How dark were the dark ages really

Go read a Wikipedia article. There are whole departments of economic historians figuring this stuff out.

good post

It was called dark because of the lack of records that survived the period.

You realize people cared more about quality over quantity, right? A blacksmith forging a good sword and selling it to some noblemen is going to less of a financial transaction than a factory mass producing swords.

Lets just say a more historically accurate name would be the Light Ages.

extremely EXTREMLY dark..
the bloodsucking, backwards, flat-earther catholick vampires literally blotted out the light of the sun and exterminated every single Pagan scientist, who were so enlightened that they emanated light blinding to the illiterate abrahamics

to expand on the sun-blotting part, they created a huge bonfire to blot it out, and used innumerable amounts of ancient secular Pagan writings and eidetic norse wisemen as fuel

How is that not a bad thing in and of itself? Lack of records means no written culture. Why do older works survive when they would have had to go through the same cataclysmic events? Why do few contemporary works survive? Clearly it is because there was nothing to preserve in the first place.

The vast majority of people lived in rural environments. There was no state for most people. There was no protection or police. Sanitation was unimaginably poor. Muslims were at the doorstep (thank you based charles martel). Education was essentially nonexistent. Plague. Knowledge of all sorts had been lost. And on and on.

You were better off living 2,000 years prior in the middle east.

That's textbook layman's pov, this should be the opening sentence for a history book on "why study the medieval time".

Do you even economics?

God your post is fucking stupid

>people still don't get that Dark Ages are called dark because there aren't many written sources

A dark room isn't called dark because it's depressing to be there, it's called dark because you can't see anything.

Remember the church kept alive Greek philosophical works.

It's also generally true. Of course there are exceptions but really, sanitation WAS poor. People lived in one room. Often there would be livestock (in anglo saxon England) as well. There were no sewage systems. The state WAS non-existant. People owed oaths of fealty to landowners. Taxation was local and eccelistial. Authority was dispensed at a community level. Education was non-existent unless you were a noble seeking theological education. Written records dissappeared because no-one could write, parchment was a pain in the butt to produce (sheep skin bruh) and there wasn't any urbanisation and therefore no literate reading, middle class to read anything that was produced. Plague was a problem and the plagues of Justinian killed a large proportion of the population of eastern Europe. Knowledge HAD been lost. Agriculture, weaponry and town planning didn't advance until the end of the period. No-one built any stone bridges. Aquaducts were considered a lost technology. Until the 12th century renaissance many pagan writers were completely forgotten (such as Aristotle). No-one wrote a work of geography until the renaissance and most western rulers until after 1000 AD were illiterate.

Much happened in the high and later medieval periods but to say that the early medieval period (the "dark ages") was anything but stagnation and in many respects regression is really trying too hard to be a contrarian.

And sometimes absent-mindedly writing over them when copying an important biblical text lol.

It was Dark because it was a political shitheap of overnight Germanic kingdoms and fighting due to the power vacuum left by a declining Empire.

>Not asking why there weren't any written sources.

There's a dark age going on in your head m8.

really
curdled
those
egg
noggins

>Dark Ages
>The World

Uhhh, eurocentrist much?

To be fair, the Dark Ages was pretty near simultaneous the world over
>Europe: Began when Rome fell in 400s AD. Ended with the establishment of Frankish hegemony in the 700s.
>Middle East: Began after the shitty Byzantine/Sassanid Wars of the 500s. Ended with the Abbasid Caliphate in 700s.
>China: Began after the decline of Ssu'ma Jin in the 400s. Ended by Sui reunification in the 600s.

I'm sure that Roman slaves working in the asbestos mines were happy there was somebody writing about them.

That slave was probably more literate than your average early middle ages ruler.

Pretty dark, you almost couldn't tell night from day so that's why everyone had candles with them everywhere

kek, BTFO by this faggot

Charlie Murphy dark

It sucked because Arianism was still strong and mudslims were raping europeans

>Middle East: Began after the shitty Byzantine/Sassanid Wars of the 500s. Ended with the Abbasid Caliphate in 700s.
That's wrong though

Basicly, europe went from being a series of interconnected towns with arts and culture, to a bunch of huts containing subsistance farmers.

Half of what you list is the fault of the Muslims assaulting Christendom.

They were fine. They are only called the 'dark ages' by Hellenophiles and Fedoramen.

braindead

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)
>Germany in 1000 etc,
>division of Europe for Eastern and Western
whoaa, they are doing really great job.

Half of what you said, especially housing was in whole of europe even up and until the 20th century.

>>China: Began after the decline of Ssu'ma Jin in the 400s. Ended by Sui reunification in the 600s.
>not the 3 Kingdoms period
You forgot about the Guptas in India. They also fell around the time that the rest of classical civilization did

I'm fairly certain medieval farmers didn't keep animals in their own houses. They also didn't live in long/round houses.

Politics and military recruitment changed dramatically during the middle ages. Bathing and sanitation improved. Public baths were popular. Secular romances were written in the middle ages. Mobility became literate. Cities and market towns developed. Industry developed in the middle ages.

Sad!