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While Not In Vogue, The Dark Ages Were Pretty Dark
Five hundred years of upheaval
Today if you dare to call the period between 476 CE and 976 CE the Dark Ages, you will get a lot of shaking heads and wagging fingers. The Dark Ages weren’t all that dark, they’ll say. The Muslims were doing extraordinary things. You have a Eurocentric view of the world. Such criticism is usually enough to get people to reconsider. In fact, it has not been in vogue to call the Dark Ages the Dark Ages for quite some time. But in an attempt to recenter the historical view of the world from Central Europe to Asia Minor, people have glossed over the fact that the Dark Ages were…well… dark.
Indeed, there were advances and great people living during this period. In fact, the area between Baghdad and Mecca was a flourishing society with some of the best thinkers of the age. But outside of this sliver of civilization, the world was struggling. Badly.
There is a reason that the Dark Ages were called such for so long. It was a genuinely wretched time to be alive for a large multitude of people.
It is also important to note that the Dark Ages encompasses a five hundred year time period from the fall of Rome to the 10th century. It does not refer to the Medieval Period or the Middle Ages, which began at the tail end of the first millennia.
