the “Dark Ages” was a term coined by a guy from Tuscany who was a big fan of classical antiquity about the fall of Rome 600 years before he was born and is an incredibly biased term from that perspective, and was coined because Petrach believed Rome’s collapse meant the death of classical Latin as a lingua franca and thus the world is bad.
It’s literally just “phone bad, wife bad, oldey timey malt sodas and rollerrinks good, make America great again” hokum but from a guy in the 12th century talking about the 5th century
From any other perspective the idea of that being the shame of mankind is kinda silly.
This idea was then co-opted by the Protestants in the 16th C as a way to say “See?! The Catholics fucked us! We need to un-catholicize the church with a schism!”
You’re criticizing the expression but not disproving the fact that Europe went back in Economics and Technological terms (to the point that formula for cement from the Romans was lost until the XXth century and the proven knowledge that the Earth was round dating from all the way back in the Ancient Greek time was forgotten, also for centuries) to the point that by the 12th Century the Arabs were more culturally and economically developed than Europe (and, curiously, it was the irrigation techniques brough to Europe by the Arabs during the Moorish Occupation of the Iberian Peninsula which, after spreading through Europe, created the Economic conditions for cities to grow and the Renaissance).
This wasn’t a regression of mankind, it was a regression of Europe - it weren’t the Arabs who burned down the Great Library Of Alexandry.
Roman ruled areas went back. The Byzantine empires and middle eastern caliphates did not - as you say. Greece, England, western France, Nordic countries all developed intra-connected Monastic libraries that were attacked by raiders for their books.
Yes, it was bad for Italy, but so was Berlusconi, and we don’t say that caused the decline of the entire world.
I think my lack of clarity in my original post is at fault here.
As I pointed out in my more recent post, the Dark Ages were a regression for Europe, not for the rest of the World.
I never meant for my reference to the Dark Ages to be interpreted as meaning that the whole World suffered.
The original point I was trying to make is that “every market ever has crashed, but the world trudges on” can be read as an excessivelly complacent take, because even if elsewhere people are fine it doesn’t mean for we ourselves were we are, that our own way of living will remain and we will be fine.
“Manking will survive” doesn’t mean our own society won’t be screwed and end up going back relative to the rest in Economic and even Technological terms.
the “Dark Ages” was a term coined by a guy from Tuscany who was a big fan of classical antiquity about the fall of Rome 600 years before he was born and is an incredibly biased term from that perspective, and was coined because Petrach believed Rome’s collapse meant the death of classical Latin as a lingua franca and thus the world is bad.
It’s literally just “phone bad, wife bad, oldey timey malt sodas and rollerrinks good, make America great again” hokum but from a guy in the 12th century talking about the 5th century
From any other perspective the idea of that being the shame of mankind is kinda silly.
This idea was then co-opted by the Protestants in the 16th C as a way to say “See?! The Catholics fucked us! We need to un-catholicize the church with a schism!”
You’re criticizing the expression but not disproving the fact that Europe went back in Economics and Technological terms (to the point that formula for cement from the Romans was lost until the XXth century and the proven knowledge that the Earth was round dating from all the way back in the Ancient Greek time was forgotten, also for centuries) to the point that by the 12th Century the Arabs were more culturally and economically developed than Europe (and, curiously, it was the irrigation techniques brough to Europe by the Arabs during the Moorish Occupation of the Iberian Peninsula which, after spreading through Europe, created the Economic conditions for cities to grow and the Renaissance).
This wasn’t a regression of mankind, it was a regression of Europe - it weren’t the Arabs who burned down the Great Library Of Alexandry.
Roman ruled areas went back. The Byzantine empires and middle eastern caliphates did not - as you say. Greece, England, western France, Nordic countries all developed intra-connected Monastic libraries that were attacked by raiders for their books.
Yes, it was bad for Italy, but so was Berlusconi, and we don’t say that caused the decline of the entire world.
I think my lack of clarity in my original post is at fault here.
As I pointed out in my more recent post, the Dark Ages were a regression for Europe, not for the rest of the World.
I never meant for my reference to the Dark Ages to be interpreted as meaning that the whole World suffered.
The original point I was trying to make is that “every market ever has crashed, but the world trudges on” can be read as an excessivelly complacent take, because even if elsewhere people are fine it doesn’t mean for we ourselves were we are, that our own way of living will remain and we will be fine.
“Manking will survive” doesn’t mean our own society won’t be screwed and end up going back relative to the rest in Economic and even Technological terms.