threatens the established social order, would be seen as a threat to the monarch. The Church being a large part to the social order would have been protected. Also literal interpretation of the Bible was a product of the Reformation which is at the start of the modern era.

I was responding to Andy's rather context free point that a hypothetical monarch could be every bit as repressive as the church. Simply stating that a monarch doesn't come into things with all the definitions of reality and doctrinal baggage that an organized religion does. And while the Monarch does indeed usually try to maintain the existing social order, which includes enforcing often strict observance of religious custom, the fact is those ideas that 'need' to be repressed come about because they conflict with church teaching. The monarch didn't generally invent those 'contrary to science, reason and reality' ideas themselves, even if they did sometimes enforce them. The church still remains a culprit, if only a partial one at times.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 27 2009, 21.21)

But all these cities depend upon a countryside for their very survival: It is changes back here that really impact city life and organization.

I don't really see the point of this. That's a fact of life in every civilization that has ever existed including ours. Urban areas can't feed themselves alone and rely on rural farmers. So what? They're the base from which all other things are possible but if a civilization is just doing the base and skipping the 'other possibles' to a large extent, I would not be inclined to consider them very developed.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 27 2009, 21.21)

But the point is they didn't "pull out", they went into a different direction, what rose out of the early middle-ages was not the classical world born anew but the High Middle ages. Which had an entirely different dynamic, better in some ways perhaps, worse in some ways certainly, but incontrovertibly not the same.

It's not a matter of unilinear development here, with the roman age being "higher" and the dark ages "more primitive" (except perhaps, when dealing with particular and very specific stuff like say, architecture)

They were in a backwards hellhole and slowly but surely became less of a backwards hellhole. That's a 'pull out' if I've ever seen one. The pullout didn't mean reversion, but they still went from something great, to something horrible, to something better. Not all linearly geographically, socially, or technologically, but that was the overall trend. In the early middle ages til probably some distance into the middle period, they were more primitive in many more respects than they were more advanced.

QUOTE (Galactus @ Jan 27 2009, 21.21)

The romans had extensive trade networks as well, but they were far less extensive than what was happening in the middle-ages (and these networks would in turn expand across the great oceans in the 1400's and 1500's)

Incidentally, this is another place where europeans advanced beyond the romans: Shipbuilding. Europeans pretty quickly were building much cheaper and more seaworthy ships. And shipbuilding is arguably far more important a tech than architecture.

Were the Roman ones really less extensive? I mean the Med. was essentially their lake, the Silk Road was open, with the conquest of Egypt they had access to extensive trading routes throughout most of the Eurasian and Africa continental landmass. Hell, they even tried to ban silk because they were spending so much on it (and some prudes thought it was immoral). Sustained widespread trade didn't really get going in Europe til 1000 AD and Vikings aside, their boats weren't really that good til significantly later. The galley was still the standard for large parts of Europe well into the late middle ages.

QUOTE (Tyria @ Jan 28 2009, 10.01)

I guess I have a completely different view of when the Dark Ages occurred. To me, a lowly ol’ Classics major, the Dark Ages were from roughly 1100BCE to 800BCE. These Dark Ages happened when the Sea People (still arguments about who they were, although the consensus seems to the Dorians) invaded Greece and surrounding areas. IIRC, the only mention of them in written record is by the Egyptians, because the Sea People made it down that far before they were stopped. These were some serious Dark Ages. Very very little is known from that time. There were no churches like in later so called Dark Ages holding on to written records.

Pretty fascinating, sounds like everyone got pretty much totally fucked except for the Egyptians who fared only slightly better. Googling notes a wide swath of wanton destruction dating from the period across Anatolia and Central Asia. The disappearance of many common markers of civilization throughout wide stretches and the decline of the usual writing, commerce, trade, etc. Still, most of the world was pretty damned dark to begin with at that time, so they had no light to lose. Interesting period. Wouldn't mind reading more about it.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 28 2009, 11.25)

that aside, some of your points are perceptive and accurate, but others can easily be countered:

"Literacy all but disappeared outside of the monasteries"

if you are a farmer, or craftsman who doesn't need to read or write to survive/flourish then why bother learning? remeber- parchment was not cheap, neither were inks or tutors.

There were farmers in the Roman period who didn't need to read. And a whole hell of alot of patricians, some plebs, and even slaves who did. It was much more widespread. It doesn't really matter whether the peasant farmer needed writing to survive, the widespread disappearance (to a large extent) of literacy is a sign of societal decline.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 28 2009, 11.25)

"trade was a fraction of its former levels, travel and cultural intermingling limited compared to other eras."

really?
have you checked out the amazing trade routes that the Scandinavian peoples developed (and their continuation in one form or another until relatively modern times)?
plus sailing to the americas - that's hardly limited travel!

Again, we're talking comparatively. Widespread European trade with the rest of the world didn't really restart til about 1000AD and your Hanse/Venetian/Genoan traders didn't really start to become powerhouses til a few centuries later. I can't seem to find any cutoff as to when European trade surpassed old Roman trade, but its very likely to have been well passed the 1200's or so. And for the periods before Charlemagne there was almost nothing comparatively, Charlemagne's own commercial resurgence was minor and unsustained, and it really wasn't til the Viking era that these things got kickstarted. That's more than 5 centuries of a 'fraction compared to other eras' and who knows when it finally surpassed past eras. We could be talking Age of Discovery here.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 28 2009, 11.25)

as for the lack of intermingling - do a quick wiki search for Dublin, York/Jorvik/The Danelaw, the Hebrides... oh and Normandy. The Norse people were pretty goof at cultural and linguistic intermingling - in some respects far superior to the Romans - more intermingling and less dominating.

Yeah the Danes got to some traveling (still some centuries after the fall). Everyone else lived their lives in isolated little villages and manors hoping not to be clawed to death by Viking Kittens

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 28 2009, 11.25)

"Your peasants lived lives of chronic ignorance and the nobles received little better"

something that had been around for a long time before the "Dark Ages" and continued right into the modern eras.

Again, comparatively. Education, literacy, and knowledge was MUCH more widespread in the Roman era than it was for many, MANY centuries afterwards.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 28 2009, 11.25)

"The legal systems were irrational and unsophisticated."

Irrational in some respects - but not to those who lived with them, remember that just because something seems wrong to our modern eyes doesn't mean it felt wrong to the people back then.

When I did my comparative law course and we covered Justinian's code vs. the contemporary legal systems of the lands of the former Western Empire, I was reading about trials by combat, weregild for all manner of vicious crimes from murder to rape. (where of course the size of the fine is determined by the status of the victim...killing slaves is cheap, pass over a schilling). Don't pay the fine and you've got a justified blood feud, legalized vigilantism with obvious destabilizing consequences. Actual criminal justice in a form that we might recognize it was extremely limited. It was also limited in scope compared to contemporary Roman Law of the time, having very little to say on matters of trade, contracts, property outside of inheritance (an area most were immensely concerned with, as its probably the most developed piece of Germanic Law), public law, etc.

You look at primitive tribal societies across the globe and some form of this compensatory criminal justice or authorized private retaliation is evident. This is backwardsness. It is not terribly rational nor sophisticated. Much of it was called vulgar law for a reason. Even those with the most direct Roman influences had codes that amounted to a bastardization of both their understanding of the subtle and nuanced Roman legal concepts they employed and of the Latin language itself that they used to codify it. These were simpletons trying to ferret out proper meaning from texts that arose out of a thousand years of education and legal development, further hampered by the old, primitive tribal customs that they tried to apply most of these legal concepts to. And the codes that had the least Roman influence were even worse. This isn't simply a matter of modern snobbery, they were backwards, simplistic, and tribal in their legal understanding.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 28 2009, 11.25)

"There was comparatively very little literature and other written records from the era."

what is the point in writing things down then very few can read? Traditions of storytelling and poetry (using very sophisticated rules) flourished. Also - remember that many documents have been lost in the centuries leading to today... some fragments have survived, often more through luck than anything else.
As for Written records - just check out the scale of the AngloSaxon Chronicle and the Irish Book Of Kells for an idea of the record keeping back then... again slightly alien to the modern eye, but priorities are a little different nowadays.

Many documents are lost from every era. But we can still generally draw the conclusion that the eras from which we find ALOT more documentation probably did alot more writing. And again, we're talking comparatively. A thousand different variations of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle still ain't a zit on the ass of what the Romans produced or the Byzantines and Arabs did later. And the fact that very few could read or write is kind of the point. Another recent historian trend is this vindication of oral traditions. But no matter how well preserved and precise these stories and customs may have been via oral transmission, its still inferior in every practical respect to writing it down. A few pieces of parchment could preserve all the stories and traditions of these peoples and leave them a hell of alot more space for new ones.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 28 2009, 11.25)

"Limited building projects and cultural and artistic achievements."
I'll let images speak here:
art
more art
building
more building
technical skill... and art

I'm sure they did some nice stuff, but there does seem to be a historical consensus that artistic, building, engineering, and other cultural output was extremely limited compared to the eras immediately before and after. (and compared to what was going on out East) It doesn't compare.

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 13.46)

Do you think the American civil justice system is backward, not terribly rational or sophisticated? The entire tort system is based on the idea of compensatory criminal justice - you kill someone, and their family can bring you to court to pay. And the payment received is usually in direct relation to their status in society (payouts to families of poor people is less then richer people due to the lesser estimated future income).

It would be if that was the only body of law that dealt with criminal offenses, but its not. We have a functioning criminal justice system where actual punishments are carried out by the established government against the perpetrators. They had only the compensatory and if the other party chose not to pay, vigilantism that could lead to destabilization escalating into internal war. Civil compensation is there to repair the victims, punitives aside, its generally not about punishing the guilty.

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 14.15)

Well, what else can you expect if there is a lack of a strong centralized government capable of enforcing justice?

What is with this shit? First the literacy stuff and now this? I'm saying society collapsed and legal systems degenerated, and you're telling me they have no strong centralized government capable of justice...that's kind of the point. That's an element of the societal collapse. Government institutions, bureaucracy, services and administration largely disappeared. Or at the very least devolved into an extremely limited and primitive form. They lost all concept of the law as a science, ran out of skilled, educated jurists, and reverted to recording tribal custom with some Romanized terminology. But as I note later on, apparently they were still capable of some form of Roman law and justice for quite a while, but chose not to use it for themselves.

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 14.15)

Again, without prisons or killing someone, what kind of punishments can you really inflict? What other options are there? You cant put someone in jail (although you might be able to force them outside the laws protection), there is a bit of a limit on executing someone, and only so much whipping or mutilation you can do.

The Romans, the Byzantines, the Persians, and many other empires and major civilizations had justice prosecuted and carried out by the state for major crimes. The Germanic tribes largely lost that for centuries onward. Even with their limited institutions their leadership should have been capable of some form of government based criminal justice with actual punishments.

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 14.15)

Essentially, your complaints regarding a tort like criminal justice system are rather pedantic, as the problem is not a un sophisticated legal system, but rather is a symptom of the lack of an overarching power capable of dispensing justice.

This would seem to suggest that they reverted to tribal custom because they didn't have the power structure to execute anything grander or more sophisticated. That isn't the case. In some respects they lost the knowledge and education or never really had it in the first place, but that came later. In most cases it was because of familiarity, these were their practices and so they continued them. For some centuries onward the law was people specific. If you were Roman, you fell under Roman law which was still practiced at the time. (though most didn't have Justinian's codification, using the far more distributed Theodosian one instead) So they had access for a while to this legal tradition, it was still in practice for some peoples, but Germanic invaders chose backwards tribalism instead to apply to their own peoples.

Yes the lack of strong state authority would make some concepts difficult to enforce, but even without a state you can do better than tossing dirt behind your back towards your assembled kin, whoever it lands on assuming your debts if you're unable to pay them. (which shows up in one of the Germanic law scrolls) And don't forget to collect the dirt from the four corners of your estate. I mean is the lack of a strong central authority really preventing something better than this nonsense from being implemented?

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 20.04)

Whats so crazy about the idea of people in a clan or extended family based society having other members of their family assume responsibility for their debts (combined with some symbolic behavior)? Are you really going to say thats a crazy and nonsensical idea? Its rather like having a cosigner for your loan, albeit with dirt throwing rather then a pleading phonecall and a notary public.

Dirt throwing to determine debt obligations...there is no amount of relativism that's gonna make that sound the least bit sane or rational. Yeah, kind of like a co-signer...who randomly and unwillingly signed on after default, and will be responsible for the whole amount. Sorry but the comparative isn't working worth a damned here. Theirs is silly, absurd and unjust...ours isn't.

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 20.51)

I am just saying you are engaging in a little hyperbole here by ignoring things like cultural factors.

I'm not ignoring cultural factors, just saying that this particular one is inferior and irrational.

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 20.51)

Besides, having a nice big ceremony will help ensure everyone remembers who is cosigning (for lack of a better term) the debt - its not like they were going to the Recorder of Deeds to put it on record.

Yeah cause it'd take a 'well lit' civilization to actually write shit down.

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 20.51)

Essentially, it seems to basically be a way to allow a lender to have some sort of insurance that a loan would be secured, by having another party ready to step into place should the borrower die.

If the borrower dies, who throws the dirt?

QUOTE (CelticBrennus @ Jan 28 2009, 20.51)

I mean come on, if you are really going to go after them for insane legal practices, lets go with that whole trial by ordeal stuff. Trial by combat I can buy, trial by ordeal? Thats just insane.

I was going to mention the ordeal stuff, but I couldn't remember the term. I was gonna put 'trial by hardship' but I knew that wasn't right. Brain fart.

QUOTE (Elrostar @ Jan 28 2009, 22.03)

Ok, I've tried to read through most of the replies to this thread, but I guess what I keep coming back to is the extremely limited geographic region which one has to consider in order for the term 'Dark Ages' to be really useful.

As part of the basis for this argument in the first place, we had to assume that we were referring only to the portions of Western Europe which had previously been under control of the Roman Empire. But we're specifically not including any area which is under the influence of the Arabs (such as the Iberian peninsula, the Middle East, and all of Northern Africa) or the Eastern Roman Empire (aka the Byzantine Empire), which would include a lot of Greece, Asia Minor, parts of Eastern Europe, etc.

And then there's some debate as to whether or not to include Britain (always the furthest flung part of the Roman world) and Scandinavia. Although there seems to be no question as to whether or not we include large swathes of Germany, even though it was beyond the reach of the Roman Empire.
But Ireland is definitely not included? (Perhaps I'm biased having read "How the Irish saved civilization")

The word that springs to mind is cherry-picking, I guess.

I really think you're overblowing the problem a bit. Europe minus the Byzantine and Muslim parts covers a sizable enough area and the vast majority of that, if it wasn't dark already, certainly went dark. Not all at the same time, some hit worse than others, and some parts came out of it quicker than others, but the term Dark Age still applies at the very least for a couple centuries.

QUOTE (Elrostar @ Jan 28 2009, 22.03)

For 2000 years, the Silk Road was a centerpiece of civilization in the world because of trade going back and forth between the Mediterranean and China. All that was happening in 'the dark ages' was a small correction where the end point moved from Rome to Constantinople. Before Rome it was Greece. But the Dark Ages didn't interrupt that trade route.

No, it just interrupted the purchasing capacity of everyone at the Western End of the trade route, killing alot of the demand for those goods. Widespread demographic decline and the near disappearance of large scale trade in the region. (to the lowest levels since the Bronze age)

QUOTE (Aemon Stark @ Jan 28 2009, 22.14)

Just what was so great about the Roman Empire? A quarter or more of the population were chattel slaves - the availability of such "free" labour undermined the economic livelihood of freemen and citizens. Large standing armies provided ready resources for coups, civil wars, and assassinations. Strong central authority is all well and good - when it exists - but it tended to mean that larger regions were swept up into larger conflicts. Cities were repositories for plague, and they remained very unhealthy places to live right up until the 19th century.

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

QUOTE (Lord of Oop North @ Jan 28 2009, 23.07)

I know people like to wax on and on about the arts and philosophy and literature, but in reality, that affected only a very, very small segment of the population. Regular Joe wasn’t employed as a philosopher or an artist. He was either a farmer or a craftsman. That’s been the truth for countless centuries, even when Rome was the premiere power of the Mediterranean. I’m sure Roman Joe didn’t read his Socrates or Suetonius. Very likely, he did not even know who they were.

History is not very often driven by the average Joe. Whether they know those philosophers or not, their lives and the directions of their states were shaped by many of their ideas and innovations. The arts are important. They help to build the prestige of a civilization. They draw people to it. Traders, artists, philosophers, engineers, investors, wealth. Arts, prestige and culture saved Babylon from being razed to the ground on several occasions. Conquerors for centuries would seek to attain the city to legitimize their supremacy. And even when the rather independent minded city dwellers got uppity, they usually got away with it, because who in their right mind would destroy the greatest city in the world? (someone did eventually, but this cultural protection lasted for a long ass time) These things have enormous effect whether the average Joe realizes it or not.

QUOTE (Lord of Oop North @ Jan 28 2009, 23.07)

The craftsmen in the 'Dark Ages' were masters at what they did.

They still were not building on a scale remotely close to what the Romans were for a very long time. Where are their great dams, roads, aqueducts, bridges, their industrial scale mining. And as Other-in-Law mentions, most of those great works of Gothic architecture came later.

QUOTE (Matrim Fox Cauthon @ Jan 28 2009, 23.39)

Wasn't it the activities of the Church (and Church-sponsored ones) that largely brought back and spread the Greek philosophers, which helped to thereby stimulate the history of ideas the led to the Renaissance?

The church kept some of these things alive in the monestaries, but it was the Byzantines fleeing the decline of the empire, many showing up in Italy, who translated the majority of the Greek philosopher texts. Many more were received from contact with the Muslim world and the Reconquista of Spain. The church's influence, while not minimal, was MUCH less than these other sources.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 29 2009, 05.17)

Back to literacy - just because a people have never been taught latin and thusly didn't leave any latin manuscripts for us to read does not mean they didn't write... check out the several Runic scripts from north west europe or Oggam - written languages that we have decyphered to one degree or another over recent years.

They didn't write on any significant scale. The level of literature, treatises, and practical record keeping seen in the east and int he previous era did not exist. Literacy was at a fraction of its former level. Noone disputes that writing still existed, just that there was very little of it comparatively.

QUOTE (davos @ Jan 29 2009, 07.21)

the fall of the Western Empire, say about 400 ad to a maybe 1000 was indeed a barbaric time that had little to recommend it beyond pure survival.

I think that's about the time period most of us have been using for much of the thread. (My first post may have extended things, but I've readjusted)

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 29 2009, 09.26)

so, the Holy Roman Empire was unimportant?

The Holy Roman Empire was began in the mid to late 10th century. The Carolingian Renaissance was brief and unsustained in many regards.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 29 2009, 09.26)

why would a people with a culture and traditions developed over hundred of years adopt the Roman laws/justice system/language if they'd had little to no contact with the Romans.. let alone been conquered by them?

First because the Roman system was better and more rational. Second, most of the German legal codes produced from the fall and centuries after had obvious Roman influences in them right down to the use of bad, bastardized latin. So even the unconquered peoples had enough contact to insert some Roman legal concepts or basic code structure into their own sets of laws. They had access. Of course I don't expect them to adopt the better system because they didn't have the infrastructure to fully understand it or implement it...but that's kind of the point. They were backwards in nearly every respect.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 29 2009, 09.26)

eta: NB/ this value of honour was one of the main reasons why the supposedly more civilised Byzantine Emperors were so keen on having the Varangian Guard - a bunch of "northern barbarians" who were actually capable of keeping their oaths unlike the normal Byzantine troops who frequently schemed and plotted at a level to rival Littlefinger.

I think you're overstating the honor issue. It was mainly the fact that their loyalty could be ensured because none of them had that many vested personal contacts or power interests in the empire itself. The locals aren't gonna put a crown on a Varangian. Nor are they integrated enough into the society to do much scheming.

QUOTE (Jaak @ Jan 29 2009, 10.53)

One simple and hard piece of evidence about how life got worse with the fall of Rome. Pottery.

A well-made, well-burned pot is not biodegradable. It can be broken, but the shards never rot and last forever in soil. It can be reused as a pot or a potsherd, for some purposes, but it stays recognizable as potsherd. It cannot be burned nor recycled by melting.

Glazed pot keeps liquids and can easily be cleaned.

In Roman context, there is a lot of mass-produced, decent quality pottery. Monte Testaccio, but there is also a lot of Roman pottery in villas and even in rather humble farmhouses.

Then look at what came in Dark Ages. Mass produced pottery vanished. There was some handmade pottery, poorly fired, porous and much more friable and brittle than the Roman pottery. The common people in Dark Ages were making do with much less useful and comfortable vessels. It was only about year 700 that some pottery produced for market returned to England - Ipswich ware.

Or look at tiled roofs. Again, an useful and comfortable thing. What came afterwards was thatch. Thatch rots much faster, is more prone to insect infestation and flammable.

Or small change in form of small-value bronze coins. The Romans had them, carried them and lost them. This meant that humble people could move about freely and pay their way in small transactions. Again vanished with Dark Ages.

Good summary of a few things that had gone thus far unmentioned Jaak. We tend to forget alot of the little, very practical things that disappeared, diminished, or degraded.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 29 2009, 10.59)

the fall of rome has little to no relevence to areas that were not part of the empire - they had nothing to lose apart from trade.. and we know that post roman trade continued very nicely in one form or another.

Trade dropped to the lowest levels since the Bronze age. I'd hardly consider that 'very nicely'. It took the Vikings to really get it kickstarted again. Also, the places in Europe that were not part of the empire were largely too backwards and desolate to bother with. They were already 'Dark'. And even their minimal contact couldn't help but benefit them. (so long as they weren't slaughtered) Rome was the only reason for trade, wealth, materials and ideas to come to Western Europe. And they were developing many of these things themselves as well. The non-empire folks weren't touching this stuff without contact with Rome.

QUOTE (BranTheBuilder @ Jan 29 2009, 11.50)

part one - perhaps for a Roman culture, but not for a culture with a different outlook on the world.
part two - Roman infulences/use of latin through the writing by church taught scholars who learned latin etc - take a look at the evolution of English Law (and eventually its infulences on US law among others) and you'll see a Prenorman Anglosaxon system that has gradually changed as society had evolved - seperate from "roman law" in its roots.

while I do deliberatley overplay the honour system (partly as it is a good example of a striking difference between cultures) it is still very important - as important as your deliberate overplaying of the wisdom/perfectness of Rome.

The development of English common law is an interesting phenomenon, but most of the world operates on some variation of the Civil Code, all of which can trace their roots back to Justinian and the great body of Roman law he codified, clarified, and organized. Its not unfair to say that the greatest single influence on Law as we know it today is Roman. And who the hell knows where we'd be legally if those influences stayed lost or muted.

As for the barbarians, I'd have more consideration for their 'different outlook on the world' if they'd built a Hagia Sophia and gave us a few Platos or Ciceros. Culture and civilization retreated and their 'different outlook' helped facilitate that. (or at the very least did nothing to mitigate or improve the situation) It took them a while to even begin to claw their way back.

QUOTE (Zabzy @ Jan 29 2009, 13.05)

Separately, we shouldn't ignore the "social services" role that the church played throughout Europe, particularly the monasteries and convents. The Church /was/ the primary "social safety net" during the time period. Its emphasis on charity and humility did a powerful lot of "good."

But that was hardly universal and we don't even know how widespread. Sure some monks were intent on good works, but others (priests and clerics as well) were primarily concerned with exploitation and accumulating personal as well as church wealth. Other monks weren't malevolent, but didn't give a shit about anything beyond the walls of the Monastery. I mean a large part of the point of Monastic life was to separate yourself from all those ills and evils of the real world and devote yourself to god.

QUOTE (palaeologos @ Jan 29 2009, 15.30)

They were originally called the "Dark Ages" because of the paucity of written records compared to the period prior to the fall of the Roman Empire. Enlightenment ideologues seized on the term and adapted it to their polemic (religion as superstition, the inevitable teleology of "progress" in technology & morality, etc). The rehab is necessary in order to eradicate the false sense of moral superiority the current age has over the 6th-11th centuries AD.

Most revisionism is a reaction to a prior eras excesses. But that doesn't stop them from running too far to the otherside and overstating the revision.

QUOTE (palaeologos @ Jan 29 2009, 15.30)

The societal collapse you refer to was on the imperial/national level, btw, not the local level. And the Roman Church, for the most part, filled the vacuum left by impotent or eroding national/state authority. It's debatable whether most common folks on the ground even noticed the "fall" of Rome.

Without a doubt the most dreadfully boring books on history are the ones that deal with the plight of the common folk. They deserve a summary byline, not a treatise. I mean who gives a shit? They do not drive history. They do not originate the great works, they do not contemplate and implement the great ideas, they do not win or lose the great wars. There is this new strain of history that seems intent on focusing on such things. What the daily life of the common peasant was like as if that was remotely relevant to history or the slightest bit interesting. I'm all for the other types of historical analysis. Great people, historical forces, or institutions, take your pick. But the plight of the commonfolk is only relevant insofar as it influenced those things. Which I'm sure they did to some degree, but that doesn't make 'What the commoners noticed' a significant question.

Whether the commoner was more comfortable before or after the fall of the empire is not important, what is important is the fact that these Post-Roman peoples made far fewer contributions to the progress of humanity than their predecessors, lost MUCH of the progress that was there, and didn't regain and exceed prior progress for a long ass time. Whether they noticed the fall of the empire or not is irrelevant, progress was lost regardless.

Further, I don't know how you define 'local level', but the fact is trade all but disappeared, so did literacy, cities, farming degraded to subsistence levels, any semblence of security vanished...I have a hard time believing that your average peasant didn't notice these things. And if he didn't, it could only have been due to ignorance of the times that came before.