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The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

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Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#141

Post by Balgair »

acqq wrote: post #96
smacktoward wrote: post #43

> The true “dark age,” of course, was the early 1940s when, simply as a side effect of industrial killing, great swathes of the past disappeared. One small yet major example—the extraordinary series of paintings of the visions of Hildegard of Bingen, made in the 1170s either by the saint herself or under her supervision, disappeared in the general catastrophe that unfolded in Dresden in early 1945. We only know what…

> That's a very different situation than we're in regarding post-Roman, pre-Carolingian Europe. There are hundreds of years in there where we have practically no documentary evidence for anything. It is even more specific. Eastern Roman Empire remained functional until it fell to the Ottomans in 1453 AD. But in Britain there were not even coins between the years 410 and 600 AD: http://www.numsoc.net/darkages.html "Hi…

The Dark Ages were very much regional, with separate areas undergoing their own eras of 'darkness' and losing communication with the rest of the world.

Interestingly, Ireland during the 400's to 600's was something of a bastion of Catholicism and 'western/classical' thought in their monasteries. Even though Britain was very pagan and 'dark', Ireland remained 'enlightened' at this time (though the populace was still very 'dark' and pagan in Ireland).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland_(400%E2%80%...

Under this regional definition of 'dark ages', even today they occur. Lost tribes in the Amazon, the populace of North Korea, very rural towns in Alaska, etc. all can be considered to be in 'dark' ages to some degree or another.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#142

Post by Swizec »

coliveira wrote: post #110
cerealbad wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tribal cultures tend to have long and complex, even tedious oral histories and initiations into them. With a knowledge keeper, shaman, druid, healer etc. Could be that the old druid power structure was in decline and so the typical transmission of information was interrupted. We know a similar thing happened later to the midwives/fertility women who were persecuted as witches with I suspect dire consequences to infan…

That's a good point. Unfortunately this leads to another cause of destabilization at the end of the Roman Empire: Christianity. You see, Christians precipitated the destruction of the pagan culture, which was the only culture shared by all people in Europe. Not only Roman history and culture was almost erased in that change, but also the oral traditions of nations around the Roman Empire that were also converted by t…

There’s a funny story about history of the Slavic tribes as it relates to this. Since Slavs didn’t write, the only reason we know their migration pattern into eastern europe and the balkans is by tracking when catholic churches stopped reporting back to HQ.

So at least on that end another reason for the break in history and lineage is that the people are completely different and in fact have no lineage back to Roman times.

Even though centuries later they converted to Christianity and started wondering why they don’t feel as Roman as they should.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#143

Post by coliveira »

btilly wrote: post #32
jcranmer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early Middle Ages is common, generally dating from "the fall of the Roman Empire" (which is itself a very ambiguous term) to around 1066. The collapse of the Roman Empire from the 3rd to the 7th century (the process is somewhat more gradual than depicted in popular culture, and the timing depends on where you lived in the Roman Empire) resulted in a serious loss of administrative capability and economic and military…

The Roman Empire's collapse was more drawn out than that. The Empire split into Eastern and Western empires under Constantine. The Eastern half got renamed to the Byzantine Empire and it lasted until the successful Ottoman conquest in 1453. This is not to be confused with the Holy Roman Empire which was not holy, nor Roman, nor a true empire. But which survived until Napoleon conquered it in 1806.

> The Eastern half got renamed to the Byzantine Empire

That's not correct, Byzantine Empire is the modern name we give to that empire during the Middle Ages. They called themselves just Roman Empire, in their minds they were just the same original Roman Empire but headquartered in Constantinople.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#144

Post by foldr »

dpark wrote: post #126
foldr wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't comprehend it, how have you managed to determine that the content is low for the number of words?

Now you're being disingenuous and borderline trolling. At no point did I say it's literally impossible to read.

You said “Okay, but they'd also probably be able to understand it", which clearly implies that people wouldn't be able to understand the current text. Then you denied that the text was was "comprehensible" ("I find it neither [pleasing or comprehensible]").

I really don't think you can have it both ways on this one. If, contrary to what you've been suggesting, the style only has a minor impact on your ability to understand what is being said, then what's the issue? Why get so worked up about the fact that some esoteric French alchemist writing in 1929 isn't writing in the journalistic style that's currently in vogue?

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#145

Post by henrikschroder »

cerealbad wrote: post #70
mason55 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know, is this because of a change in society, such that it became difficult or less important to track these things? or is it because of a change in the people, for example people of Roman descent mixing with local tribes, like the Franks, and the local tribes didn't have the traditions of tracking the things that would allow us to trace this back?

Tribal cultures tend to have long and complex, even tedious oral histories and initiations into them. With a knowledge keeper, shaman, druid, healer etc. Could be that the old druid power structure was in decline and so the typical transmission of information was interrupted. We know a similar thing happened later to the midwives/fertility women who were persecuted as witches with I suspect dire consequences to infan…

> I think the Scandinavians have a slightly clearer picture of their descent due to the later expansion of the new religion into their territories.

Not really, the oldest Scandinavian kings that historians are pretty certain were real people were Harald Fairhair who was king of Norway around 900CE, Gorm the Old who was king of Denmark around 930CE, and Eric the Victorious who was king of Sweden around 970CE.

And the sources we have for the ancient kings were usually continental scholars, monks, bishops, or missionaries, who most probably had an agenda, and an antagonistic view of the pagans up north. And likewise, when the Scandinavians told their history to the weird people from the south, they probably embellished their stories.

...unlike for example Charles Martel and early French dynasties, who were 200 years earlier than the known Scandianavians.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Scandinavia was a completely uncivilized backwater. :-)

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#147

Post by BishopofAgde »

nostrademons wrote: post #90

I've wondered recently if historical prominence and quality of life are anticorrelated: if the civilizations we think of as biggest and greatest are the ones that were the worst to live under. Or, more provocatively, if civilization is just relationship dysfunction on a grand scale. What is civilization? It's centralization of power, increasing specialization of roles, usually higher population density, greater inter…

When you don't have large civilizations typically most people will be subsistence farmers, so you don't have much time to pursue other interests. You might not have warfare on a grand scale but you still have it. But now you don't have professional soldiers to protect you, so if someone comes knocking you have to take up arms yourself or abandon your home. Travel is dangerous without maintained roads and patrols. Without that you don't have easy communication which means a lack of ideas being spread.

This isn't a refutation, but I can think of plenty aspects of life improved during a pax. I don't think going wildly in either direction is ideal.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#148

Post by Amezarak »

beat wrote: post #106
Amezarak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the explosion of Islam across the Middle East and across to India, bringing with it tremendous scholarship and economic prosperity. This is a very misleading description of what happened. The early Muslim conquests caused major disruption in the Middle East, otherwise known as the Roman and Persian Empires, as cities which had been full of scholarship and prosperity for centuries were invaded and the population con…

Those same Muslim scholars were the ones who preserved and promoted Greek texts that were destroyed by early Christian fanatics.

What exactly are you referring to? Early Christians didn’t have the political power to destroy Greek texts, and Muslims didn’t arrive on the scene until 600 years later, so they could not have saved Greek texts from Christian abuse. And even then, Constantinople was the major and often sole source for many Greek texts, particularly after the collapse precipitated by the Muslim invasions and subsequent wars; many of them spread to the West when Roman scholars began fleeing wear and revitalized interest in Greek language and learning.

The main reason a lot of classical learning fell into disuse in the West was that the Germanic peoples migrating in didn’t care much, and there was a language barrier - most stuff was in Greek, and they only knew Latin, for the most part. With a very few exceptions, nobody was going around actively destroying stuff. Indeed, the Church is the main reason so much was preserved in the West, particularly some later popes that took a keen interest in the preservation of ancient texts. Easily the worst thing the West did was the burning of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, because again, the Byzantine Empire, even what remained of it by then, was a real center of learning and probably easily the biggest surviving repository of books on the planet at the time, so undoubtedly we lost some texts then.

This isn’t really a religion vs religion thing - the Christians came into an existence in a society and region already steeped in Greek learning, and slowly assumed political control over the region. The Muslims were in an entirely different situation: they were from an underdeveloped region and came into the Middle East via conquest. They simply didn’t know what they had, and the violence of the conquests was a major setback. In some ways, the region never really recovered - that and the Mongol invasions.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#149

Post by dpark »

colechristensen wrote: post #129
dpark wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is just stupid to say "this style is the only acceptable style and anyone doing anything different is an asshole". It isn't stupid. It's snobbery. If you denigrate straightforward writing as "barbaric", you're a snob, plain and simple. > Surface quality is boring, substance is important. My problem with overly-flowery writing is specifically that it's about style and not substance. If your goal is to educate or…

>My problem with overly-flowery writing is specifically that it's about style and not substance. There is the snobbery. Bad writing is everywhere. Some people have large vocabularies and use them well, some people don't. Becoming a good writer also requires a lot of bad writing. Complex writing more so. If you say everything complex is just about style and showing off, it reflects poorly on your ability to determine…

"You have a different opinion from me. Therefore you are a snob." Boo. You brought up style and substance, and when I answered you called me a snob. This is not what snobbery means. It is not snobbery to hold an opinion. Nor is is snobbery to think something is bad if you have reasons.

If you don't like to listen to bubblegum pop, that doesn't make you a snob. If you argue that the lyrics are simple and the repetitive beats basic chord progressions are unoriginal or pandering to the crowd, that still doesn't make you a snob. But if you say that anyone who makes or listens to bubblegum pop is an idiot, now you're a snob. Snobbery isn't disliking something. It's looking down on something (or more practically on people who like that something.)

I don't think people who write flowery, dense prose are all snobs, nor did I say that they were. I said the ones who do this and then call straightforward writing "barbaric" are snobs, because "barbaric" is not a meaningful criticism, any more than "idiotic" is.

I gave you specific reasons I do not like the flowery style of writing, and why I find it counterproductive. I think writing in this way is very self-important and I think it puts the reader secondary to the author's ego. I think flowery writing has poor fit for purpose, if the purpose is to educate or even entertain. If the purpose is to demonstrate artistry in sentence composition, then sure, flowery writing seems great for that purpose, but I personally have zero interest in that purpose, and I think most people probably have zero interest in that. Slogging through three times as much text and reading every paragraph twice to make sure I understood the point is not a rewarding experience for me.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#150

Post by acqq »

Balgair wrote: post #141
acqq wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a very different situation than we're in regarding post-Roman, pre-Carolingian Europe. There are hundreds of years in there where we have practically no documentary evidence for anything. It is even more specific. Eastern Roman Empire remained functional until it fell to the Ottomans in 1453 AD. But in Britain there were not even coins between the years 410 and 600 AD: http://www.numsoc.net/darkages.html "Hi…

The Dark Ages were very much regional, with separate areas undergoing their own eras of 'darkness' and losing communication with the rest of the world. Interestingly, Ireland during the 400's to 600's was something of a bastion of Catholicism and 'western/classical' thought in their monasteries. Even though Britain was very pagan and 'dark', Ireland remained 'enlightened' at this time (though the populace was still v…

> Even though Britain was very pagan and 'dark', Ireland remained 'enlightened' at this time (though the populace was still very 'dark' and pagan in Ireland).

Do you happen to know something about the coinage in Ireland in that period? Also, searching for the survived original sources in that entry, they are either first half 400, written outside of Ireland, then some written later than 600 AD? Maybe I missed something?

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