The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by throwaway2048 » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #67

viburnum wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not societal breakdown, that just means the inbred aristocracy doesn’t go back to antiquity. Society and its rulers are not the same thing.

Still, there were families in those days with unfathomable wealth. If memory serves me well, one was so wealthy that when they sold their land after becoming Christians they caused a real estate crisis across the Roman Empire. (Source: The inheritance of Rome, Chris Wickham, one of the early chapters.) And just a few centuries earlier, Julius Caesar arguably was one of the richest to have ever lived on earth. It's se…

The concept of wealth fundamentally depends on the society its created in.

If I am the last person on earth, i effectively "own" the entire earth, but it means nothing.

Same for a man staving to death on top of a mountain of gold.

Which makes this billionaire New Zealand apocalypse compound trend all the more ridiculous, if society collapses, being a billionaire is going to mean absolutely nothing, you would think the money would be better spent ensuring that doesn't happen in the first place

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

#152

Post by heraclius » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

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 Byzantines not call themselves Byzantines; they considered themselves Roman. See a helpful answer on Reddit¹ which notes an episode in which the Byzantines imprisoned an envoy for calling their emperor that of the Greeks. It would of course be obtuse to call the Byzantine Empire the Roman Empire, but the renaming was after 1453.

¹ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ak435w/did_t...

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

#153

Post by diminoten » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

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…

Has anyone else here heard of the historical conspiracy theory (I don't know how else to describe it) that the european dark ages literally never happened, and the Gregorian calendar simply skipped those years entirely?

It's pretty fascinating as a concept, though it hits many obvious pitfalls (what about all the stuff that's said to have happened during those years?!?!) and I'm not versed enough in the "theory" to give it justice.

It's certainly fun to think about, even if it's complete nonsense!

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

#154

Post by betterunix2 » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #128

Those were the dark ages because previously there was a highly developed civilization with its sophisticated culture, art, science, technology and liberties, and then the western world sunk into an era where almost all of it was temporarily forsaken. It fell into the darkness and chaos (at least from the point of people who lived in the Roman empire). Barbaric tribes raided the lands, many local wars again started si…

To be clear, the science, knowledge, and skills of humanity continued to advanced during the European dark ages. Outside of Europe there was the Islamic Golden Age and the Tang Dynasty period of China. The scholarship and science of the Islamic Golden Age actually continued the intellectual development of the Romans (which is why we still have the Elements and other Greek works), probably because the Caliphate had conquered so many important Byzantine urban centers.

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

#155

Post by blancheneige » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

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.

This has been debunked many years ago and is only perpetuated by wishful and disingenuous revisionism. Ancient Greek texts were being translated in the heart of France half a century before Arabic texts reached the kingdom. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/world/europe/28iht-politi...

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

#156

Post by ardit33 » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #94

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…

The so-called dark ages are not much worse than other periods of human history when there is were no large government institutions. With the end of the Roman Empire in the west, Europe came to be ruled by local tribes, in the same way that happened throughout history. Europeans demonstrated to be as barbarians as any other group of people in the world that had no strong institutions to protect society from their imme…

Not correct. They were much worse indeed.

Remember, Romans had a fairly advanced society, and buildings, architecture, and infrastructure. Roads crossing whole regions, (the highways of the time), aqua-ducts, ways to dispose sewage, etc...

This all slowly degraded and eventually disappeared with the fall of the empire.

Stone building were replaced by mud huts, and I don't know about you, but not having running water in your town, or paved roads to the next town or port seem like huge drawbacks to life quality.

The first Anglo-saxons that came in Britania, after the Roman left lived in what you would call downright primitive huts made by either mud or wooden planks with mud in them.

That and the constant warring, in many ways, it was a huge set-back for the people there.

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

#157

Post by coliveira » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

cerealbad wrote: post #39

I would love to see a reasonable explanation for the rapid development of Western Europe. The henge circles all across the world (including the new world) show an advanced mathematics and astronomy for thousands of years before the rise of settler empires say parity ~9000 BC. Jump forward all the way to the late 1800s and despite the glacial pace of social change in Russia they are still designing one of the best rif…

Western Europe is not so special as people imagine. The Greeks and Romans managed to conquer pretty much everything that was important for them at the time, and they did it centuries earlier. The difference for Europe is that they were able to build on top of ancient knowledge passed down by Greeks and Romans. With modern technology they were able to reach everywhere in the world and create armies that were almost impossible to defeat. I think earlier empires were much more impressive for doing so much with so little knowledge.

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

#158

Post by dpark » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #144

dpark wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unde…

You cannot be serious. I refuse to believe that you actually read this literally and cannot recognize nuance. If you read an article about the contents of Fort Knox and the vault is described as "impenetrable", would you write the author angrily asking how they could possibly know what's inside if it's "impenetrable"?

There's a wide spectrum between "easy to understand" and "literally impossible to understand". Everything to the left of "literally impossible to understand" can be understood (at least in part). That doesn't mean the effort is low. Hell, I can "understand" German but I'm going to spend a lot of time translating words I don't know.

Why are you so worked up about someone online doesn't share your love of flowery prose that you're willing to engage in borderline trolling to piss them off? Personally I don't care about Fulcanelli and had never heard of him before today. I do care about general quality of writing because I'm exposed to it constantly.

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

#159

Post by heraclius » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

hodgesrm wrote: post #78

mjw1007 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "Late Antiquity" is common.

Late antiquity generally refers to the period around and after the emperor Constantine when the Roman empire started to fray around the edges. It includes writers like St. Augustine who IMHO was as good as any thinker before or after. Not to mention artistic creations like the churches of Ravenna and the laws of Justinian. It's quite different from the period that set in after the invasion of the Lombards (568 AD) an…

The Pirenne thesis is superficially plausible. However, McCormick’s Origins of the European Economy, which represents perhaps the most innovative approach in dealing with a paucity of evidence to date, suggests otherwise.

“About one in seven eastern travelers I have uncovered set out from the Arab world (49: 14 percent of 340). They were mostly Christian and Hellenic. That so many appear from research geared to the Byzantine and Latin source materials—presumably the least rewarding for the Arab world—challenges the conventional wisdom.” [p. 217]

“Another, less obvious characteristic of some other eastern travelers further undermines the notion of interrupted intercourse, at least between Byzantium and the Arab world. Beyond the travelers who came directly from the Arab world to the west, another substantial group of eastern voyagers (28: 8 percent) also traveled to the Arab world at other times. In all, nearly a quarter of all eastern travelers also came from or went to the Caliphate (77: 23 percent of all eastern travelers).” [p. 218]

Moreover, though I shan’t here give references, a substantial portion of the European economy was driven by the supply of slaves to the Caliphate. But a few more things to note: the Arabs are just as important as the Byzantines insofar as the numismatic evidence is concerned; one writer during this period wrote of relief when arriving in the areas ruled by the Arabs, which were far more orderly—all that was needed was a simple bribe, a welcome prospect compared to the banditry common in other areas; Arab piracy was certainly widespread, but in McCormick’s analysis “very few of our travelers had their voyage interrupted by violence” [170] overall, whether by Arab pirates or other actors.

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

#160

Post by dpark » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #137

dpark wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not merely with the words chosen but they way they're stitched together. Someone else tried to rewrite it without the over-the-top flowery language and it's far more concise despite still not being particularly minimalist. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19741886 >60% reduction in content for a single off-the-cuff rewrite implies the original work needs an aggressive editor with an aggressive amou…

The rewrite, while simpler and arguably clearer, also seems more boring to me. It doesn't engage my imagination. In any case, the original doesn't set off my "bullshit detectors". Such an aggressive way of commenting on a piece of writing! Not everyone must or should write like Hemingway -- not even Hemingway!

That's fair and maybe it is more boring. It was, after all, an off-the-cuff rewrite by some random person on HN. It wasn't written to demonstrate the ideal way to present the argument, but as a way of showing that the original used a whole lot of words to say not that much.