Google’s telling me basic metallurgy started a few thousand years late. Not seeing any bronze, but copper and gold were popular though. Aztecs and Maya’s were making good strides in math, too. No algebra, but they had a symbol for zero and basic functions like division.
Some groups in NA developed basic metallurgy, then fairly quickly lost it because the metals they were producing weren't any better than the stone stuff they were using.
The copper around the Great Lakes was so pure that it wasn’t very useful. To make copper useful you need it to have impurities that give it strength and durability, otherwise it’s so soft you can form it without advanced forging techniques. Fell out of favor in place of lithic tools.
The Purépecha/Tarascans had also developed bronze alloys, and were using their superior knowledge of metallurgy to defeat the fearsome Aztec Empire. Tin deposits are not commonly accessible anywhere in the world, and especially not in North America, but the Tarascans could source a decent amount of tin from the Zacatecas region in the northern part of their territory.
Unless I'm mistaken, no. Bronze production requires tin, and as far as I'm aware there's only a single tin deposit in North America; somewhere in Canada.
The Purépucha/Tarascans could source tin from deposits in the Zacatecas region, which was in the northern territory of their empire. They did produce bronze alloys and actually used their superior knowledge of metallurgy to give themselves an advantage over the fearsome Aztec Triple Alliance, defeating the warriors of Tenochtitlan in multiple battles.
I'm not sure of whether or not it was ever made, but I am sure that North America doesn't have anything near the tin deposits found in Eurasia, definitely not enough for a stable bronze economy.
That’s true, probably the first intentional use of the alloy.
Although in that case it was probably ornamental rather than practical. We use bismuth “bronze” (technically a composite brass) for stuff like bearings because the bismuth forms a natural lubricant, but in their case the fact it polishes nicely and doesn’t oxidize readily was more likely the appeal.
The disrespect for the old copper culture is ridiculous. The purity of the copper meant they could forge objects out of it without having to create fires hot enough to melt the copper. The number of artifacts we have found from this culture proves that they found the copper useful. Not to mention, I don't know how the material that allows you to create fishing hooks on the shores of the great lakes could be considered anything other than useful.
The Americas weren't into the alloys that the Europeans were, but their goldsmithing was very advanced. They could do intricate details the Europeans weren't yet capable of.
Its kind of a give or take depending on wich culture and region you're refering. As far as I know, Steel for example wasn't mastered that much if at all (Obsidian most famously known to be used instead, at least for military pourposes.) but artisanship on Platinum and gold were developed to pretty sphisticated standards, even uniquely to Europe, as well as for example masonry/city design/civil engenieering and architecture, with famous examples of oustanding precision in constructions, observatories, canals, pyramids, even agrarian techniques such as terrace crops. Pretty advanced medicine and bothanic knowledge for local diseases, poisons, ritual drugs and such, and pretty advanced astronomic knowledge, wity very accurate callendars and predictions of astral events.
No steel on the whole continent. Not even iron if I remember correctly. The hardest stuff the Incas had for stone working was bronze (which they prob didnt use for this purpose). They seem to have sanded the giant rocks, and cut the by the soakwoodinwater method. Made holes for stakes using harder stones. But they had a lot od manpower, working on those monuments was kinda their taxation, which really illustrated to me the answer to "is it possible" should always be "how much are you willing to spend"...
Depends upon what time frame one wants to call the Dark Ages but there was the late Olmec and later early Mayans down in Mexico, the Mississippians in the American South, Pueblos and related tribes in the American Southwest and the mound builders up in the Great Lakes region, but the lack of written records and prevalence of perishable building materials (ie wood, thatch and the like) can make especially the more northeastern tribes/civilizations hard to research.
The Mayans are a pretty good group to look into. I can't remember all the facts but specifically look into the level of design they took when creating Chichén Itzá. Also, the founding of Mexico city by the Aztecs (Tenochtitlan) and their floating gardens (Chinampas). Tenochtitlan was literally built on a lake, unfortunately that's part of the reason why Mexico City is sinking now.
Edited: To add that Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan. Aztecs were a northern Mexico tribe while the Mayans were a southern Mexico (Yucatan peninsula) tribe.
Nearby Teotihuacan is also very impressive, built by a pre-Aztec civilization roughly 250 ad it was one of the largest cities in the world at the time and was the center of a massive trade empire.
Agree with your points but remember that the Maya (built Chichén Itzá) and Mexica/Aztecs (built Tenochtitlan) are different people/culture. Tenochtitlan would have been amazing to see with its grid of canals and floating gardens - very different now (not that Mexico city isn't also amazing).
I visited both Mexico city and the Yucatan peninsula (where Chichén Itzá and other Mayan sites are) a couple of years ago. Seeing the pyramid and the ball court was fascinating.
The ancestral Puebloan civilization had an empire spanning much of the US southwest and northern Mexico, with paved roads, irrigation, cities, etc. They also had a fairly advanced understanding of astronomy. The empire peaked in size around 1100 AD if I remember correctly.
Yep. And most likely fell due to a drought. The cities in the cliffs were built during the collapse period as a way to defend themselves from other marauding groups.
In the southwest, in the Phoenix area, they had over 30 miles of hand dug irrigation canals by this point. They had been developing them for hundreds of years and had a fairly stable agricultural setup. They interacted with many surrounding tribes as shown by the integration of different cultural petroglyphs dating from ~700 to 1500s. You can still visit and see these petroglyphs and even an excavated ancient canal. Many of Phoenixes current canals were built over where natives built theirs.
Native cultural was very advanced and we often do no do it justice when speaking about them historically.
I’ve always wanted for there to be an app that’s like Google maps but it has a time period slider and it’ll show how borders changed in different periods and maybe when possible how cities could have look during the chosen period, and if you click in a certain region it can tell you what it was called back then, what language was spoken, who was the ruler at the time, what were their allegiances, population estimate, language spoke, and other historically relevant details.
So you can compare different historic contexts around the world during the same chosen time period.
Off the top of my head, the Maya peaked around 500 AD, and had a long decay thereafter. The Aztecs and Incas similarly arose around the 13th century and peaked shortly thereafter.
In fact, the Spaniards couldn't have asked for more perfect t I ming when they got to Sputh America,.as the Inca were embroiled in civil war.
We historians are lost due to the so called "trends". First, we have an assumption of a time period, i.e.. the middle ages are the "dark ages". For some time, everyone accepts this idea. Later on, a few people start challenging it, not necessarily due to new evidence, but just out of curiosity and thinking outside the box. "Well, the middle ages were a retrocession from the Roman Empire, but they also did some good stuff". When more people start joining this revisionism, there is a full pendular move to the other direction, as the echo chamber breeds more radical views. "Actually, people lived better in the middle ages than in post-industrial revolution England"...
It is boring and a total waste of time, literally just cherry picking to prove points. That's why I flat out refuse to engage in these trends. Now we've been in the "middle age good" trend for some years, eventually we will see a pendular movement back to start when someone starts comparing urban populations from the Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Sigh.
No... The way university is structured requires PhD students to follow the same line of thought as their mentor, this stifles creativity. And exaggerating sells more books. Whole conferences are held to prove these points, humans love to be for and against ideas, nuance is discouraged.
On top of that, historians are divided into two camps: the "parachuters" and the "truffle searchers". Ones make the big theories, the others collect data from primary sources and do micro history. Problem is, the parachuters will tell the truffle searchers to collect the data they want to prove their point. And if a truffle searcher goes "solo" and just tries to be as objective as possible, he is very likely to end up in professional failure and isolation. Point in case, my father is the biggest expert in XVIII century Spanish nobility, but he has only get 6000 euros out of selling books for his whole life.
If you want to change this, you'd need a) a lot of intellectual integrity, which is rare, b) universities as we know them radically transforming overnight. And believe me, modern university is the institution that has changed the least since it was last reorganized in Germany in the XIX century. They are absolutely resistant to change, even the Catholic church or the military have evolved more in the way they work.
Hmmm I am not sure, I remember Umberto Eco already pointed out this problem of trends many years ago in "How to Write a Thesis". It's just a shared feeling for most historians that are outside academic circles, meaning not working in a university.
That being said, if what you want to know what is the antidote to this trend problem, just read Italian microhistory or local history heavily focused on primary sources. My first recommendation would be "the cheese and the Worms" by Carlo Ginzburg. Or "Chinese son of God" by Jonathan Spence. No big theories, no trying to prove points. Just straight up facts and descriptions of historic reality. And highly entertaining, because they are both very talented writers.
Only an absolute donkey wouldn't realise the later half of the first millennia was civilization collapse. And yet here we are. I went to a conference that was called "the Carolingian renaissance", their point being that Charlemagne was on par with Roman empire level administration because HE OPENED AN OFFICE AND MINTED MORE COIN. It's bad.
It really does feel like there was an overcorrection. Like saying nothing improved is not correct, but it was not a great time for Europe, and a lot of advancement from Rome and Greece was lost during this period and recovered during the Renaissance.
It feels like this happens with many concepts. Something goes a bit too much one way, then there's a contrarian opinion. Contrarian opinion takes over and takes its perspective too far.
Only an absolute donkey wouldn't realise the later half of the first millennia was civilization collapse.
I'll argue this one. Civilization collapse where? Umayyad Spain was doing all right. Cordoba had something like 200,000 people at the end of the millennium. The Eastern Romans and Abbasids certainly were too. The British Isles were already in the process of civilization collapse around 300; look at the population of Londinium over time. Same goes for Pannonia and Raetia. Germany, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe were far more civilized at the end of the millennium than at the start of it. And this is not discussing the 80% or so of humanity that lived outside of Roman lands.
So, really, civilization collapsed in Italy and parts of Gaul. And it was already declining in the 200s. You had Symmachus and Marcellinus, as well as Christian writers like Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, and that's mostly it for the last 300 years of Western Roman literature. Galen and Ptolemy were probably the last of the great scientific writers, and they died at the end of the Golden Age.
"Civilization collapse" generally has one of two measurements: de-urbanization (generally caused by the end of subsidized grain shipments from Africa) and an end to patrician literary culture.
Yes to all your points, but my brother in Christ, we are talking about Western Europe.
Your last point is really interesting. De-urbanization is often presented as people moving to the countryside due to cities being unsafe, lack of commerce, lack of subsidies, invasions, broken down political system, etc. It is NOT. I am sure it is due to people literally dying. There is demographic decline, not just people moving to the countryside. My "province" of Bética on Spain was one of the wealthiest during the Roman Empire. If people were moving out of cities during the crisis, why is there more archeological evidence of people living in the countryside in the Ist century than in the 5th? Unless they are living in clay huts and dying soon, thus leaving less archeological evidence.
And you are definitely underrating how common literacy was during the Roman Empire. It was way more common than previous finds would show. You just need to see all the spelling mistakes and lower latin from the end of the Empire, as in, my hometown alone has 10000 inscriptions from the late Empire. And we've got like two letters from the early medieval times, when it was the capital of the visigothic kingdom.
True, except "Dark Ages" were never the same as the "Middle Ages." Dark ages were the few hundred years between late 400s and early 700s, specifically in Western Europe, where there was an enormous decline in urban living, literacy, health, trade, and population compared to the Western Roman Empire, not to mention a lot of tumultuous migration and conquering by outsiders. There's not a single technological innovation from that time period that matters today, and an extremely limited written historical record.
Historians have long been clear about this, even when using the term "dark ages," although the dark ages started out as a way to refer to everything before about 1200, which is indeed inaccurate. But for 500-700, it's incredibly accurate for most of Western Europe.
Nobody says dark ages, until they want to get kicked out of their university/research center. I think for a medieval historian to say that is a death sentence.
And yes, high and low medieval periods are very different. In this I totally agree with you. About the low medieval period, it is an age of recovery and mild innovation. There is a very obvious acceleration of events after the Black Plague, due to political changes.
Heavy plow spread during this time. Even the Irish were building saw mills. There was an overall decline in urban life but rural life was progressing. Libraries like the ones on holy island and the vivarium preserved nearly all the texts we think of as the classics.
I don't think this meme is inaccurately claiming that historians are into "Dark Ages" rhetoric, instead it's taking a jab at the general public, where this idea is still pretty popular.
There was a roughly ten-thirteen period that was called the dark age because due to some internal church political drama they stopped recording history for a bit so official records from the papacy don't exist hence this is where things go dark but they don't apply that to the entire medieval age.
That's an alternative Dark Ages theory that I don't really think stands up to scrutiny. It was advanced in the 1800s and also isn't really used by modern historians.
It's only kinda applicable to the parts of Europe that used to be a part of the Western Roman Empire, and even then it is only a somewhat reasonable description from the mid 5th century to maybe the end of the 8th or so.
Dark age "The period after the destructive wars and split between north and south Korea, where North korea had a lighting problem that is in fact still visible today from space"
Didn't it just originally refer to the period in which written sources are less numerous in north west Europe?
So Britain has inscriptions and some degree of names, places and dates for events recorded in Roman annals found across Europe and the middle east. But then for a few centuries until the anglo-saxons begin to chronicle it was hard to tell who was showing up, when and where, who was claiming to rule when and where so it is like the archives go dark during these ages.
Then the term gets more widely applied to medieval pre-renaissance Europe as a time of cruelty and superstition as if Rome was a bastion of modern humanitarianism and nobody made records in Ravenna or Aachen during the same period, let alone China...
It was usually used to describe a decline of classical learning and culture following the fall of Rome, but the concept is lopsided and only applies to very narrow areas, it holds about as much merit continentally or even globally as „Weimar Classicism“, which refers to an „era“ of literature completely reserved for the works of Goethe, Schiller, Wieland and Herder who lived in Weimar. It does not have any meaning beyond that city and these 4 people and maybe Kloppstock, which is why you dont usually see it in any timelines.
Dark Ages is the term that correspond to period of Barbarian kingdoms after the fall of Western Roman Empire (476 A.D. - app. 900/1000 A.D.) because very little written sources came from this period of time from Western (but also Eastern) Europe (excluding Byzantium and Arab sources).
Another meaning, it was the time when antique philosophical thought was largely forgotten and only when the works of Aristotle and Plato were rediscovered, translated, and studied upon in 12th century it ended
Except that by the 900s we actually have a ton of written sources. Source scarcity is a very punctual problem, both in terms of timeline and geography, and mostly restricted to non-Roman Europe before the 700s.
As Europe becomes more Catholic/Orthodox, more written sources appear. In fact by the year 1000 we have a pretty great picture of most what goes on in Europe as per our modern understanding of it.
"In fact by the year 1000 we have a pretty great picture of most what goes on in Europe as per our modern understanding of it."
Yes but large parts of that picture required quite a lot of puzzle building by historians. People living in ca 1800 didn't have access to the collected view of the Dark Ages that we have today,
Eh, not really. It is primarily an English term because it describes the situation in England, not in the whole of Europe. E.g. there are at least some serious sources during the time from modern day France and Western Germany. Primarily because they often just kept the old Roman administration or at least priesthood.
It's not without gaps, but we have at least a pretty good idea what happens from the moment the Franks settle the area right until the High Middle Ages. And given that the Franks arrive with the end of the Roman Empire, there is no real gap.
Franks were essentially a small northern European kingdom with a succession of almost unknown and unimportant rulers after Clovis, up until Charles Martel in the early 700s.
Yes, history kept happening after 476. No, it was not a historical continuation - it was a dramatic historical collapse after the Roman Empire. Western Europe recovered only slowly, and in limited areas, and the people were notably fewer and less well off.
I like to think of the european early medieval period as essentially post-apocalyptic. People obviously continued living in their own micro societies. But the large scale civil works had largely been destroyed and the knowledge to rebuild them lost.
Only post apocalyptic for some. The different Germanic tribes were having a grand time. Finally the massive oppressive slaving empire was falling, and they where there to pick up the pieces.
Calling the early medieval period "Dark Ages" in much of central and eastern Europe makes no sense either because before it there was absolutely no written sources and during that "Dark Age" written sources first appear.
Yes, technological progress did continue, but some technologies were lost and many cities declined. Urban populations were reduced, and large scale Roman engineering, such as aqueduct maintenance, and complex road networks fell into decline
Hagia Sophia was 6th century. And Charlemagne's cathederal was also pretty impressive -- that was 9th century. But yeah, those flying buttresses and huge rose windows were state of the art, and took a long time to figure out, and there was lots of trial and error.
The Romans who often get called the Byzantine Empire spent the dark ages continuing to develop and would have been the first to point out that the term dark ages only applies to a poor and peripheral region where Roman civilisation has been in retreat.
The most prominent churches in Europe tend to be from the high middle ages, which some include as part of the dark ages, but I think 12th and 13th century can only rightly be called the "high middle ages" as they really are the greatest example of many things that epitomized the middle age.
So while not AS magnificent (high middle ages are called "high" for a reason), there's still plenty of great churches from after the fall of Rome to before the 11th century. You can easily Google this. The problem is that many were extensively renovated in the high middle ages (or later), or were not from Europe (seriously, Egypt had some great stuff).
Honestly, which technologies do you mean? People just kind of repeat this to the point that everyone believes it, but I've seen very few actual examples of things people outright forgot how to do. The main difference was the scale of resources available to put into projects.
If anything, I'd say the fall of the Western empire actually accelerated technological development after 400 years of complete stagnation. You'll notice that basically every major "Roman invention" really dates to the Hellenistic period. Meanwhile OP actually forgot several more crucial medieval innovations, including the stirrup, advanced steelmaking, and above all three-field crop rotation which vastly improved agricultural productivity.
A lot of technologies weren’t loss but the decline of central governments meant that a lot of civil projects and professional armies couldn’t be recreated. Rather then losing the technologies it was mostly that they couldn’t use them anymore without a well funded central government backing them
Yep, it’s much easier to think of the Middle Ages more as lacking the Roman megastate to provide and allocate capital and manpower for large-scale projects, and less about them not having the know-how or intellectual capacity for these things. People didn’t suddenly become stupider en masse, as seems to be pretty widely implied in pop culture assumptions.
Due to the state of written records and passing off of technical knowledge at the time, usually from a teacher to apprentices, if you are unable to use the technology, the knowledge of the technology itself will soon be lost. It's not like Charlemagne was sitting on the formula for Roman concrete and the technical plans for the water driven stone saw and just couldn't use it because he didn't have enough money.
They're making a joke, Zunes were an iPod competitor (MP3 player) made by Microsoft. The fact that you didn't know what it was tells you how successful they were.
Is it really "lost tech"? We just aren't quite sure which of five or so possible combinations of available ingredients were actually used (i think heated naturally occuring crude oil wirh maybe something else added is the one considered most likely?).
We can do better nowadays, but the actual formula for Greek fire was lost in the 1200s and we only have educated guesses as to what the original formula actually was.
Stirrups doesn't originate from Europe, they were invented in Asia and it's estimated they first saw wide use around 200-400 a.d over there, which isn't considered the "dark ages". To say they were "invented" during the dark ages would be somewhat disingenuous.
Yes, there were technological inventions during "the dark ages", but societal control and structure, philosophic discussion etc. staggered.
Technology isn't everything: societal, political and moral systems must also be considered.
Hydraulic concrete continued to see use throughout the middle ages.
What was lost was the use of pozzolanic ash from the Vesuvius area, which made the concrete stronger. But again, this is a loss of access, not of knowledge.
The middle ages had clear glass. The difference is they also developed new methods of productions that enabled local production in central Europe instead of imports from the Levante and Egypt.
Domed roofs?
I recall learning that the duomo was a prestige project for building a huge not-quite dome and it required new materials (bricks of a certain kind) in an innovative structure (a kind of self scaffolding herringbone) with a conscious effort to try to rediscover the means to make domed roofs and large interior spaces as the Romans did at the Pantheon.
How many of these memes are just arguing with strawmen while depicting yourself as a chad? Nobody is seriously making such a simplistic overarching argument unless they’re extremely misinformed
Still, it feels like we're preaching to the choir. Chances are its rare that someone who truly believes the dark ages were such because nothing happened probably wouldn't lurk long on the history subreddit. And, of course, people spreading misinformation can feel like there's a large misinformed base when really, what happened was 200 people saw the meme. 3 people made an incorrect statement and 7 people upvoted those comments. The other 95% of people are not interacting
That would cover most popular science communicators (who generally are not historians).
As a kid I used to read lots of popular science books, and they either said that basically nothing of interest happened in the middle ages or vilified the time period.
I assume you’ve never seen one of those posts in popular or r/all that claims some variation of “all human progress in Europe was stalled from 700 CE till the Renaissance (or even the Enlightenment) by a ‘Christian Dark Age’”
Granted, they’ve become less common over the years, but the idea that the Medieval period was a grimdark time where everyone was stupid and cruel and society regressed and stagnated is still fairly ingrained in popular consciousness.
The romans and Mesopotamians had windmills. The 1st century han chinese invented the heavy plow and it was introduced to europe via vikings contact with the slavs. The Greeks were already building complex mechanical clocks.
The Romans and Mesopotamians almost definitely didn't have the same windmill technology that was used in 12th Century Europe they even visually look different. Not to mention that those were extremely rare compared to water mills.
2.That sounds extremely unlikely seeing as how Europe in general had little to any contact with China in Early Medieval period (Also the linked Wikipedia article doesn't say that, not sure where you got that from)
3.Sure Greeks had made great progress in mechanics, but since The Antikythera mechanism was literally only found at the bottom of the sea, id say it didn't have a direct impact on the late medieval clocks.
The "dark ages" has been constricted over time from being synonymous to the medieval era, to now where it's just used to aptly describe the immediate circumstances of post-collapse Roman Empire western Europe, or just not used at all.
They were called Dark because they didn't burn enough witches and heretics, in opposition to the Enlightenment, named after all the bonfires lighting up the continent.
I would say everything got really FUCKED in Europe after collapse of Rome and Arabian conquests. Trade got fucked, pirating got strong and the imperial logistic also was lost. Europe just couldn’t catch a break with disaster after disaster; Arabs, Germans and Vikings. After everything settled down and somewhat stable time had come progress continued and surpassed Roman
It was only a disaster for the italians. Pretty sure all the provinces were ecstatic being able to spend their money on their own towns rather than giving it to rome.
I'd need to look it up again, but I remember a report that suggested that median lifespan actually increased during the Dark ages. Mostly due to the decline of the plague tinderboxes that were cities, medical advancements, and the fact that wars went from having 50,000 people in each side to twelve dudes fighting over a pig farm.
Compared to late Rome and migration period Medieval era was great.
There is a reason those populations from late antiquity shrank massively.
Plagues, end of food supply from Mediterranean (especially after Arab conquest of north Africa), climate cooling and wars (Huns, migrating peoples)...
Medieval era has more easily sustainable and resilient lifestyle and less massive wars than those of antiquity.
Reneissance is built on foundations of preceding era and its advancements, its rise in metalurgy, food production, cities, universities, architecture and wealth needed to support such cultural flourishing.
Depends how see it. In terms of violence honestly the periods proceeding and seceding were way worse. The Renaissance was not this peaceful artsy age. It had by far bigger,bloodier, and more frequent wars. The fall of Rome was not the time to be alive. Huns and Goths raging over the border while the Roman beaurcracy imploded and everyone's fighting each other. The middle ages was actually more stable and peaceful then what came directly before and directly after. Sure you may be going but the Pax Romana to which I say the pax Romana couldn't last forever the turmoil of the later Empire was invetible and the middle ages was an improvement from the chaos ensueing from the WRE's collapse. In terms of social development. Really depends where you live.
I mean even rome during the height of the empire wasn't a great place to be, walking out at night you'd probably be mugged, killed and thrown in the Tiber river if you didn't had the money for bodyguards
walking out at night you'd probably be mugged, killed and thrown in the Tiber river if you didn't had the money for bodyguards
Crime didn't improve in the middle ages nor did it really after hell I wouldn't exactly go walking around at night alone in certain parts of town now. So in my opinion violent crime isnt the best metric to use here. However warfare is a serious escalation in levels of violence and disrupts daily life significantly. The amount of war inflicted upon citizens of the Roman Empire during the height was relatively little especially when compared with the later Empire. And when compared to the middle ages the vast majority of 1,000 year period really wasn't that baf.
Renaissance wasn't just an art movement. It was a great philosophical change kickstarted by the knowledge of Greek brought by Byzantine intellectuals fleeing to Europe. Europeans could read again the Greek philosophers, which completely changed their view of the world in a few decades
While you are correct that the Renaissance is more than an art movement you are overselling the contribution of the "Greek" part of the Renaissance. Even before Greek was established as a subject in Italian universities and humanistic schools (in the 1390s), Renaissance scholars' rediscovery of ancient Latin texts had already changed their view of the world. You also seem to repeat a myth that annoys me and which I have debunked over on r/badhistory: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1kytxo1/the_myth_that_manuscript_carrying_refugees/.
The dark ages are a myth, the only reason they are called that is because there are very few sources from Britain during that time. Everyone else was business as usual
There were few written sources for all of Western Europe at the time after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. And in that way, it is a fitting name for the early middle ages. The lack of written sources leaves us kind of in the dark.
That's not where the term comes from. That was a later reinterpretation of the term. The term comes from Petrarch who was comparing medieval Europe as a dark fall from the golden age of the Roman Empire.
It is an incorrect term though, that much is true and is why modern historians don't use it.
Arles went from a big bustling Roman city with a gladiatorial arena within it, to literally shrinking so much that the entire village relocated itself to within the arena, using its outer walls as city walls.
Compared to Roman times, things were not "business as usual".
Compared to Roman times, things were not "business as usual".
Well of course, if you city is part of the Mediterranean trade with rome, yeah your city is going to shrink due to the decreased economic activity; but the average peasant is still doing peasant things.
It’s an interesting thought, but I would argue the decline of Rome is better attributed to flaws in their political institutions rather than any distinct lack of technology. Stirrups and clocks were no doubt useful, but they would not have provided any greater stability unless they somehow mitigated the damaging effects of constant civil war from ambitious generals or the declining sense of cohesion between the disparate groups of people under the control of Roman administration.
Nothing would have changed. The issue with the Roman empire was not the strength of the army but with how the empire was fundamentally created in the first place.
Let me introduce to you the spinning wheel, a "dark ages" invention that increased the productivity of spinning, before by far the most consuming part of cloth production, one which required hundreds of not thousands of hours for a single clothing item, by roughly 10x.
Incredibly important but not often discussed, a lot of it because our primary sources aren't very interested in the lives of peasant women.
I’m sure this low effort meme left out some important inventions.
But in only 500 years from 1500 to 2000, the whole ass Industrial Revolution happened and then was followed up by computers and the age of information.
The amount of meaningful inventions during that time are innumerable.
And going back farther I’m sure you would agree that metal working and construction are monumental inventions, there’s a huge difference between a society that has swords and bridges and one that doesn’t.
I think it’s important to note that much of the progress made from 1500-2000 owes its origins to the medieval period. The creation of universities alone is a monumental achievement that we obviously still benefit from today. Not to mention the commercial revolution in the 12th and 13th centuries that brought innovations like double entry book keeping and international banking systems. There are also innovations in political institutions like the British parliament and the French Estates General which eventually provided the economic and political framework that allowed for the Industrial Revolution.
There was the Medieval Agricultural Revolution which began around 1000 A.D., which saw the advent of three-field crop rotation and new agricultural technologies like the heavy plow and horse collar, which enabled drastically increased food production and thus a population explosion which contributed to urbanization.
This growth of towns and cities which occurred during the High Middle Ages spurred the Commercial Revolution, which began around the 11th century and laid much of the groundwork for the later Industrial Revolution and the advent of capitalism. Trade guilds (Medieval precursor to trade unions), joint-stock companies, stock exchanges, modern banking systems, modern insurance policies, mercantilism, and colonialism all saw their genesis during this period.
This, of course, served as the economic engine of the Renaissance. There were various Medieval “little renaissances” which laid important cultural and intellectual groundwork, such as the Northumbrian, Carolingian, and Ottonian Renaissances, though the Renaissance proper arguably began with the Medieval Renaissance in the 11th century, which stretched into the 15th century and continued into the Italian Renaissance. This period saw the growth of the earliest universities (which grew from earlier monastery and cathedral schools founded during the Early Middle Ages), rediscovery of more classical texts, as well as contemporary Arab, Jewish, and Byzantine ones, largely through the Crusades, seeing significant advances in law, philosophy, science, and medicine. Scholastic theology was developed, which provided the intellectual foundation for the Scientific Revolution. Hindu-Arabic numerals and algebra were introduced. Vernacular literature emerged. Art also developed significantly, such as the advent of Gothic architecture.
In terms of technologies, there were significant advancements in metallurgy and industry thanks to the advent of hydraulic-powered bellows and trip-hammers, blast furnaces, advanced heat-treatment techniques, and cast iron production. There were major developments in military technologies, such as fortifications, siege weapons, body armor, crossbows, as well as the development of gunpowder weapons such as cannons, handgonnes, and eventually matchlock arquebuses. The lateen sail, sternpost rudder, astrolabe, magnetic compass, and more advanced shipbuilding techniques were invented, which of course enabled the Age of Exploration. The printing press and papermaking were of course huge developments, as well, which enabled widespread literacy and the spread of ideas which fueled the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. The mechanical clock revolutionized timekeeping. The stirrup and canted saddle enabled the creation of heavy shock cavalry, which laid the foundation for later European social systems.
Thats the issue of having "medieval" and "middle ages" cover such a vast and diverse time period. So yes, people in the middle ages had clocks but only in the latter part of it. Knights and castles werent a thing for abut half of the middle ages yet its what most people associate with it. Plate armor came in quite late yet the stereotypical knight is depicted wearing plate. Even Buttonholes, like the one in the picture would have on his clothes came in quite late, around the 13th century. Personally i would much prefer the middle ages to start only with the high middle ages, and have the early middle ages completely separate as its own distinct time period.
Dark ages typically refer to a very specific part of medieval Europe in a very specific time frame. The way I’ve seen it laid out is that it refers to western and some parts of central and Southern Europe from the 5th to 10th century, which while by no means empty, weren’t quite as innovation filled as the later Middle Ages.
But anyway you’re right, the dark ages weren’t really dark
Also consider 3-fold and then 4-fold crop rotation, which along with the colombian exchange, created the agricultural revolution. It is not an exaggeration to say it laid the foundation for the industrial revolution, by allowing societies to transition from mostly subsistence farming to urbanization.
The European 'Dark Ages' were only about 500 years long, they ended in the 11th century. All those inventions you listed marked the end of the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages was only the *Early* Medieval period, as the period is more properly kown in academia, the High and Late Medieval periods are *not* the Dark Ages.
Seriously. Sure, the methods were boosted by knowledge from Asia. But compare what a smith could do in 800 and something a smith could do in 1400.
We're talking night and day. Okay mail and decent swords vs quasi full plate and excellent swords made of fucking spring steel. Armour so good you almost don't need a shield anymore.
Historians don't even use the term "dark ages." Because they weren't dark and they're way too focused on Western Europe and not the rest of the world.
What was north american natives developing during this time? Rarely hear about them.
Google’s telling me basic metallurgy started a few thousand years late. Not seeing any bronze, but copper and gold were popular though. Aztecs and Maya’s were making good strides in math, too. No algebra, but they had a symbol for zero and basic functions like division.
Some groups in NA developed basic metallurgy, then fairly quickly lost it because the metals they were producing weren't any better than the stone stuff they were using.
The copper around the Great Lakes was so pure that it wasn’t very useful. To make copper useful you need it to have impurities that give it strength and durability, otherwise it’s so soft you can form it without advanced forging techniques. Fell out of favor in place of lithic tools.
Was bronze ever invented in the Americas?
Andean societies did develop bronze-working.
Most tin in the Americas is centered in South America, with limited deposits in North America.
You need both sizable enough resources of copper and tin in order for bronze-working to be possible.
I can confrim this entire comments train. I was there.
I confirm because I played Runescape
"Look at this rock, let's see if it melts!"
Ah the age of exploration
Kids these days with their steel and titanium. When I was a boy we had obsidian and flint, and we were lucky!
The Purépecha/Tarascans had also developed bronze alloys, and were using their superior knowledge of metallurgy to defeat the fearsome Aztec Empire. Tin deposits are not commonly accessible anywhere in the world, and especially not in North America, but the Tarascans could source a decent amount of tin from the Zacatecas region in the northern part of their territory.
Unless I'm mistaken, no. Bronze production requires tin, and as far as I'm aware there's only a single tin deposit in North America; somewhere in Canada.
you can use arsenic too
That is true, and arsenical bronze was apparently used by indigenous cultures in Peru and Ecuador, so my earlier comment is slightly false
the egyptians were doing it as well
The Purépucha/Tarascans could source tin from deposits in the Zacatecas region, which was in the northern territory of their empire. They did produce bronze alloys and actually used their superior knowledge of metallurgy to give themselves an advantage over the fearsome Aztec Triple Alliance, defeating the warriors of Tenochtitlan in multiple battles.
I'm not sure of whether or not it was ever made, but I am sure that North America doesn't have anything near the tin deposits found in Eurasia, definitely not enough for a stable bronze economy.
And my tin dealer won't tell me where he gets the stuff.
Unexpected Bill Wurtz
Western Mexico and northern South America had arsenical bronze and the Andean cultures had tin bronze.
Arsenic bronze? How toxic is that alloy?
Arsenic has a low vaporization rate (615 C°) so it’s very very dangerous to smelt
Extremely toxic
Toxic enough that swords made from it deal poison damage.
The Inca also had bismuth bronze
That’s true, probably the first intentional use of the alloy.
Although in that case it was probably ornamental rather than practical. We use bismuth “bronze” (technically a composite brass) for stuff like bearings because the bismuth forms a natural lubricant, but in their case the fact it polishes nicely and doesn’t oxidize readily was more likely the appeal.
That's true. What I saw said they found Bismuth Bronze knives at Machu Pichu. It didn't state the context that they were found.
The disrespect for the old copper culture is ridiculous. The purity of the copper meant they could forge objects out of it without having to create fires hot enough to melt the copper. The number of artifacts we have found from this culture proves that they found the copper useful. Not to mention, I don't know how the material that allows you to create fishing hooks on the shores of the great lakes could be considered anything other than useful.
Can't kill someone with it -> not useful is basically how a lot of people think
suffering from success
Mayan math was supposedly great. Could calculate astronomical distances and such.
The Americas weren't into the alloys that the Europeans were, but their goldsmithing was very advanced. They could do intricate details the Europeans weren't yet capable of.
Its kind of a give or take depending on wich culture and region you're refering. As far as I know, Steel for example wasn't mastered that much if at all (Obsidian most famously known to be used instead, at least for military pourposes.) but artisanship on Platinum and gold were developed to pretty sphisticated standards, even uniquely to Europe, as well as for example masonry/city design/civil engenieering and architecture, with famous examples of oustanding precision in constructions, observatories, canals, pyramids, even agrarian techniques such as terrace crops. Pretty advanced medicine and bothanic knowledge for local diseases, poisons, ritual drugs and such, and pretty advanced astronomic knowledge, wity very accurate callendars and predictions of astral events.
No steel on the whole continent. Not even iron if I remember correctly. The hardest stuff the Incas had for stone working was bronze (which they prob didnt use for this purpose). They seem to have sanded the giant rocks, and cut the by the soakwoodinwater method. Made holes for stakes using harder stones. But they had a lot od manpower, working on those monuments was kinda their taxation, which really illustrated to me the answer to "is it possible" should always be "how much are you willing to spend"...
Purepecha in Mexico & Andean Communities in Peru / Bolivia had Arsenical Bronze.
Rise and fall of urbanized agricultural civilizations, among other things. Look at the so-called Mississippian Culture.
Were you trying to say it shouldn't be called Mississippian or were you trying to introduce the name to someone unfamiliar?
Depends upon what time frame one wants to call the Dark Ages but there was the late Olmec and later early Mayans down in Mexico, the Mississippians in the American South, Pueblos and related tribes in the American Southwest and the mound builders up in the Great Lakes region, but the lack of written records and prevalence of perishable building materials (ie wood, thatch and the like) can make especially the more northeastern tribes/civilizations hard to research.
The Mayans are a pretty good group to look into. I can't remember all the facts but specifically look into the level of design they took when creating Chichén Itzá. Also, the founding of Mexico city by the Aztecs (Tenochtitlan) and their floating gardens (Chinampas). Tenochtitlan was literally built on a lake, unfortunately that's part of the reason why Mexico City is sinking now.
Edited: To add that Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan. Aztecs were a northern Mexico tribe while the Mayans were a southern Mexico (Yucatan peninsula) tribe.
Mexico city is also sinking because they're pumping out all the water in the aquifers for the city
Nearby Teotihuacan is also very impressive, built by a pre-Aztec civilization roughly 250 ad it was one of the largest cities in the world at the time and was the center of a massive trade empire.
Agree with your points but remember that the Maya (built Chichén Itzá) and Mexica/Aztecs (built Tenochtitlan) are different people/culture. Tenochtitlan would have been amazing to see with its grid of canals and floating gardens - very different now (not that Mexico city isn't also amazing).
I visited both Mexico city and the Yucatan peninsula (where Chichén Itzá and other Mayan sites are) a couple of years ago. Seeing the pyramid and the ball court was fascinating.
The ancestral Puebloan civilization had an empire spanning much of the US southwest and northern Mexico, with paved roads, irrigation, cities, etc. They also had a fairly advanced understanding of astronomy. The empire peaked in size around 1100 AD if I remember correctly.
Yep. And most likely fell due to a drought. The cities in the cliffs were built during the collapse period as a way to defend themselves from other marauding groups.
Cliffs make for great natural walls.
Probably on account of being great, natural walls.
Building and then collapsing their own civilization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park?wprov=sfla1
developing basic syringes for medicine: use a hollowed out bird bone, and a hollow rubber ball to draw and inject the fluid
In the southwest, in the Phoenix area, they had over 30 miles of hand dug irrigation canals by this point. They had been developing them for hundreds of years and had a fairly stable agricultural setup. They interacted with many surrounding tribes as shown by the integration of different cultural petroglyphs dating from ~700 to 1500s. You can still visit and see these petroglyphs and even an excavated ancient canal. Many of Phoenixes current canals were built over where natives built theirs.
Native cultural was very advanced and we often do no do it justice when speaking about them historically.
I’ve always wanted for there to be an app that’s like Google maps but it has a time period slider and it’ll show how borders changed in different periods and maybe when possible how cities could have look during the chosen period, and if you click in a certain region it can tell you what it was called back then, what language was spoken, who was the ruler at the time, what were their allegiances, population estimate, language spoke, and other historically relevant details.
So you can compare different historic contexts around the world during the same chosen time period.
Off the top of my head, the Maya peaked around 500 AD, and had a long decay thereafter. The Aztecs and Incas similarly arose around the 13th century and peaked shortly thereafter.
In fact, the Spaniards couldn't have asked for more perfect t I ming when they got to Sputh America,.as the Inca were embroiled in civil war.
Mass murder I think. But that what everyone does
Dark Ages was used to mean the gap in the written record, but it has a totally different popular meaning.
We historians are lost due to the so called "trends". First, we have an assumption of a time period, i.e.. the middle ages are the "dark ages". For some time, everyone accepts this idea. Later on, a few people start challenging it, not necessarily due to new evidence, but just out of curiosity and thinking outside the box. "Well, the middle ages were a retrocession from the Roman Empire, but they also did some good stuff". When more people start joining this revisionism, there is a full pendular move to the other direction, as the echo chamber breeds more radical views. "Actually, people lived better in the middle ages than in post-industrial revolution England"...
It is boring and a total waste of time, literally just cherry picking to prove points. That's why I flat out refuse to engage in these trends. Now we've been in the "middle age good" trend for some years, eventually we will see a pendular movement back to start when someone starts comparing urban populations from the Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Sigh.
Do you propose anything against this process?
No... The way university is structured requires PhD students to follow the same line of thought as their mentor, this stifles creativity. And exaggerating sells more books. Whole conferences are held to prove these points, humans love to be for and against ideas, nuance is discouraged.
On top of that, historians are divided into two camps: the "parachuters" and the "truffle searchers". Ones make the big theories, the others collect data from primary sources and do micro history. Problem is, the parachuters will tell the truffle searchers to collect the data they want to prove their point. And if a truffle searcher goes "solo" and just tries to be as objective as possible, he is very likely to end up in professional failure and isolation. Point in case, my father is the biggest expert in XVIII century Spanish nobility, but he has only get 6000 euros out of selling books for his whole life.
If you want to change this, you'd need a) a lot of intellectual integrity, which is rare, b) universities as we know them radically transforming overnight. And believe me, modern university is the institution that has changed the least since it was last reorganized in Germany in the XIX century. They are absolutely resistant to change, even the Catholic church or the military have evolved more in the way they work.
Well what do you expect of these universities? They were founded during the dark ages!
Exactly haha
Very interesting. Thank you for shedding light on this rather unknown subject to the public.
Could you possibly be able to point to some references, links, etc. which could help to delve into this discourse?
Hmmm I am not sure, I remember Umberto Eco already pointed out this problem of trends many years ago in "How to Write a Thesis". It's just a shared feeling for most historians that are outside academic circles, meaning not working in a university.
That being said, if what you want to know what is the antidote to this trend problem, just read Italian microhistory or local history heavily focused on primary sources. My first recommendation would be "the cheese and the Worms" by Carlo Ginzburg. Or "Chinese son of God" by Jonathan Spence. No big theories, no trying to prove points. Just straight up facts and descriptions of historic reality. And highly entertaining, because they are both very talented writers.
I’ve said this before but the fact that Latin fractured into a bunch of different languages makes it pretty clear things indeed went dark for a while.
Only an absolute donkey wouldn't realise the later half of the first millennia was civilization collapse. And yet here we are. I went to a conference that was called "the Carolingian renaissance", their point being that Charlemagne was on par with Roman empire level administration because HE OPENED AN OFFICE AND MINTED MORE COIN. It's bad.
It really does feel like there was an overcorrection. Like saying nothing improved is not correct, but it was not a great time for Europe, and a lot of advancement from Rome and Greece was lost during this period and recovered during the Renaissance.
It feels like this happens with many concepts. Something goes a bit too much one way, then there's a contrarian opinion. Contrarian opinion takes over and takes its perspective too far.
I'll argue this one. Civilization collapse where? Umayyad Spain was doing all right. Cordoba had something like 200,000 people at the end of the millennium. The Eastern Romans and Abbasids certainly were too. The British Isles were already in the process of civilization collapse around 300; look at the population of Londinium over time. Same goes for Pannonia and Raetia. Germany, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe were far more civilized at the end of the millennium than at the start of it. And this is not discussing the 80% or so of humanity that lived outside of Roman lands.
So, really, civilization collapsed in Italy and parts of Gaul. And it was already declining in the 200s. You had Symmachus and Marcellinus, as well as Christian writers like Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, and that's mostly it for the last 300 years of Western Roman literature. Galen and Ptolemy were probably the last of the great scientific writers, and they died at the end of the Golden Age.
"Civilization collapse" generally has one of two measurements: de-urbanization (generally caused by the end of subsidized grain shipments from Africa) and an end to patrician literary culture.
Yes to all your points, but my brother in Christ, we are talking about Western Europe.
Your last point is really interesting. De-urbanization is often presented as people moving to the countryside due to cities being unsafe, lack of commerce, lack of subsidies, invasions, broken down political system, etc. It is NOT. I am sure it is due to people literally dying. There is demographic decline, not just people moving to the countryside. My "province" of Bética on Spain was one of the wealthiest during the Roman Empire. If people were moving out of cities during the crisis, why is there more archeological evidence of people living in the countryside in the Ist century than in the 5th? Unless they are living in clay huts and dying soon, thus leaving less archeological evidence.
And you are definitely underrating how common literacy was during the Roman Empire. It was way more common than previous finds would show. You just need to see all the spelling mistakes and lower latin from the end of the Empire, as in, my hometown alone has 10000 inscriptions from the late Empire. And we've got like two letters from the early medieval times, when it was the capital of the visigothic kingdom.
Places like /r/HistoryMemes are absolutely not doing anything to help
Hell no, the level is very low here ))
True, except "Dark Ages" were never the same as the "Middle Ages." Dark ages were the few hundred years between late 400s and early 700s, specifically in Western Europe, where there was an enormous decline in urban living, literacy, health, trade, and population compared to the Western Roman Empire, not to mention a lot of tumultuous migration and conquering by outsiders. There's not a single technological innovation from that time period that matters today, and an extremely limited written historical record.
Historians have long been clear about this, even when using the term "dark ages," although the dark ages started out as a way to refer to everything before about 1200, which is indeed inaccurate. But for 500-700, it's incredibly accurate for most of Western Europe.
Nobody says dark ages, until they want to get kicked out of their university/research center. I think for a medieval historian to say that is a death sentence.
And yes, high and low medieval periods are very different. In this I totally agree with you. About the low medieval period, it is an age of recovery and mild innovation. There is a very obvious acceleration of events after the Black Plague, due to political changes.
Heavy plow spread during this time. Even the Irish were building saw mills. There was an overall decline in urban life but rural life was progressing. Libraries like the ones on holy island and the vivarium preserved nearly all the texts we think of as the classics.
Feels good to hear someone articulate it so well as have thought this before
Obviously they weren’t dark, even that long ago the sun rose everyday
Never let an inconvenient fact get in the way of a bad meme
I don't think this meme is inaccurately claiming that historians are into "Dark Ages" rhetoric, instead it's taking a jab at the general public, where this idea is still pretty popular.
>Historians don't even use the term "dark ages."
There was a roughly ten-thirteen period that was called the dark age because due to some internal church political drama they stopped recording history for a bit so official records from the papacy don't exist hence this is where things go dark but they don't apply that to the entire medieval age.
That's an alternative Dark Ages theory that I don't really think stands up to scrutiny. It was advanced in the 1800s and also isn't really used by modern historians.
I think you’re referring to the lack of contemporary records about east Francia during the Viking attacks and the fall of the Carolingian dynasty
It's only kinda applicable to the parts of Europe that used to be a part of the Western Roman Empire, and even then it is only a somewhat reasonable description from the mid 5th century to maybe the end of the 8th or so.
With all due respect to those historians, I will continue to refer to any time before the arrival of maters and taters in Europe as "The Dark Ages."
To anyone who uses the term ‘dark ages’ outside of a Roman and Migration Period context - I’m going to eat you alive… feet first 😩
Dark age "The period after the destructive wars and split between north and south Korea, where North korea had a lighting problem that is in fact still visible today from space"
Check and mate!
Dark Ages is honestly a too dramatic term even for this period, tbh.
Didn't it just originally refer to the period in which written sources are less numerous in north west Europe?
So Britain has inscriptions and some degree of names, places and dates for events recorded in Roman annals found across Europe and the middle east. But then for a few centuries until the anglo-saxons begin to chronicle it was hard to tell who was showing up, when and where, who was claiming to rule when and where so it is like the archives go dark during these ages.
Then the term gets more widely applied to medieval pre-renaissance Europe as a time of cruelty and superstition as if Rome was a bastion of modern humanitarianism and nobody made records in Ravenna or Aachen during the same period, let alone China...
It was usually used to describe a decline of classical learning and culture following the fall of Rome, but the concept is lopsided and only applies to very narrow areas, it holds about as much merit continentally or even globally as „Weimar Classicism“, which refers to an „era“ of literature completely reserved for the works of Goethe, Schiller, Wieland and Herder who lived in Weimar. It does not have any meaning beyond that city and these 4 people and maybe Kloppstock, which is why you dont usually see it in any timelines.
It was totally dark ages bro, (so about the feet...)
I'm good with the term in context of the early iron age, ppl lost writing and to us this era is "dark" due to the lack of sources.
What about MGMT?
Quentin, that you?
Calm down there Tarantino
But Europe was in a dark age 😈😈
Dark Ages is the term that correspond to period of Barbarian kingdoms after the fall of Western Roman Empire (476 A.D. - app. 900/1000 A.D.) because very little written sources came from this period of time from Western (but also Eastern) Europe (excluding Byzantium and Arab sources).
Another meaning, it was the time when antique philosophical thought was largely forgotten and only when the works of Aristotle and Plato were rediscovered, translated, and studied upon in 12th century it ended
Describing a period with few written sources as "dark" makes perfect sense to me.
Except that by the 900s we actually have a ton of written sources. Source scarcity is a very punctual problem, both in terms of timeline and geography, and mostly restricted to non-Roman Europe before the 700s. As Europe becomes more Catholic/Orthodox, more written sources appear. In fact by the year 1000 we have a pretty great picture of most what goes on in Europe as per our modern understanding of it.
"In fact by the year 1000 we have a pretty great picture of most what goes on in Europe as per our modern understanding of it."
Yes but large parts of that picture required quite a lot of puzzle building by historians. People living in ca 1800 didn't have access to the collected view of the Dark Ages that we have today,
Eh, not really. It is primarily an English term because it describes the situation in England, not in the whole of Europe. E.g. there are at least some serious sources during the time from modern day France and Western Germany. Primarily because they often just kept the old Roman administration or at least priesthood.
It's not without gaps, but we have at least a pretty good idea what happens from the moment the Franks settle the area right until the High Middle Ages. And given that the Franks arrive with the end of the Roman Empire, there is no real gap.
Franks were essentially a small northern European kingdom with a succession of almost unknown and unimportant rulers after Clovis, up until Charles Martel in the early 700s.
Yes, history kept happening after 476. No, it was not a historical continuation - it was a dramatic historical collapse after the Roman Empire. Western Europe recovered only slowly, and in limited areas, and the people were notably fewer and less well off.
I like to think of the european early medieval period as essentially post-apocalyptic. People obviously continued living in their own micro societies. But the large scale civil works had largely been destroyed and the knowledge to rebuild them lost.
Only post apocalyptic for some. The different Germanic tribes were having a grand time. Finally the massive oppressive slaving empire was falling, and they where there to pick up the pieces.
Calling the early medieval period "Dark Ages" in much of central and eastern Europe makes no sense either because before it there was absolutely no written sources and during that "Dark Age" written sources first appear.
The second part is a myth. You can start from Boethius.
Yes, technological progress did continue, but some technologies were lost and many cities declined. Urban populations were reduced, and large scale Roman engineering, such as aqueduct maintenance, and complex road networks fell into decline
It was mainly civil engineering that declined because of the lack of a large state to fund it.
Though cathedrals eventually met and then surpassed the skills of Roman engineers.
Hell yeah, I fucking love cathedrals
Hell yeah, and I love fucking them
Eventually like after the dark ages eventually?
Hagia Sophia was 6th century. And Charlemagne's cathederal was also pretty impressive -- that was 9th century. But yeah, those flying buttresses and huge rose windows were state of the art, and took a long time to figure out, and there was lots of trial and error.
The Romans who often get called the Byzantine Empire spent the dark ages continuing to develop and would have been the first to point out that the term dark ages only applies to a poor and peripheral region where Roman civilisation has been in retreat.
No, the Cologne cathedral was built in the 9th century. Reims too I think.
But finished in the 19th.
The most prominent churches in Europe tend to be from the high middle ages, which some include as part of the dark ages, but I think 12th and 13th century can only rightly be called the "high middle ages" as they really are the greatest example of many things that epitomized the middle age.
So while not AS magnificent (high middle ages are called "high" for a reason), there's still plenty of great churches from after the fall of Rome to before the 11th century. You can easily Google this. The problem is that many were extensively renovated in the high middle ages (or later), or were not from Europe (seriously, Egypt had some great stuff).
Honestly, which technologies do you mean? People just kind of repeat this to the point that everyone believes it, but I've seen very few actual examples of things people outright forgot how to do. The main difference was the scale of resources available to put into projects.
If anything, I'd say the fall of the Western empire actually accelerated technological development after 400 years of complete stagnation. You'll notice that basically every major "Roman invention" really dates to the Hellenistic period. Meanwhile OP actually forgot several more crucial medieval innovations, including the stirrup, advanced steelmaking, and above all three-field crop rotation which vastly improved agricultural productivity.
A lot of technologies weren’t loss but the decline of central governments meant that a lot of civil projects and professional armies couldn’t be recreated. Rather then losing the technologies it was mostly that they couldn’t use them anymore without a well funded central government backing them
Yep, it’s much easier to think of the Middle Ages more as lacking the Roman megastate to provide and allocate capital and manpower for large-scale projects, and less about them not having the know-how or intellectual capacity for these things. People didn’t suddenly become stupider en masse, as seems to be pretty widely implied in pop culture assumptions.
Due to the state of written records and passing off of technical knowledge at the time, usually from a teacher to apprentices, if you are unable to use the technology, the knowledge of the technology itself will soon be lost. It's not like Charlemagne was sitting on the formula for Roman concrete and the technical plans for the water driven stone saw and just couldn't use it because he didn't have enough money.
this book goes into one example - roof tiles.
While it wasn't widespread, some of the wealthier Romans had Zune's
Had Zune's what? And who was Zune
They're making a joke, Zunes were an iPod competitor (MP3 player) made by Microsoft. The fact that you didn't know what it was tells you how successful they were.
I know what Zunes were/are. I have one.
I was mocking his grammatical failings.
Understandable, have a wonderful day.
Greek fire is the main example I can think of a technology which is still lost to us today, but that existed during the 'Middle Ages'.
Is it really "lost tech"? We just aren't quite sure which of five or so possible combinations of available ingredients were actually used (i think heated naturally occuring crude oil wirh maybe something else added is the one considered most likely?).
We can do better nowadays, but the actual formula for Greek fire was lost in the 1200s and we only have educated guesses as to what the original formula actually was.
Stirrups doesn't originate from Europe, they were invented in Asia and it's estimated they first saw wide use around 200-400 a.d over there, which isn't considered the "dark ages". To say they were "invented" during the dark ages would be somewhat disingenuous.
Yes, there were technological inventions during "the dark ages", but societal control and structure, philosophic discussion etc. staggered.
Technology isn't everything: societal, political and moral systems must also be considered.
The process to make roman concrete was lost until rather recently as I recall.
Hydraulic concrete continued to see use throughout the middle ages.
What was lost was the use of pozzolanic ash from the Vesuvius area, which made the concrete stronger. But again, this is a loss of access, not of knowledge.
It’s the same thing. I promise you nobody in remembered the ingredients if they couldn’t source them for a hundred years.
Clear glass.
The middle ages had clear glass. The difference is they also developed new methods of productions that enabled local production in central Europe instead of imports from the Levante and Egypt.
Roman concrete is an example.
Roman plumbing was essentially lost and forgotten, as well. They had central heating (typically through the floor).
Please look at the early medieval plan of the St. Gall monastery for example. They had water pipes and toilets as well as floor heating.
Iirc I've read that the recipe for concrete was lost with the western roman empire
Domed roofs?
I recall learning that the duomo was a prestige project for building a huge not-quite dome and it required new materials (bricks of a certain kind) in an innovative structure (a kind of self scaffolding herringbone) with a conscious effort to try to rediscover the means to make domed roofs and large interior spaces as the Romans did at the Pantheon.
How many of these memes are just arguing with strawmen while depicting yourself as a chad? Nobody is seriously making such a simplistic overarching argument unless they’re extremely misinformed
I have met a lot of extremely misinformed people.
Still, it feels like we're preaching to the choir. Chances are its rare that someone who truly believes the dark ages were such because nothing happened probably wouldn't lurk long on the history subreddit. And, of course, people spreading misinformation can feel like there's a large misinformed base when really, what happened was 200 people saw the meme. 3 people made an incorrect statement and 7 people upvoted those comments. The other 95% of people are not interacting
That would cover most popular science communicators (who generally are not historians).
As a kid I used to read lots of popular science books, and they either said that basically nothing of interest happened in the middle ages or vilified the time period.
I assume you’ve never seen one of those posts in popular or r/all that claims some variation of “all human progress in Europe was stalled from 700 CE till the Renaissance (or even the Enlightenment) by a ‘Christian Dark Age’”
Granted, they’ve become less common over the years, but the idea that the Medieval period was a grimdark time where everyone was stupid and cruel and society regressed and stagnated is still fairly ingrained in popular consciousness.
100% of them, always.
Imo saying the European Dark Ages is fine. I.e 5th-10th century in Europe. Especially like.. 6th/7th century, before the Carolingian renaissance.
First university was in the 11th century.
Mechanical clock - 13th century.
Windmills in Europe - supposedly in the 12th century (but the Romans had pretty impressive watermill systems .jpg)way before that).
The romans and Mesopotamians had windmills. The 1st century han chinese invented the heavy plow and it was introduced to europe via vikings contact with the slavs. The Greeks were already building complex mechanical clocks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough#History
SMH nothing in this post actually came from europe in the middle ages.
The "dark ages" (early middle age) didnt last 1000 years
Your meme is completely incorrect.
You can build a (wind)mill in dark age, but University and Heavy Plow aren't available until Castle Age.
laughs in Burgundians
The "dark ages" has been constricted over time from being synonymous to the medieval era, to now where it's just used to aptly describe the immediate circumstances of post-collapse Roman Empire western Europe, or just not used at all.
The Dark Ages really is a misnomer.
They were called Dark because they didn't burn enough witches and heretics, in opposition to the Enlightenment, named after all the bonfires lighting up the continent.
Also, wasn't there a shit ton of progress made in the Middle East. Ibn al Haytham was during the European "dark ages" wasn't he?
I would say everything got really FUCKED in Europe after collapse of Rome and Arabian conquests. Trade got fucked, pirating got strong and the imperial logistic also was lost. Europe just couldn’t catch a break with disaster after disaster; Arabs, Germans and Vikings. After everything settled down and somewhat stable time had come progress continued and surpassed Roman
It was only a disaster for the italians. Pretty sure all the provinces were ecstatic being able to spend their money on their own towns rather than giving it to rome.
A lot of people stopped being slaves, i suspect they found the collapse to be a rather positive thing as well.
Compared to Rome and the Renaissance, it probably wasn't a fun time.
I'd need to look it up again, but I remember a report that suggested that median lifespan actually increased during the Dark ages. Mostly due to the decline of the plague tinderboxes that were cities, medical advancements, and the fact that wars went from having 50,000 people in each side to twelve dudes fighting over a pig farm.
Compared to late Rome and migration period Medieval era was great. There is a reason those populations from late antiquity shrank massively. Plagues, end of food supply from Mediterranean (especially after Arab conquest of north Africa), climate cooling and wars (Huns, migrating peoples)...
Medieval era has more easily sustainable and resilient lifestyle and less massive wars than those of antiquity. Reneissance is built on foundations of preceding era and its advancements, its rise in metalurgy, food production, cities, universities, architecture and wealth needed to support such cultural flourishing.
Depends how see it. In terms of violence honestly the periods proceeding and seceding were way worse. The Renaissance was not this peaceful artsy age. It had by far bigger,bloodier, and more frequent wars. The fall of Rome was not the time to be alive. Huns and Goths raging over the border while the Roman beaurcracy imploded and everyone's fighting each other. The middle ages was actually more stable and peaceful then what came directly before and directly after. Sure you may be going but the Pax Romana to which I say the pax Romana couldn't last forever the turmoil of the later Empire was invetible and the middle ages was an improvement from the chaos ensueing from the WRE's collapse. In terms of social development. Really depends where you live.
So that's not really an accurate description of Late Antiquity. The decline of Rome was a process, not a singular event.
The Middle Ages describe a long period of time from the successor states through the High Middle Ages and the Black Death.
I mean even rome during the height of the empire wasn't a great place to be, walking out at night you'd probably be mugged, killed and thrown in the Tiber river if you didn't had the money for bodyguards
Crime didn't improve in the middle ages nor did it really after hell I wouldn't exactly go walking around at night alone in certain parts of town now. So in my opinion violent crime isnt the best metric to use here. However warfare is a serious escalation in levels of violence and disrupts daily life significantly. The amount of war inflicted upon citizens of the Roman Empire during the height was relatively little especially when compared with the later Empire. And when compared to the middle ages the vast majority of 1,000 year period really wasn't that baf.
The Renaissance was an art movement. Otherwise you're just discussing the Late Middle Ages.
In fact there were already two other "renaissances," the Carolingian and the Ottonian.
Renaissance wasn't just an art movement. It was a great philosophical change kickstarted by the knowledge of Greek brought by Byzantine intellectuals fleeing to Europe. Europeans could read again the Greek philosophers, which completely changed their view of the world in a few decades
While you are correct that the Renaissance is more than an art movement you are overselling the contribution of the "Greek" part of the Renaissance. Even before Greek was established as a subject in Italian universities and humanistic schools (in the 1390s), Renaissance scholars' rediscovery of ancient Latin texts had already changed their view of the world. You also seem to repeat a myth that annoys me and which I have debunked over on r/badhistory: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1kytxo1/the_myth_that_manuscript_carrying_refugees/.
Very interesting, I'll read it, thank you! But yeah, something made western europeans more interested in learning greek in that period
The dark ages are a myth, the only reason they are called that is because there are very few sources from Britain during that time. Everyone else was business as usual
There were few written sources for all of Western Europe at the time after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. And in that way, it is a fitting name for the early middle ages. The lack of written sources leaves us kind of in the dark.
Also nothing came from Eastern Europe, for an exception of Byzantium, but it was, kind of, expected
That's not where the term comes from. That was a later reinterpretation of the term. The term comes from Petrarch who was comparing medieval Europe as a dark fall from the golden age of the Roman Empire.
It is an incorrect term though, that much is true and is why modern historians don't use it.
Arles went from a big bustling Roman city with a gladiatorial arena within it, to literally shrinking so much that the entire village relocated itself to within the arena, using its outer walls as city walls.
Compared to Roman times, things were not "business as usual".
Well of course, if you city is part of the Mediterranean trade with rome, yeah your city is going to shrink due to the decreased economic activity; but the average peasant is still doing peasant things.
It was most certainly NOT business as usual in Britain from 400-700. Massive disruption, deurbanization, migrations of people.
Dark Ages: Europe between the 5th to 10th centuries. Differentiated from the late medieval period.
First European university: University of Bologna, 1088. Not the Dark Ages.
First mechanical clock: 13th century Germany. Not the Dark Ages.
First windmills: Originated in Persia during the European Dark Ages, but didn't get to Europe until the 12th century. Not the Dark Ages.
Heavy plow: Okay that was a Dark Age innovation. You're 1 for 4.
Progress only happens in big, centralized, western European areas. Anything else is sparkling technological advances.
Makes me wonder how the original Roman Empire would’ve faired if they’d had access to late medieval tech.
It’s an interesting thought, but I would argue the decline of Rome is better attributed to flaws in their political institutions rather than any distinct lack of technology. Stirrups and clocks were no doubt useful, but they would not have provided any greater stability unless they somehow mitigated the damaging effects of constant civil war from ambitious generals or the declining sense of cohesion between the disparate groups of people under the control of Roman administration.
Nothing would have changed. The issue with the Roman empire was not the strength of the army but with how the empire was fundamentally created in the first place.
Let me introduce to you the spinning wheel, a "dark ages" invention that increased the productivity of spinning, before by far the most consuming part of cloth production, one which required hundreds of not thousands of hours for a single clothing item, by roughly 10x.
Incredibly important but not often discussed, a lot of it because our primary sources aren't very interested in the lives of peasant women.
That’s a Terribly small amount of progress in 1000 years if that’s all that mattered from a progress standpoint.
Compared to what came before or after?
….both?
I’m sure this low effort meme left out some important inventions.
But in only 500 years from 1500 to 2000, the whole ass Industrial Revolution happened and then was followed up by computers and the age of information.
The amount of meaningful inventions during that time are innumerable.
And going back farther I’m sure you would agree that metal working and construction are monumental inventions, there’s a huge difference between a society that has swords and bridges and one that doesn’t.
I think it’s important to note that much of the progress made from 1500-2000 owes its origins to the medieval period. The creation of universities alone is a monumental achievement that we obviously still benefit from today. Not to mention the commercial revolution in the 12th and 13th centuries that brought innovations like double entry book keeping and international banking systems. There are also innovations in political institutions like the British parliament and the French Estates General which eventually provided the economic and political framework that allowed for the Industrial Revolution.
The meme…definitely leaves out a lot.
There was the Medieval Agricultural Revolution which began around 1000 A.D., which saw the advent of three-field crop rotation and new agricultural technologies like the heavy plow and horse collar, which enabled drastically increased food production and thus a population explosion which contributed to urbanization.
This growth of towns and cities which occurred during the High Middle Ages spurred the Commercial Revolution, which began around the 11th century and laid much of the groundwork for the later Industrial Revolution and the advent of capitalism. Trade guilds (Medieval precursor to trade unions), joint-stock companies, stock exchanges, modern banking systems, modern insurance policies, mercantilism, and colonialism all saw their genesis during this period.
This, of course, served as the economic engine of the Renaissance. There were various Medieval “little renaissances” which laid important cultural and intellectual groundwork, such as the Northumbrian, Carolingian, and Ottonian Renaissances, though the Renaissance proper arguably began with the Medieval Renaissance in the 11th century, which stretched into the 15th century and continued into the Italian Renaissance. This period saw the growth of the earliest universities (which grew from earlier monastery and cathedral schools founded during the Early Middle Ages), rediscovery of more classical texts, as well as contemporary Arab, Jewish, and Byzantine ones, largely through the Crusades, seeing significant advances in law, philosophy, science, and medicine. Scholastic theology was developed, which provided the intellectual foundation for the Scientific Revolution. Hindu-Arabic numerals and algebra were introduced. Vernacular literature emerged. Art also developed significantly, such as the advent of Gothic architecture.
In terms of technologies, there were significant advancements in metallurgy and industry thanks to the advent of hydraulic-powered bellows and trip-hammers, blast furnaces, advanced heat-treatment techniques, and cast iron production. There were major developments in military technologies, such as fortifications, siege weapons, body armor, crossbows, as well as the development of gunpowder weapons such as cannons, handgonnes, and eventually matchlock arquebuses. The lateen sail, sternpost rudder, astrolabe, magnetic compass, and more advanced shipbuilding techniques were invented, which of course enabled the Age of Exploration. The printing press and papermaking were of course huge developments, as well, which enabled widespread literacy and the spread of ideas which fueled the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. The mechanical clock revolutionized timekeeping. The stirrup and canted saddle enabled the creation of heavy shock cavalry, which laid the foundation for later European social systems.
Medieval apologists hyperfocusing on the Late Medieval period example 10.594.882
Thats the issue of having "medieval" and "middle ages" cover such a vast and diverse time period. So yes, people in the middle ages had clocks but only in the latter part of it. Knights and castles werent a thing for abut half of the middle ages yet its what most people associate with it. Plate armor came in quite late yet the stereotypical knight is depicted wearing plate. Even Buttonholes, like the one in the picture would have on his clothes came in quite late, around the 13th century. Personally i would much prefer the middle ages to start only with the high middle ages, and have the early middle ages completely separate as its own distinct time period.
This still baffles me. Especially given the rest of the world existing but even Europe continued doing pretty ok actually.
Dark ages typically refer to a very specific part of medieval Europe in a very specific time frame. The way I’ve seen it laid out is that it refers to western and some parts of central and Southern Europe from the 5th to 10th century, which while by no means empty, weren’t quite as innovation filled as the later Middle Ages.
But anyway you’re right, the dark ages weren’t really dark
the most important progress was about work of iron.
from doing iron stick with 2 edges (sword), to full plate armor that doesn't hinder movement.
then, with this skill, we could do canon, gun, then steam engine.
Also consider 3-fold and then 4-fold crop rotation, which along with the colombian exchange, created the agricultural revolution. It is not an exaggeration to say it laid the foundation for the industrial revolution, by allowing societies to transition from mostly subsistence farming to urbanization.
Yeah things are great when you avoid all the bad stuff huh
The European 'Dark Ages' were only about 500 years long, they ended in the 11th century. All those inventions you listed marked the end of the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages was only the *Early* Medieval period, as the period is more properly kown in academia, the High and Late Medieval periods are *not* the Dark Ages.
Everytime I hear the term dark ages anymore I literally roll my eyes
As CK3 taught me, Windmills are so fucking good
mesoamerica (central) and southern mexico had some cool technology in the realm of the greeks (aquaducts, maths, cultivation techniques, slaves)
not sure about south america, probably yah similar to central
but NA was locked in time for like 15k years. no written word, no forms of post-lithic tech i can think of
Not true. You don't get the Heavy Plow until the Castle Age, and Universities until the Imperial Age.
METALLURGY.
Seriously. Sure, the methods were boosted by knowledge from Asia. But compare what a smith could do in 800 and something a smith could do in 1400.
We're talking night and day. Okay mail and decent swords vs quasi full plate and excellent swords made of fucking spring steel. Armour so good you almost don't need a shield anymore.
I don’t believe anything happened before 7-24-1974 when I was born.
Guns. The had guns in the medieval period.
If that doesn't prove tremendous progress, then I don't know what does.
This renaissance myth (that the middle ages were a "dark age") needs to stay in the past.
No you dont get it they didnt invent the ideology that claimed le progress le good and has le destination, aka in lighten men, so they had no progress
Oh wow mechanical clocks over the span of 1000 years. Definition technology right there...
Meanwhilw Rome city had between 1-2 million population. First city in history to have that kind of advancement in infrastructure.
You know whats the secind city in history to be advanced enough for 1 million population? London. And thats in the 19th century.
So yeah, Dark ages is a fitting name.