How 'Dark' were the Dark Ages? (Short Animated Documentary)

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anon

How dark were the Dark Ages? Not that dark, comparatively.

Sources:

The church of Ravenna, Constantinople and Rome in the seventh century by Veronica Ortenberg West-Harling.

The Dark Ages by Janet L. Nelson.

A People's History of Modern Europe by William A. Pelz.

Medieval People in Town and Country: New Perspectives from Demography and Bioarchaeology by Maryanne Kowaleski

[modernclassicalmusic]

You are completely forgetting the fact that during the dark ages there were no light bulbs to speak of, thus making it significantly darker

[justiceteachesAI]

Don’t worry, it takes only 500 food to upgrade to the Feudal age.

[ryanhelbling]

So... What I gather from this video is that Britannic peasants spontaneously combusted right after Rome left the island.

[MrReuin]

I think that subject needed more time :)

[timfortune]

Petrarch: "Okay maybe things didn't suck as much, but come on guys, Rome was so much cooler and now it's gone."
Byzantium: "Hate to interrupt, but check the date dude. It ain't 1453."

[alternativebassist]

As my tutor at university used to say: “if you talk about the ‘dark ages’ a historian of our generation would laugh at you. A historian of the previous generation would probably punch you.”

[shgjjj]

go back to 10 minutes, this deserved longer

[xyryyn]

I've always preferred the definition of "Dark Age" as one where there's little to no surviving writing to help us modern folks understand what was going on, such as the so-called Greek Dark Age between the Bronze Age collapse and roughly the time of Homer, where the Mycenaean writing system completely died out and the Greeks later invented a whole new system of writing based on the Phoenecian alphabet to write down their language. Under this sort of definition, even then, the post-Roman Dark Ages are varying levels of "dark", depending on where you go. Britannia's historical record is pretty sparse between about 410 and the Mercian Supremacy, for example, and northern Europe didn't have a writing system to lose. By contrast, Gaul/Francia, Spain/Al-Andalus, and Italy still had highly functional writing systems.

[SupremeLeaderKimJong-un]

Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again

[BarelyEducational]

It was only called the Dark Ages because not a lot of stuff was written down during it compared to when the Roman Empire was still active. So "Dark" as in we have to infer what really happened, not "Dark" as in they were terrible and everyone died.

[cubed.public]

elementry school history: yes
middle school history: no
high school history: it depends
college history: YOU decide, write a 10 page essay on what you think

[herodotus]

Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great rebuild aqueducts, theaters, build churches and supported educated people like Boetius while St. Benedict established Monte Cassino abbey from where monasticism, with their libraries and hospitals, spread. So yeah, not that uncivilized.

[TheFiresloth]

In France, it's mostly called "periods of the Barbarian Kingdoms." Well, it was when I was a kid.

[billy]

I feel morbid for laughing when someone just tips over when they I continue to laugh every time it happens.

[Bigfoot_With_Internet_Access]

We bigfoots didn't have to worry about the dark ages out here in the woods

[cmmoe]

Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy is an absolutely beautiful mixture of poetry and prose written while he was imprisoned and sentenced to death by Theodoric and well worth a read

[albinoasesino]

How 'Dark' were the Dark Ages?
What about how "cold" was the cold war?

[KarlVyt]

On the point of the decline of Roman cities (Rome in particular) and the increasing rural population. It had been going on steadily throughout the western empire for over two centuries before it fell. The eastern empire remained heavily urbanized even after the western one fell since it was more stable . It entered its own period of dark age after the arab conquests and successive civil wars until it stabilized again in the 9th and 10th centuries.

[justinian-the-great]

You know how ridiculous was the Dark Age, when through the most of it by far the most civilized and most prosperous region of Europe

[cdtv]

1:02 *"just kidding, they fell appart ALMOST immidiatly!"*