The fact that some historians insist the Dark Ages didn't actually exist - and this is considered legitimate within the professional community - is a big reason why History doesn't deserve the same respect as, say, medicine or physics. It's as if lots of medical academics held anti-vax views.
Insane
The issue us historians have is that the term in misleading, overly reductive, and empowers uninformed morons such as yourself to make sweeping judgements, while simultaneously unearthing the fact that you have zero idea what you’re talking about History not deserving respect is utter bullocks
Your thread on this reeks of an undergrad who hasn't done their work but insists they understand the subject matter as, many months ago, they listened to a dodgy podcast. You evidence only ignorance here, but pretend to be authoritative. Why take you seriously on anything if this is how you work?
@thelouvreof.bsky.social
You just have no idea what science is, do you?
Historians don’t say the time didn’t occur. They just haven’t called it the “dark ages” in ages. And who are you to say how much respect a field deserves? Talk about arrogant ignorance.
Medical doctor here. Medicine’s history is full of diseases that don’t actually exist, or are you still being treated for neurasthenia? It’s called progress…
Quick, show me the one definitive interpretation of Finnegan’s Wake. Or Gravity’s Rainbow. Or Beloved. It’s impossible. Historiography is an act of hermeneutic interpretation, pursued with the same latitude that a literary scholar would bring to the reading of any text in their field
Uh, no, that's not what that implies.
Sorry, this is completely crackers. It would be like suggesting medicine needs to have space for miasma theory in order to be legitimate!
There was a major fall in population, state capacity, literacy, and army size, over several centuries. Entire cities were abandoned or greatly diminished. Pretending this didn't happen is reality denial on a level with anti-vax, phlogiston theory or the moon landings were faked.
it's not self-evidently true that army sizes falling means that a society is getting Darker, which is one reason why imposing value judgments on the quality of swathes of time is somewhat foolish
If that were universally true, the U.S. has been in a Dark Age since 1945.
'It's more complex than Petrarch / Victorian dudes thought' is one thing (and true). But to say the Dark Ages didn't happen is nonsense.
This seems like saying "it's nonsense to deny it's Pythagoras' Theorem, invented by Pythagoras, because a^2+b^2 does in fact = c^2"
Dude what the fuck is wrong with the people on your island?
Like have you just never heard of Peter Brown?
Almost everyone in this conversation is from that island
Well there you go
I'm British and I'm embarrassed by this!
Look I’m a Yank and I’m hyperaware of just how big a glass house I’m living in but wow you guys have gone as batshit as us
I thought this was a disagreement about the definition of the dark ages not a fascist overthrow of the national constitution with troops on the streets and concentration camps, etc.
Yes it’s very bad here but your trajectory isn’t much better. You’re already in the “roving lynch mob” stage
Stop it. It’s embarrassing.
it’s also especially common for Brits to be particularly pessimistic about post-Roman europe because Britannia was among the least developed portions of Rome and sank to some of the lowest depths in the post-Roman world. This doesn’t make it true for the entire period or region!
Okay, but you know damn well that the consensus amongst professional historians is the former, not the latter. So why pretend otherwise?
This is an embarrassing, but not unusual, level of "has visibly not done the reading" behaviour from a member of the British political class.
It is nonsense. That’s why nobody says it. Or would claim it’s something actual historians say… Unless someone misunderstood a field of study, waded in with their “I’m a special clever boy badge” and tried to refute a claim *they’d made up*. Surely nobody would be so publicly arrogant & ignorant?
“Dark Ages” is a frame of reference; the frame is defective; and has massive subtext which can’t be avoided. Much as saying “the US Civil War was about States Rights” it elides a lot, and by doing so inhibits learning, and stifles understanding.
God I love when pundits mistake their dilletente's understanding of a field for real understanding, then continue to hold a tone of smug superiority even when it's clear they're learning the actual facts/major positions of the discussion as they go!
"The Dark Ages" is a descriptive term that was counted by people who wanted to distinguish themselves from their forebears. There's no quantitative consensus on when this alleged Dark Ages began or ended. It's like the old term 'hysteria'- unspecific & dismissive.
You're an idiot
Three questions for you, Iain, to answer in your own time: 1) When were the Dark Ages? 2) Where did they take place? 3) Where and when *didn't* they take place? Bonus points if you mention Baghdad, Constantinople or Chang'an in your answer.
Ah the dark ages you mean the postpalatial bronze age
Who exactly are you arguing against? This feels like a straw man.
No one says that there wasn’t a diminishment in organization during that time in parts of Europe. It just wasn’t the “Dark Ages”. Things still happened and other places flourished during the same time.
Yeah. Iain is right that it would be crackers if people were saying “post-Roman western Europe, a great time had by all”. But they’re not. They are rightly saying that it’s not a useful way to think about or label the period as a whole.
God forbid a historian try and tell people that it wasn't as simple as they imagine
its like Iain is proving this is why you need historians by telling all historians they are crap because they know more about this period that he does I'm all for stuff like this, but I'd expect it from someone called Historilover823 or something
That’s Iain’s username on Quora.
God, is that Iain Middlesbrough/Maidenhead/whatever I blocked the prick right wing 'intellectual' At It Again?
Looks like it
"Debating is me taking the opposite opinion to you. I am very smart and popular and wasn't bullied at school"
Not just God, Iain too!
iain forbid anyone tell iain anything complicated lol
Hard to tell anyone anything from the Dark Ages. I swear, it's like there's a relative lack of written sources in Europe during that time period that makes it more difficult to shed a light on what was going on...
Yep. Bad label.
Partly because it is now better recognised that late antiquity wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs either.
I wish I could track down the paper but I recall there is at least some archaeological evidence that people in sub-Roman Britain may have been better fed than their predecessors - presumably because a sizable chunk of agricultural production was no longer being hived off as taxes.
I’m not suggesting that’s generalizable, but in a way that’s the point. The end of Rome came at very different times for people in different places and meant very different things in practice.
Like I really wouldn’t have wanted to be in northern Gaul in the fifth century or central Italy in the mid sixth.
In fact, some historians are saying pretty much just this. For example, this recent history is entitled “The Bright Ages.”
I'd argue that's there's strong evidence that for most residents of Italy, the deposition of Romulus Augustulus was of no import whatsoever. If anything, Odoacer and Theodoric the Great's reigns were significantly superior to any time during the century leading up to the 'Fall'.
What really did it for Italy was the Gothic War, which was started by the ostensibly non-barbarian Eastern Roman Empire, and even then the most significant long-term consequence was political fragmentation rather than a major regression in civilisation.
yeah, Iain doesn’t understand thing one here
The only way you could possibly come to this conclusion based on what historians say about the “Dark Ages” is if you’re both historically illiterate and intellectually dishonest. The field of history isn’t treated as seriously as STEM fields because dipshits like you can walk around pretending
that you’re a “history buff” because you listened to one podcast and think you have the slightest fucking clue what you’re talking about.
Nobody is pretending that Europe didn’t change after the fall of the Roman Empire, but the point is using reductive terms that come from centuries-old books, written by people who did not have access to many of the sources, documentation, and artifacts that we have today is blatantly stupid.
🙌
In the UK you can see Roman ruins and Norman castles and cathedrals but there don’t seem to be many surviving buildings from the 500 years in between
I mean, you can't see Norman castles 'in the UK'. But also, the United Kingdom is not the whole of the world. Post-Roman Britain was a bleak place.
I guess the dark ages concept was probably Anglocentric because the Islamic world was building a lot at that time
There's bits of one at Hastings. But yes, the Dark Ages is not a useful term, from what I understand from colleagues who work on this stuff.
Because many of those buildings were probably wooden structures. Stoneworking and masonry is expensive and labour intensive.
No serious historian pretends that this never happened. I suggest you read some books before posting again.
meth is bad for you, son
What do smaller army sizes have to do with darkness, exactly?
All of these things happened at different rates in different places and to very different extents. Re. Britain we generally treat antiquity as having ended in the early fifth century. In Italy or North Africa it arguably lasted until at least the late sixth.
You can’t explain why unless you are willing to a) get more complicated than ‘a thousand years without a bath’ and b) accept that we’re not talking about a single Europe-wide timetable or process.
The point is that “Middle Ages” includes everything within V-XV. This is no longer considered useful. What you describe actually happened with the fall of the Roman Empire. Then there was an increase from XI to XIII. Then again a disaster in the XIV century.
Yes. In EUROPE.
Who exactly is pretending that there wasn't a major fall in population? Could you name one of these people who claim that population didn't decrease?
in a very specific part of the world
I thought the Dark Ages were called that because very little was written down. I wonder if our digital age will end up being called such if there is no way to capture our digital records (eg who’s recording all of this noise from the internet for example!!)
No - the term is about cultural and economic decline originally.
I think this is what is called a non sequitur…👆
The Eastern Romans - who considered themselves the direct heirs of the entire Roman Empire & actually got richer, more powerful & more highly civilized for several centuries after the fall of Rome - would like to debate your proposition. So would any number of other polities in Europe & elsewhere.
> Pretending this didn't happen No one is - you're just misinformed about a specialist subject.
How do you feel about mathematics, because I have some bad news… en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_o...
Which 'historians' are these? I think we need to see a list. Cos the actual point is not that the time period didn't happen; it just wasn't 'Dark' in the sense in which that adjective was used by scholars many decades ago. You're actually talking about historiography. But maybe let's not go there.
Man, please. This is completely bonkers 🤣.
Can you define what the “Dark Ages” was and what made it “dark.”
Historical periods are conventional. They aren't natural kinds.
No, it’s more like the majority of physicians telling you that Cold is not actually caused by cold weather, rather a virus! Historians basically are telling you that it’s more complicated than what your dad told you or Coach Johnson taught you in school. Read before you opine.
Bit of a twat aren't you
Who should we trust, historians who are experts in their field, or the guy who says we should have more far-right friends? Hard choice.
….what?
I mean seriously what? The Dark Ages is a specific characterisation of a period of history. It is not a fact, but a judgment made or not on the basis of accumulated evidence, which is inevitably extremely limited. There is absolutely room for argument around it.
It’s also an extremely old idea, developed by people in what today we’d call the late Middle Ages, specifically as a pejorative against their intellectual forebears. Is it really a surprise that modern historians with access to a very different range of tools and evidence have revised that view?
This this this this… the 1927 New York Yankees existed and the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers existed, but the “Golden Age of Baseball” did not exist.
The 'Dark Ages' were, of course, fabricated, in a conspiracy between Emperor Otto II and Pope Sylvester II. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom...
Which country are you talking about?
Phantom Time Theory dawg. If white people didn't write it down, it didn't happen.
Is this historian who insists the Dark Ages didn't actually exist in the room with us right now, Iain?
This doesn't scan even superficially, but particularly that last sentence feels overwrought and emotional rather than objective and useful. I'd recommend another metaphor as a starting point. Then a deep dive as to why there is a discussion of why 'Dark Ages' isn't necessarily a good term.
If I was wholly unqualified on a subject others have incredibly deeply expertise in and they told me I was talking evident nonsense I would hope I'd have the grace to accept the opinions of the actually qualified. Believe it or not the middle school history you've internalised isn't true.
Given that people are still being executed for heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, etc, one could argue the Dark Ages aren't even done yet
Western Europe isnt, and never was, the world.
I think they hold issue with the concept. During The 'Dark Ages', Muslims in Baghdad were literally inventing mathematics and charting human anatomy and a good deal of Western learning was being industrious preserved by the Irish.
yeah nothing "dark" about an era when written records were controlled by priests, when barbarians reigned supreme, no nothing dark about that
yes, that's right, it's the professional academic historians who are acting like antivaxxers and not you, guy who reads things on the internet
wasnt very dark in Arab/Muslim and in Asia. It was a European/Christian decent. Almost all “Western” science was developed in those two regions during this time.
Says the person that isn’t a historian 🤷🏻🤷🏻🤷🏻
That's...not the same at all
The Dark Ages didn’t actually exist
There have been periods in history where broad civilisational collapses are visible - i.e. the Late Bronze Age Collapse - but the so-called 'Dark Ages' were more a period of significant territorial fragmentation rather than a wholesale regression in civilisation across Europe.
you don't get to talk about respecting medicine when you're anti-trans
No offense dude but you have no idea what you're talking about
You are on a roll this month Iain Do you really want to go down in history as the Hot take BlueSky man though?
History degree haver. This is not what anyone thinks. The argument is, "The phrase dark ages conjures ideas about this time which aren't true and we should do away with it as a term". This is anti-intellectual trash Iain. The kind of argument that would get laughed at in medieval history 101.
u okay bud
Is it not the case that "Dark Ages" refers to a lack of records as opposed to an excess of "bleakness"?
No, it is a label applied by Petrarch, a 14th century historian, because he considered it a period of economic and cultural decline.
Honestly one of the big problems with the 'Dark Ages' is its backers can never precisely define the concept chronologically and geographically.
Related to imo the tendency to confuse the Roman Empire of Caligula and Nero (well documented) to the late Empire. There are several centuries of difference.
Also, the 14th Century... not great imo.
He's back, and basically insisting that any decline in organization or living standards after the Roman Empire constitutes a dark ages. So basically you have to choose between that and a monotonic Whiggish progress. Those are the only two types of history.
It allows historians to link it to 'a social justice issue' apparently. Does the B in LGBTQ stand for 'Byzantium'?
Lombards Goths Byzantines Teutons and (I’m still working on the Q)
Turns out this is what gets me to finally sort through my history books - desperately going through the China books in order to make the correct 'Q' joke.
There’s a pretty obscure bunch of Germans called the Quadi, but they don’t make for a good punchline.
LGBTQIA: Lombards, Gothic clans, Byzantine iconoclasts, Tagmata, Qurtubah, Irano-Arab culture WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE
LGBTSPQR issues in the news again?
More of a poet than a historian, really. (Did he actually write any proper history, as opposed to, like, essays where he mulled over history?)
I mean, who is a real historian is a whole other question, historically speaking.
Sure, and you can debate whether, say, Machiavelli was a real historian, but he did write a History of Florence. Whereas I wasn't aware of Petrarch writing any works that would have been considered "histories" at the time (though perhaps he did?)
I just think 'essays mulling over history' - the work of a historian, literally discovering lost letters and documents - the work of a historian. Frankly there are many more marginal cases than Petrarch.
That's fair. There are actual professional historians who mostly do this rather than writing big books.
Yes Hume in his own lifetime is an historian but is remembered for his philosophy work Gibbon’s same work is now read for literary & philosophical value rather than as history
When I was in school (late 70s and 80s) I was taught a very specifically English meaning to use it to refer strictly to the period without written records from (as they put it) the withdrawal of the Roman legions to the arrival of St. Augustine. But that's a reinterpretation, of course.
The idea that Alfred is post-Dark Ages (never mind 1066, or All That) is definitely not what Petrarch was on about.
It is very funny that in casual parlance Petrarch's own time is commonly considered part of the Dark Ages
Would I rather live under Charlemagne or in any of his dominion in the 14th century: not a headscratcher!
The Hundred Years' War has entered the chat.
"Am I a Saxon or not?"
(Mild historical peeves - that modern Saxony is nowhere near early medieval Saxony)
The center of gravity of "Saxony" moved gradually up the Elbe from what is now Niedersachsen (under the Ottonian and Guelph Dukes of Saxony) to what is now Sachsen-Anhalt (under the Ascanian and Ernestine Dukes and Electors) to the modern state under the Albertine electors in the 16th century
And then of course Friedrich August I lost the Wittenberg area after the Congress of Vienna, which was the connection between late medieval and early modern Saxony.
PEDANT VOICE: "Technically, they should really call it Meissen and Lower Lusatia"
it's all very untidy, really. What are they, Poland?
Dunno, a fair few bits of Italy weren't that bad in the 14th century
Al-Andalus was still pretty decent at that point too, if you were down south.
But there was also that whole bubonic plague thing
Also on the OP, I have noticed that certain Americans strongly react against any idea that history is more complicated than the image portraited in Victorian lessonbooks for schoolchildren. I am not sure where this comes from, video games?
I think it’s the broad curriculum at undergrad level. People who do not study history often have a V elevated idea of what “if only people knew about X!” and/or regard all attempts to complexify history as a bit seditious.
The worst thing about the US education system is the 101 courses which enable too many people to think they know loads off the back of a single course which should just be an gateway to other courses rather than an idiots guide
Every single time I read in fiction or nonfiction that it was considered witchcraft to wash oneself in the Middle Ages, it turns out the author went to Cambridge. Very odd.
Which is weird because I'd say the most popular historical vidya franchises do go into that complexity!
The last Assassin's Creed game delved into the status of women and foreigners in Sengoku Japan! The one before that was set in Abbasid Baghdad!
well yes but that happens in the early middle ages once too
Or Late Antiquity if you will
14th century gets you the Black Death, but then the Carolingian period gets you Justinian's Plague (probably also the Balck Death) still kicking around
Good luck with the fourteenth century.
In common parlance and in the writings of Petrarch himself(!): "there was a more fortunate age and probably there will be one again; in the middle, in our time, you see the confluence of wretches and ignominy". (Petrarch, Epistolae metricae 3.33, ll.4-6.)
And it's dropped out of use by historians for being moralistic and inaccurate, much like a lot of the old 'whig history' and 'Marxist history' concepts have. The idea that historians must never reexamine the past is a shockingly common one, but it confuses objectivity with doctrine.
I'm not sure we should cast doubt on an eyewitness account.
And I thought it was about the lack of windows.....
It also at its broadest only applies to, what, West and some of Central Europe?
Tbth it applies to Eastern Europe but only if people are willing to extend it to like 1350.
That's far beyond Iain's understanding
I mean 530-550 was very damaging and bleak due to Plague of Justinian, various destructive wars (Gothic Wars basically ruined Urban Italy) and globalized darkness at the time due to volcanic activity which caused crop failure.
So I've seen this meaning used (and it was deliberately how the term was used to describe the "Greek Dark Ages", a term that has also largely fallen out of use). This meaning is a later reappropriation of the term, though, as a response to the very criticism by historians seen here
The use of Dark Ages lacks sufficient nuance to be a useful term, where it was actually a European phenomena and even then not unremittingly "dark". So the use of Dark Ages is more like medical academics holding a view that vaccines have no side effects and are ideal for everyone?
I refuse to believe they didn't exist simply because until the advent of the light bulb, things were truly 'dark' all the time.
don't smoke meth, it's bad for your health
Your point being? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael...
No it isn’t like that at all, actually. What an asinine analogy.
Uhhhh I have never once in my life heard that until now. Not on TV, not on social media, no where. You're making shit up.
Well done Iain👏 You've just won stupidest post of the day🤣
As I understand it, that name/concept is a way of thinking about the era which has been moved on from. So it isn't as if medics were anti-vax, it's more like medics not using leeches anymore. I mean, some do, but it's not mainstream.
It feels somewhat akin to Pluto dead-enders who still shout “Pluto is a planet” as if knowledge cannot advance over time. Originally, the Earth was not a planet. The “planets” were the conspicuously wandering stars. But the people who actually study them needed a better word as they learned more.
Or, maybe, people who don't study history think they know it and try to ham-fist their bad takes into what experts have actually studied. I don't say shit about mRNA vaccines because I didn't study that, and I trust the consensus of the people that do. Stay in your lane, Iain.
You can simply reply "I was mistaken" and this will all blow over with your reputation slightly improved. Why not give it a try?
Well there was no dark age in the Abbasid caliphate and the Islamic golden age. There was no dark age in the Carolingian Empire. There was no dark age in pre-plague 6th century Byzantium or 12th century Byzantium. Or in 14th to 16th century Italy. So when was it? Where?
Surface level vs deep knowledge Those actually versed aren't bothered by it not fitting into a neat little box of a couple hundred characters
It’s been decades since a serious Early Medieval historian has insisted on the Dark Ages being a valid term. I did my history degree (Early Medieval/Byzantine) in the early 80s and the term 'Dark Ages' was regarded as tosh even then.
I'm not sure there is even a term in wide circulation in German. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
I'm interested in why you think 'the Dark Ages' is a useful historical term? Historians stopped using it a while ago, mostly because it's both inaccurate and moralistic. Its replacement, the 'Early Medieval Period' (or 'Late Antique Period' in the Mediterranean) lacks both of those issues.
So apparently Ian is under the impression that some historians believe that nothing happened between roman times and the rennaissance. Instead of being interested in the discussion that many historians consider the dark ages an incorrect term for that specific very real time period.
Perhaps he's taking issue with the "Phantom Time" hypothesis. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom...
I’m more of a Fomenko’s New Chronology man, myself. The math is irrefutable.
Fomenko is like an order of magnitude more insane than Velikovsky or Illig, who are both deeply insane.
Ah yes, the widely subscribed-to and definitely-mainstream Phantom Time theory! (Gotta be one of my favorite timey-wimey conspiracy theories.)
My favorite thing about the Phantom Time conspiracy is that they have literally no answer for "what about literally any part of the world that we have written records for other than western Europe?" Byzantium, China, the entire period of the rise of Islam!
They claim that the whole period from 614 to 911 is made up. Charlemagne is kind of at the center of it, but I'm deeply confused how this is suppoed to works in the Mediterranean. Spain goes from the Visigoths to the Umayyads all of a sudden?
I personally love “evidence contradicts the hypothesis.” I just imagine some historian or archivist or religious scholar being like “but like… look at the date on this.”
What’s more likely: That a pope and a king made a big deal about being in office during the Millennium? Or That a pope and a king wanted to make a big deal about being in office during the Millennium and so they fabricated hundreds of years of history and distributed artifacts to cover it up?
So you're saying the conspiracy is possible
Ignorant of both science and history. Science changes its understanding all the time. Atoms turn out not to be unsplitable, species get retaxonomized, Newton's Laws aren't as universal as originally thought, phlogiston gets debunked, continental drift goes from crazy idea to accepted fact. 1/2
Also "didn't exist" is nonsense. Historians decided that "dark ages" was a poor way to understand the period from the 5th century on and started calling it "early Medieval". Compared to the changes science has gone through, that's nothing. 2/2
Oh shut up
You're full of shit. Historians just oppose to calling it the "dark ages" because they were only so "dark" in idiotic/violent Europe! The rest of the world was having a great time (see the Islamic golden age)
What historians are you thinking of
Visigoths: "My people! From our humble origins as displaced refugees, we have risen to be a new power! We have brought low the greatest empire of our day! Surely, history will acknowledge our achievements!" Some jackass: "lol whut? tribes are dumb, Rome was cool. Must be a dark age or something."
You, uh, haven't studied the history of the first millennia much, have you?
Indeed. That's why we say, "Those who don't learn from Physics are doomed to repeat it".
And anyway there are many examples from Physics that might be compared to this. Einstein didn't think the probabilistic nature of Quantum Physics was correct. A more current example might be Tegmark's views on the nature of reality.
There exist methods of illumination other than brightly burning strawmen.
Not in the White House…
📌
What a wonderful turn of phrase. That's a keeper.
A world lit only by brightly burning straw men
📌
And fortune presents gifts not according to the book….
How often do you have the thought, "Oh there's a new scholarly consensus that's different from what I was told as a child, maybe the child was inadequately informed?"
I’m waiting for a new scholarly consensus on me before I answer
Why most historians no longer use the biased misnomer "dark ages", thread: bsky.app/profile/fake...
