Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

lithub.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 249 posts

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

#201

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

hetman wrote: post #198
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. Perhaps it could be argued that the Roman Empire was simply ahead of their time, but we went from engineering marvels (of their time) such as the Roman aqueducts [1], the Pantheon [2], or the Colosseum [3], which held 50-80k spectators in 72AD, to very little of note for 100s of years following. What I find intriguing is that the Roman Empire even 'discovered' steam power in the first century [4].…

Roman metallurgy was really not at a point to make practical use of steam power on a scale that made it more effective than using slaves. Crucible steel, a bare minimum, wouldn't come to Europe for over a millennium. They simply did not have the materials engineering to build useful pressure vessels. People get weirdly romantic about how easy these ideas would have been to implement; there's this weird conception tha…

Nowhere did I say it would be easy.

Just as far as anyone can tell, they never realized the 'toy' could have a real world use.

Had they thought of an application, they could work on making it possible. They thought it was just a parlor trick.

>Second, Roman knowledge wasn't lost. It was all still there in the Byzantine Empire yet strangely they weren't sending rockets to the moon in the 1200's.

Seriously, what the fuck, why are you attacking me.

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

#202

Post by UnhelpfulYoda »

What a bizarre perspective on the issue of whether or not the "Dark Ages" are incorrectly named.

The author seems to think that the term stems from the extent to which historical buildings were lost or re purposed. With that kind of logic, you could similarly say that abandoned towns are the height of civilization.

In other words, a very muddled thesis, followed by muddled, ill fitting justifications.

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

#203

Post by UnhelpfulYoda »

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…

San Francisco disproves this thesis. It's impossible to build anything new, because of inane historical significance given to even the most decrepit cow palace or laundromat. I can only pray that San Francisco experiences a "Dark Age" where ugly old crap is replaced with shiny new towers.

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

#204

Post by UnhelpfulYoda »

wallace_f wrote: post #194
coliveira wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This seems so overly simplistic, and perhaps misleading. Not just because, as evidenced in the article and is consensus among scholars, that the pejorative term, Dark Ages, itself is misleading. But There seems to be so much other blatant evidence which calls your premise into question. After all, Caeser made his name as he led a conquest with what was not fundamentally different to a warring tribe, and marched it ba…

Meh, this is just the latest fad with 'scholars' ...the whole thing about how The Dark Ages weren't really dark, has been going on for about 20 years now... there are good reasons that this period is called the dark ages.

I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick.

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

#205

Post by UnhelpfulYoda »

EliRivers wrote: post #53
gonehome wrote: post #19

This seems like a perfect example of someone who needs to read pg’s essay “write like you talk”: http://paulgraham.com/talk.html I don’t get an intelligence vibe from this style of writing - it mostly just sets off my bullshit alarms.

Having read the article, I disagree. What "style" of writing? The sentences aren't excessive, the language is all fairly common (the author even takes pleasure in simplifying "scramasax", clearly inviting us to take pleasure in it as well). What's wrong with it? It's not meant to be a list of purely literal facts. It's entertaining and a pleasure to read. As for Paul Graham's opinion piece; well, that's just silly. S…

I think the issue is that the author doesn't establish a clear thesis from the very beginning. Additionally, the bizarre nature of the thesis and long run-on sentences only serve to confuse the reader as to what it is exactly that he is trying prove or disprove.

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

#206

Post by ddebernardy »

gen220 wrote: post #100
ddebernardy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sort of off-topic; what was your overall impression of Wickham's book (or the greater series that his is a part of, if you've read them)? Do you think they're generally humble overviews of their respective periods?

Wickham's book is extremely hard to read - and as a matter of fact, I've never pulled off reading it to the end, even on the 3rd try. The issue is he's extremely meticulous, and goes on ad nauseam on methodology, on what to make of the sources he's referencing, and so forth. This is all extremely interesting, mind you. But the amount of methodological asides is such that you rapidly lose track of where you were in the narrative, and it's easy to go through a chapter without remembering what the first few pages were about, or indeed anything at all.

For the others in the series I've no idea. They've been on my reading list forever.

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

#207

Post by wallace_f »

UnhelpfulYoda wrote: post #204
wallace_f wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems so overly simplistic, and perhaps misleading. Not just because, as evidenced in the article and is consensus among scholars, that the pejorative term, Dark Ages, itself is misleading. But There seems to be so much other blatant evidence which calls your premise into question. After all, Caeser made his name as he led a conquest with what was not fundamentally different to a warring tribe, and marched it ba…

Meh, this is just the latest fad with 'scholars' ...the whole thing about how The Dark Ages weren't really dark, has been going on for about 20 years now... there are good reasons that this period is called the dark ages. I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick.

>I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick.

The dark ages I seem to have a more-clear picture of: derth of historical record, rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, technological progress, and unfortunate disease, all each contributed, and amalgamated into the public conscious of defining the era as 'dark.'

The civil war thing is really confusing. I grew up on slavery as the reason, then in uni had a prof tell me it was really about states rights. I've talked to others who had the exact opposite experience. Anyways, it's a super political and emotionally sensitive topic to people... But I had the impression the states rights narrative was not a recent thing.

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

#208

Post by orthoxerox »

scarmig wrote: post #185
ardit33 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can't compare Britain in the post-Roman area with Rome at the height of empire. London in the "Dark Ages" didn't have aqueducts. But Londinium was part of the periphery of the empire, and it also never had aqueducts. There's not that much information to be gained by cherry picking the elements of the central core of the Roman Empire and asking why they weren't present in far flung areas in the post-Roman era. Ske…

I'd wager that if the modern globalized economy were destroyed, people everywhere would become healthier, going from single-crop intensive farming, garment working and assembly lines back to localized farming and manufacturing. The populations would dwindle, of course, but the survivors would be healthier and happier.

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

#209

Post by cocochanel »

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 Dark Ages are only dark to us.

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

#210

Post by Marazan »

wallace_f wrote: post #207
UnhelpfulYoda wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, this is just the latest fad with 'scholars' ...the whole thing about how The Dark Ages weren't really dark, has been going on for about 20 years now... there are good reasons that this period is called the dark ages. I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick.

>I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick. The dark ages I seem to have a more-clear picture of: derth of historical record, rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, technological progress, and unfortunate disease, all each contributed, and amalgamated into the public conscious of defining the era as 'dark.' The civil war thing is really confusing…

The state's right they were fighting for was the right to keep slaves.

It is super clear, the states say it in their succession documents.

Claiming it is about abstract states rights and not slavery is Lost Cause revisionism.

Post reply on HN