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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9548481" data-attributes="member: 4937">sigh This old argument again.Egypt had three dark ages before the rest of the world even learned to write.  They are not particularly unusual in history.  However, it would be a mistake to make one of the two common misconceptions about the European dark ages.  First, that the whole world was plunged into "darkness" as opposed to only a formerly prosperous and highly literate culture - namely the Latin west of the Roman Empire.  Obviously, the Eastern Roman empire while diminished continued along just as literate as ever.  And two, that this period of darkness lasted the whole of what is now called "the Middle Ages" or the Medieval Period.  Rather, what you tend to see is a relative paucity of writers from this region for a rather "brief" period of a few hundred years beginning just after the fall of Rome until say about the time of Charlemagne.  By the 11th century, Europe was "bright" again in the sense of we have many authors disclosing to us much about their world, and by the 13th century it was enjoying a renaissance in thought, art and engineering the like of which has rarely been seen in world history.  Some explanation for the "darkness" can be attributed to just a geographic shift.  Northern France, England, or Germany was never before this point a particularly literate part of the world anyway, so shifting the focus of history to that area does come with a reduced number of authors.  But to say that there was no darkness, in the sense of there were not only a decreasing number of writers whose works were created and preserved in the period, but also a great many works winking out of existence for lack of scribes recopying them, is I think to be disingenuous for the purpose of selling books.Please do not assume that my opinions or use of the term "Dark Ages" are out ignorance or lack of study of the period.  I took medieval history under Richard Gerberding, and I've read extensively on the period - particularly the economic history of the period.</blockquote>

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