But there were candles. And torches. And oil lamps. Also if you leave a bowl out in the sun during the day you collect sunlight and can use it at night. Fireflies are yet another option.
@@RoScFan I saw that there was one reply on this guy's comment and thought, "is this reply sarcastic or are they just completely oblivious to the joke?" I just found out that it was the latter
@@TarwTarw No, it was a joke. !any different jokes in one comment. Feigning ignorance of the jokes, troll physics1, troll physics 2 and overall nonsense.
Ah... a fellow man of culture I see :D . So mighty were men way back when, that a single villager could erect an entire Castle by himself, simply by pounding the ground with a lump hammer. Why he couldn't use said bludgeoning instrument - or indeed his hunting bow - to smote attackers though is beyond me XD.
@@aconcernedcitizen6056 "Brittanic peasants" which in the 21st century would be defined as the working class would fall apart soon as a no deal Brexit would occur. UK businesses would struggle to trade through, in & from Europe (our biggest trader). Hense, spontaneously combusting. After the removal of EU.
These videos are mainly just to give an overview of the topic. If it interests you then look up more on the topic. If it doesn’t, it’s just a cool little thing to learn.
@@kylewatson4193 No objection to what you said, but I also enjoyed the 10 minute episodes more. They give 3 x more time on the topic and are at the same time still an overview on the topic.
Aarni Koivisto I agree, I liked the 10 minute episodes more. But on topics like this there may be too much to adequately explain in 10 minutes or just not enough. Like the British Empire episodes needed 2 parts.
And who ran things during the dark ages? Religion. When science started to be embraced, we reclaimed growth of discovery like the ancient world.with better communication inventions starting with the printing press, scientific discoveries could be built upon.
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."
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.”
Ahmet Akif DURMUŞ basically the early medievalists of yesteryear spent so long trying to remove the term dark ages from popular culture that they go into attack mode the moment they hear it
@@alternativebassist It's an unscholarly term steeped in Renaissance ideology (as the video points out). That said, things genuinely were terrible on the island of Britain.
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.
Other things were lost to, famously the knowledge of how to make concrete. However Europe still found ways to make buildings so it's like planet of the apes or anything.
@@davidsuda6110 The knowledge of how to make Roman concrete wasn't really lost, it was still recorded in some monasteries and the like, but it wasn't useful as people had migrated to the countryside and less buildings required concrete to be built, and the materials to make it weren't readily available as long-distance trade decreased
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.
It is however, the most extreme case. As said in Britannia things went -according to plan- not that great. And in Gaul, well there was a shading here, the South saw very little change but the north saw lots of changes. The term dark age is not totally accurate but not totally inaccurate either, it just depends on were you look. Although I'd argue that the brunt of the dark age was in fact not from the time directly after the fall of Rome but that of after the Arab conquest (and before the Carolingian Renaissance) as the relations with the Eastern Empire were severed now that they have lost control of the Mediterranean
real dark age and devastation in Italy come with byzantine reconquest, they win but they are exausted and Italy devastated, soon conquered by the least civilized germanic people, the longobards. but after 2 century they start unificating Italy and become well integrated with italic native population, but then the pope ask Charlemagne: hey plz end longobard kingdom whole carrier and that's why Italy still divided until XIX century meanwhile other main european countries unified much earlier...
@brian' theodoric the Great, Justinian, Theodora, Matilda of Tuscany, Alfred the Great, pope Silvester ii, emperor Basil ii, edward i, edward iii, Louis VIII, Louis ix, Philip iii, Philip iv, pope clement v, Alfonso x, Isabel of France, i could go on with decent rulers from this era
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.
That's mostly British case. We know that frankish conquered modernday northern france with leadership of merovingian dynasty. And in visigothic spain was having succession crisis. But in Britain what we know is mostly archeological or myth and legend due to it was total mess of dozens of angles,saxons,and jutes petty kingdom in western portion of isle,and dozens of petty kingdom founded in wales and ireland. Unlike france,iberia,italy,north africa britain had almost hundred petty kings when mainland europea had 4 kingdoms at most in a region
I'm a believer in the term "Dark Ages" and no, for peasants, things didn't change so much; though "more frequent local famines" is not usually the thing you feature on the travel brochure. My big point about Dark Ages though, is the collapse of cities. Civilization is "citi-fication" so yes, civilization declined, and quite substantially. The process of civilization is to create enough surplus, and organize society, such that significant specialization, and to a large extend, intellectual work, can be done. That did not completely stop in the Dark Ages, but, in general more working knowledge was lost than was created. Now this really applies to northwestern Europe more than other places formerly within the Roman Empire, so I am perfectly content to accept a much narrower definition of the Dark Ages on a geographic level, but Bede to one side, there was not much advancement, and the loss of technical capacity far outweighed what little advancement there was. As to Herotodus main point, It is not just that we have fewer documents, it is that they created fewer documents, and the documents that they did create were largely copies of Roman work. (And we get down on our knees and thank those monks who did all of that copying work). Again, we have a couple of exceptions, mostly historians, and Bede was truly brilliant, but and he would have shone brightly in any age, but he shines much more brightly because he worked against such a Dark background.
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
I imagine because the dark ages weren’t nearly as dark with the Carolingian and Merovingian dynasties (especially with Charlegmagnes Renaissance). Where as in the English world it certainly was. While you had Charles Martel and Charlemagne we had Hengus and Horsa
@@LordBruuh ah boudicca, slaughtered a bunch of civilians, finally met an army 3 times smaller and got utterly annihilated, losing all Iceni land and commiting suicide. She ruled for what like a year, I have no idea why she is remembered or praised.
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
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.
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 was.......Balkans!
Funny aint it, the Balklands were really quite an advanced place....then the slavs invaded ;) Naah just joking, it was those Bulghars and Avars and Huns.
considering there was a high chance of worldwide nuclear/conventional warfare, the cold war was honestly pretty cold. some proxy wars here, some espionage there. hardly anything compared to what could have been
And yet the scholars of Ireland kept writing, transcribing and recording during the dark ages, thus making sure all was not forgotten when the light came back on. Well done us!
Ah, yes, "writing." In old Gaelic, it was spelled "drinking." (BTW, I'm part Irish and I'd still love Ireland even if I wasn't--how could you not--so just know that I jest out of love).
Regarding Italy, we also shouldn't forget that it was precisely the Reconquista of Justinian that ruined a lot of cities and the economy of the peninsula. Just because the country nominally became Roman for a few years again, doesn't mean that it returned to being prosperous. On the contrary, the long war was disastrous for what was left of Roman Italy, and _started_ the "Dark Age" for Italy.
@@jokester3076 That was the nail in the coffin; but the war against the Ostrogoths lasted for almost 30 years and brought widespread hunger, disease, death, and looting with it. Even in 562, after the end of the war, Italy was devastated, Rome depopulated, and the Roman success a Pyrrhic victory. So yes, the Lombard invasion made the reconquest short-lived, but ruinous it had already been.
The Biggest problem with the "Dark Age" in the 800 year duration after the Roman empire, is that we have so many texts that are handed down to us from the Roman empire that just wouldn't have survived if there had been no scholastic tradition within that period. tl;dr: We wouldn't know it was a "dark age" if it had actually been a truly "dark" age
Well, I'm pretty sure dark ages refer to the stagnation of these traditions, which would have resulted in the continued traditions, but however this isn't true of course, that's just the original thinking
If by "scholastic tradition" you mean monks sometimes not quite completely destroying the classic manuscripts they used as raw material for creating palimpsests into which they could copy religious texts, then you're right..
@@dansanger5340 That heavily depends on what kind of text you are talking about. Texts that could be connected to Christianity (either directly or forcefully) got preserved well but were altered to fit the Christian viewpoint (Which the Romans did as well by the way, go read something by Tacitus if you want to see Roman revisionism). Texts that had obvious uses for a kingdom, like texts on law, were either copied almost seamlessly or bundled together in the most complete lawbook to that date (Codex Justinianus). Texts that didn't appear to be that important, like (minor) poetry and slice-of-life texts, were pretty much ignored. Also, if the monks could recognize the name of the author, the text got preserved much better. In short, the scholastic tradition has either altered or ignored many texts that would be priceless for todays historians, but their works have allowed us to at least get the big 240p picture of how the Roman Empire functioned, survived and adapted throughout the centuries. Same deal with Nordic culture: on the one hand they poured wayyyy too much Jesus into Ragnarok, on the other hand those Christian monks were the only ones to leave a comprehensive collection of Nordic myths. D-tier preservation is still better than no preservation, so the scholastic tradition deserves at least a bit of credit for it.
Ancient text surviving wasn't the "direct" achievement of the monesteries and the catholic church. Warring small states, plaugae, vikings, nomadic invasions, the supreme position of the bigot chatholic church-it it was a dark age.
Dark Ages Peasent: who needs aqueducts when we've got Bede to read. Peasent 2: What's reading? And so the Roman System was essentially maintained and nothing bad happened ever. The end.
This topic and video could get way more developed, analysed and get even better if it were longer. Your work is one of a kind in quality, you analyse more objectively, going straight to the root of the point, avoiding ready made answers by the academia. You're really exceptional. You can do whatever you want and I'm not one of your patrons, but this is my opinion and I think you could be even better.
2:00 I still find it funny how scholars and intellectuals in the 1300s and the 1400s wanted to prove so badly that "things were much better when the Romans were there" that, in order to deal with the fact that, well, the Roman Empire never left, and it still existed at that time, they came up with the term "Byzantine Empire" and pretty much retconned the last 1000 years as being something different
The general consensus here is that this topic needed more than three minutes. I would have preferred ten minutes or longer as I generally enjoy your videos very much.
If there's obviously too many to speak of in any sort of detail, why not make a longer video instead of just pointing out some grand events without even providing much of a context?
this is entertainment, not history lessons. If this video would have been longer, I wouldn't have clicked on it and History Matters wouldn't have made money on it. History Matters wanted to entertain me and make some money. I wanted to be entertained, everyone wins. You're the odd one here, who should look for history lessons wherever they have as a primary goal to provide history lessons.
@@nydydn Apparently I'm not the odd one, since at least 149 people have shown share my opinion by liking the comment and there's quite a few more comments on this video expressing the same opinion, together receiving well over 10000 likes.
@@mr.2083 which doesn't mean much out of 1M views to date, which is above average performance for his videos. I'm not saying you're not right, I'm just saying that your expectations are somewhat off from what this channel provides, and that he's unlikely to change a strategy that works.
@@nydydn Perhaps, but then again you're dismissing quite a couple of factors that heavily skew your comparison. Also you're forgetting when the initial comment was placed and how his style was back then, it was right after his transition from 10 minute video's(hence his old name 10 minute history or something similar) to rather short ones, which yea did have an effect on expectations regarding more complex topics.
@@liamjm9278 Rome is Rome, which is why the Byzantine empire, which did not control Rome, did not speak latin, was not a continuation of the roman empire in any meaningful way and kept calling themselves romans simply as a way to keep their prestige even though literally no one else recognized them as such, was not Rome.
Philosophers in the Renaissance and (especially) Enlightenment had a nasty habit of saying the several centuries before them sucked, largely because of their own prejudices. Lots of falsehoods are still widely taught as historical fact because of their chronological snobbery.
This video is completely wrong though. I can just point out that in Italy during the Greco-Gothic war (year 700) the death toll was 10-12M on 15M citizens with cannibalism and mass starvation this is PURE revisionism
Isn't darkness a relative term? Antiquity was overflowing with historians, philosophers and mathematicians but in the "Dark ages" they were few and far between. There's also the destruction of information such as the burning of the Library of Alexandria and the murder of Hypatia.
It still had a lot of new information especially in medicine such as the modern surgical tools with Qasim Zehravi And let's not forget that ibn Haytham kinda researched really advances stuff for physics like optics Mathematics also improved when Indian, Persian, and Greek findings were put together and combined with new findings of the era It was also the period where modern engineering, hydraulics, and machinery was found with scientists like Rezzaz Jazari It had a lot of more new inventions as these are only a small amount of examples from the small amount of books that survived when the library they were all stored in got burned down to ground along with the city so...
absolutely and undeniably I've never understood why so many people get their panties in a bunch over it The Somewhat Worse In Certain Areas And Much Worse In Others Mostly In The West Where The Growth Of Knowledge And The Expansion Of The Populace Stagnated For A Few Centuries Ages is a mouthful
@@alanpennie8013 Not really. One of the main reasons for the large population decrease was the loss of Egypt. Egypt was a very important source of food for the Roman Empire. Also the water supply was drastically reduced. So thy couldn't feed a million people. Many died or left Rome.
@@renenerozar3954 It is generally believed that the population of Rome declined during the Fifth Century. But it was still a flourishing city in 500 according to the monk Fulgentius.
You gotta keep in mind, in the Roman Empire, taxes were often paid in the form of food, rather than money (most people were farmers). The Roman authorities shipped a lot of that food into Rome and other important cities, making those cities able to grow much larger than they naturally ever could. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, those massive amounts of food could no longer be shipped to Rome, thus, almost a million people had to move into rural Italia, to work on farms mostly.
It's important to remember that dark ages also referes to the invasions/mass migracion that terminated the bronze age and later used to refer to the middle ages by petrog
by the logic of people who passionately hate the term Dark Ages, since not everything collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age, it shouldn't be called the Bronze Age Collapse
I mean. It wasn't that Austrian either. Austria Hungary was a really Multicultural Nation. But compatible Cultures. So it kinda worked. Like compare it to Scottish, Irish, Welsh, English. All different but compatible. It's not like today's Multiculturalism which is a disaster.
@@VenomousSpyro oh yeah the famously compatible cultures of England and Ireland. That is why there was widespread anti anglo violence in all of Ireland from 15th century all the way to the Good Friday agreement - because they were so compatible
The term "Dark Ages" (saeculum obscurum) has nothing to do with Petrarch (0:08). Petrarch divided history into "antiqua" and "nova". A modern historian would say "ancient" and "medieval." Petrarch wrote in 1330s and was not aware that the Renaissance was on the way. The term Dark Ages actually comes from Caesar Baronius, who wrote a history of the church in 1602. Baronius used the term to refer to the period between the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and beginning of the Gregorian Reform in 1046. So his idea of the Dark Ages was quite different than any of the various definitions that are currently in use.
Another way to look at it is that the populations shifted from the cities where they practiced trades to the country due to the lack of of a continent wide food network. Education rates plummeted in the 'dark ages' and wouldn't pick up again until the black death and the renaissance. Though the only thing dark about the dark ages was the middle class being almost eradicated, but centres of learning remained in the church and thus continued to expand as the clergy were a protected class.
This is kinda one of the correct interpretations of the term. We also had this theory at university. We know a lot about the period, but we call it "dark ages" because literacy and scientific efforts were low during that period and many of the things that got written down were lost due to the turmoils of the times. Thus we don't have as many written sources from this time as compared to before and after. So we are literally in the dark a bit.
Ok civilization didnt come to a complete collapse. But it was really damn dark. As you said urban living nose dived. That means things like mass learning went away. Skills were lost. The secret to using concrete largely went away, for example. So few technologies were developed during the Dark Ages, but plenty went away. And no one really seemed to mourn its loss until Charlemagne. (Crowned HRE on Christmas 800)
The “dark” ages really were only that way because not as much was written during the time immediately after west Rome transformed into Europe ( a concept worth a video itself). Henri Pirenne is compelling in his view and I think remains correct at the heart of his theory. The Petrarchan theory has largely faded away, and the medieval period is now properly seen as a time when the foundations of modern western civilization were being constructed (using Greco Roman equipment and material). The “dark ages” is too romantic and poetic to give up, even if it is more myth than reality.
I wish you didn't keep making your videos shorter and shorter. I understand the need to keep churning out content but I'd rather wait a few more days for a longer video than get super short ones. Just my observation.
I agree with you and surely many more will too. Unfortunately it's not really up to any of us; it's mostly about the damn algorythms, that discourage high quality because of the effort and all the time it takes to achieve that.
You are making the same mistake that many so-called history buffs make. The word dark in dark ages refers to a general lack of knowledge about the time period, not to any inherent evil or literal darkness or badness. The meaning is similar to that used in dark side of the Moon or darkest Africa. It's simply means we don't (at the time of the speaker or writer) know very much about the subject.
Well I’m gonna be fair the eu was good as an economic market but when it starts enforcing rules on member states they should have put the break through the floor
The first universities were founded during the Dark Ages and the great Gothic Cathedrals, chiseled by hand without power tools, were built during it In many ways it really was forward thinking instead of backward
The "Dark Ages" were named by the same people who named their own time "the Renaissance." They also looked at buildings like Notre Dame de Paris and called that style "Gothic" because they thought it was ugly.
It does tell you something though about the general state of learning when all it took for Charlemagne to become known as a great patron of learning was to fund a few court intellectuals and have a library with a few hundred books. So yes, the term Dark Age is accurate. Nobody ever claimed that Western Europe was a complete black hole of ignorance at the time, but it was certainly a low point compared to what came both before and after.
@@forsakenquery Italy proves you wrong so does England and Spain but whatever it was a beautiful paradise the Germans were in right for killing 20M people again
thanks, I enjoyed this. perhaps also check out the today I found out episode on did people throw sewage into the street during the middle ages (rarely).
You are completely forgetting the fact that during the dark ages there were no light bulbs to speak of, thus making it significantly darker
But there were candles. And torches. And oil lamps. Also if you leave a bowl out in the sun during the day you collect sunlight and can use it at night. Fireflies are yet another option.
@@RoScFan I saw that there was one reply on this guy's comment and thought, "is this reply sarcastic or are they just completely oblivious to the joke?"
I just found out that it was the latter
@@RoScFan There is plenty of light when My ancestors burned your huts down, they weren't just arsonists, they were practical.
@@TarwTarw No, it was a joke. !any different jokes in one comment. Feigning ignorance of the jokes, troll physics1, troll physics 2 and overall nonsense.
Even more curiously the "enlightenment" started around 1700 and there were still no lightbulbs? 🤔🤔🤔
Don’t worry, it takes only 500 food to upgrade to the Feudal age.
Age of empires joke?
Ah... a fellow man of culture I see :D .
So mighty were men way back when, that a single villager could erect an entire Castle by himself, simply by pounding the ground with a lump hammer.
Why he couldn't use said bludgeoning instrument - or indeed his hunting bow - to smote attackers though is beyond me XD.
No.
I do think both the Arab world and China used "cheese steak Jimmy's" to advance to the Imperial Age.
11
So... What I gather from this video is that Britannic peasants spontaneously combusted right after Rome left the island.
I knew about that even before I saw the video
A bit like the direction we're gonna go after Brexit. Ah, if only we could learn from the previous inheritors of the land. .
"Things will never change."
"Wait, why the fuck is Rome going away?!"
"NOOOOOOOOOO!"
*Explodes*
@@athishamiqbal7011 whys that then?
@@aconcernedcitizen6056 "Brittanic peasants" which in the 21st century would be defined as the working class would fall apart soon as a no deal Brexit would occur. UK businesses would struggle to trade through, in & from Europe (our biggest trader). Hense, spontaneously combusting. After the removal of EU.
I think that subject needed more time :)
There are lots of videos on youtube about the dark ages and their actual impact on history. Short and sweet is history matters flavor.
These videos are mainly just to give an overview of the topic. If it interests you then look up more on the topic. If it doesn’t, it’s just a cool little thing to learn.
@@kylewatson4193 No objection to what you said, but I also enjoyed the 10 minute episodes more. They give 3 x more time on the topic and are at the same time still an overview on the topic.
Aarni Koivisto I agree, I liked the 10 minute episodes more. But on topics like this there may be too much to adequately explain in 10 minutes or just not enough. Like the British Empire episodes needed 2 parts.
And who ran things during the dark ages? Religion. When science started to be embraced, we reclaimed growth of discovery like the ancient world.with better communication inventions starting with the printing press, scientific discoveries could be built upon.
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."
Trebizond from 1453 to 1461: "Am I a joke to you?"
@@BroadwayRonMexico yes
@@BroadwayRonMexico very much so
@@BroadwayRonMexico Trebi-who?
1527 am I a joke to you
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.”
care to elaborate?
Ahmet Akif DURMUŞ basically the early medievalists of yesteryear spent so long trying to remove the term dark ages from popular culture that they go into attack mode the moment they hear it
@@alternativebassist
It's an unscholarly term steeped in Renaissance ideology (as the video points out).
That said, things genuinely were terrible on the island of Britain.
Alan Pennie Not an unscholarly term, and there’s nothing wrong with being steeped in Renaissance ideology :). Stop shilling
Samsca looking through history with the lens of any ideology tends to be pretty dumb
go back to 10 minutes, this deserved longer
The numbers probably weren't as good for him, which is pretty sad
I miss 10 minute history. But perhaps a compromise could be dividing topics into 3 parts
Personally I kinda hope he splits it, longer ten minute videos with plenty of shorter ones as he sees fit, I still love the content!
Blame RUclips hating education
In a video he said he would get demonetized
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.
Other things were lost to, famously the knowledge of how to make concrete. However Europe still found ways to make buildings so it's like planet of the apes or anything.
On the other hand our age is so verbose that future generous may not be able to figure out what the heck was going on.
@@trajan75 people living in our age don't know wtf is going on
@@davidsuda6110 The knowledge of how to make Roman concrete wasn't really lost, it was still recorded in some monasteries and the like, but it wasn't useful as people had migrated to the countryside and less buildings required concrete to be built, and the materials to make it weren't readily available as long-distance trade decreased
@@coindorni I wonder if localism didn't have an effect as well. Meaning what was being built was much smaller.
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.
It is however, the most extreme case.
As said in Britannia things went -according to plan- not that great. And in Gaul, well there was a shading here, the South saw very little change but the north saw lots of changes.
The term dark age is not totally accurate but not totally inaccurate either, it just depends on were you look. Although I'd argue that the brunt of the dark age was in fact not from the time directly after the fall of Rome but that of after the Arab conquest (and before the Carolingian Renaissance) as the relations with the Eastern Empire were severed now that they have lost control of the Mediterranean
real dark age and devastation in Italy come with byzantine reconquest, they win but they are exausted and Italy devastated, soon conquered by the least civilized germanic people, the longobards.
but after 2 century they start unificating Italy and become well integrated with italic native population, but then the pope ask Charlemagne: hey plz end longobard kingdom whole carrier and that's why Italy still divided until XIX century meanwhile other main european countries unified much earlier...
I mean...just Latinize Theoderic to Theodosius and it's not that different.
@brian' theodoric the Great, Justinian, Theodora, Matilda of Tuscany, Alfred the Great, pope Silvester ii, emperor Basil ii, edward i, edward iii, Louis VIII, Louis ix, Philip iii, Philip iv, pope clement v, Alfonso x, Isabel of France, i could go on with decent rulers from this era
@@herodotus945 Matilda is kinda the tail end of the dark age neh? :p By the 9th century things are looking decidely semi civilized again.
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.
People forget that one meaning of 'dark' is simply unexplored or unknown.
Probably because the cities in each kingdom kept getting sacked by other rival kingdoms and tribes but that's just a maybe
That's mostly British case. We know that frankish conquered modernday northern france with leadership of merovingian dynasty. And in visigothic spain was having succession crisis. But in Britain what we know is mostly archeological or myth and legend due to it was total mess of dozens of angles,saxons,and jutes petty kingdom in western portion of isle,and dozens of petty kingdom founded in wales and ireland. Unlike france,iberia,italy,north africa britain had almost hundred petty kings when mainland europea had 4 kingdoms at most in a region
They were terrible and everyone died
I'm a believer in the term "Dark Ages" and no, for peasants, things didn't change so much; though "more frequent local famines" is not usually the thing you feature on the travel brochure. My big point about Dark Ages though, is the collapse of cities. Civilization is "citi-fication" so yes, civilization declined, and quite substantially. The process of civilization is to create enough surplus, and organize society, such that significant specialization, and to a large extend, intellectual work, can be done. That did not completely stop in the Dark Ages, but, in general more working knowledge was lost than was created. Now this really applies to northwestern Europe more than other places formerly within the Roman Empire, so I am perfectly content to accept a much narrower definition of the Dark Ages on a geographic level, but Bede to one side, there was not much advancement, and the loss of technical capacity far outweighed what little advancement there was. As to Herotodus main point, It is not just that we have fewer documents, it is that they created fewer documents, and the documents that they did create were largely copies of Roman work. (And we get down on our knees and thank those monks who did all of that copying work). Again, we have a couple of exceptions, mostly historians, and Bede was truly brilliant, but and he would have shone brightly in any age, but he shines much more brightly because he worked against such a Dark background.
Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again
No Funny Didn't Laugh
Is your electrical grid down again?
Yes pretty sad indeed that the current US president is clearly darkness.
@@timmmahhhh the us should be a monarchy
I am just waiting for a trump comment. Anyone ? 🤣
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
lol
In France, it's mostly called "periods of the Barbarian Kingdoms." Well, it was when I was a kid.
As well as "Great Barbarian invasion"
I imagine because the dark ages weren’t nearly as dark with the Carolingian and Merovingian dynasties (especially with Charlegmagnes Renaissance). Where as in the English world it certainly was. While you had Charles Martel and Charlemagne we had Hengus and Horsa
Is this where asterix comes into play?
@@alyarmouk4790
No. Asterix was long dead (or would have been if he'd been historical)
@@LordBruuh ah boudicca, slaughtered a bunch of civilians, finally met an army 3 times smaller and got utterly annihilated, losing all Iceni land and commiting suicide. She ruled for what like a year, I have no idea why she is remembered or praised.
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
We bigfoots didn't have to worry about the dark ages out here in the woods
Go back to Mars you wild animal
*Here, I have found a specimen of Scp-1000 in the wild, send a mobile task force immediately to* [Data Expunged]
hey man where are you living to get such good internet access? I'm just asking for, a...friend. Who has no interest in finding you really
Hold it, Bob! We can see your wristwatch!
You eat babies
I feel morbid for laughing when someone just tips over when they die.....but I continue to laugh every time it happens.
I know; that is endlessly entertaining.
And the Sound effect. Plop.
I feel the same way when I see someone do a face plant on concrete in a skateboarding fail video
*thud*
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.
..................
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 was.......Balkans!
byzentium
@@andreacapuano585 You mean Roman Empire?
Atilla and this buddies: *laugh in hunnic* Well they absolutely annihilated northern Balkan.
Hey hey hey, dont forget that back then Byzantium was on the balkans.
Dont underestimate east Rome
Funny aint it, the Balklands were really quite an advanced place....then the slavs invaded ;) Naah just joking, it was those Bulghars and Avars and Huns.
How 'Dark' were the Dark Ages?
What about how "cold" was the cold war?
Not that dark
Not that cold
considering there was a high chance of worldwide nuclear/conventional warfare, the cold war was honestly pretty cold. some proxy wars here, some espionage there. hardly anything compared to what could have been
1:02 *"just kidding, they fell appart ALMOST immidiatly!"*
And yet the scholars of Ireland kept writing, transcribing and recording during the dark ages, thus making sure all was not forgotten when the light came back on. Well done us!
This was actually the beginning of literacy and scholarship in Ireland.
@Chris Sennwood apparently they traded with it though
Ah, yes, "writing." In old Gaelic, it was spelled "drinking."
(BTW, I'm part Irish and I'd still love Ireland even if I wasn't--how could you not--so just know that I jest out of love).
Regarding Italy, we also shouldn't forget that it was precisely the Reconquista of Justinian that ruined a lot of cities and the economy of the peninsula. Just because the country nominally became Roman for a few years again, doesn't mean that it returned to being prosperous. On the contrary, the long war was disastrous for what was left of Roman Italy, and _started_ the "Dark Age" for Italy.
The plague combined with the lombard invasion is what made the re-conquest short lived and ruinous.
Justinian saved Italy just like Team America saved France.
@@caiawlodarski5339 *Team* America.
@@caiawlodarski5339 Hahaha my friend
@@jokester3076 That was the nail in the coffin; but the war against the Ostrogoths lasted for almost 30 years and brought widespread hunger, disease, death, and looting with it. Even in 562, after the end of the war, Italy was devastated, Rome depopulated, and the Roman success a Pyrrhic victory.
So yes, the Lombard invasion made the reconquest short-lived, but ruinous it had already been.
It was dark because they forgot to replaces the oil in their lamps.
Golum?
*Thomas Edison has not yet entered the chat*
hello my friend, do you want to buy oil lamp? only if you have rubies...
I think this is a reference to the parable of Jesus.
Thanks for being a patreon for so long James Byzanet.
The Biggest problem with the "Dark Age" in the 800 year duration after the Roman empire, is that we have so many texts that are handed down to us from the Roman empire that just wouldn't have survived if there had been no scholastic tradition within that period.
tl;dr: We wouldn't know it was a "dark age" if it had actually been a truly "dark" age
Well, I'm pretty sure dark ages refer to the stagnation of these traditions, which would have resulted in the continued traditions, but however this isn't true of course, that's just the original thinking
If by "scholastic tradition" you mean monks sometimes not quite completely destroying the classic manuscripts they used as raw material for creating palimpsests into which they could copy religious texts, then you're right..
@@dansanger5340 nah I don’t think that’s right. Only a small proportion of the texts we have are from Palimpsests
@@dansanger5340 That heavily depends on what kind of text you are talking about. Texts that could be connected to Christianity (either directly or forcefully) got preserved well but were altered to fit the Christian viewpoint (Which the Romans did as well by the way, go read something by Tacitus if you want to see Roman revisionism). Texts that had obvious uses for a kingdom, like texts on law, were either copied almost seamlessly or bundled together in the most complete lawbook to that date (Codex Justinianus). Texts that didn't appear to be that important, like (minor) poetry and slice-of-life texts, were pretty much ignored. Also, if the monks could recognize the name of the author, the text got preserved much better.
In short, the scholastic tradition has either altered or ignored many texts that would be priceless for todays historians, but their works have allowed us to at least get the big 240p picture of how the Roman Empire functioned, survived and adapted throughout the centuries.
Same deal with Nordic culture: on the one hand they poured wayyyy too much Jesus into Ragnarok, on the other hand those Christian monks were the only ones to leave a comprehensive collection of Nordic myths. D-tier preservation is still better than no preservation, so the scholastic tradition deserves at least a bit of credit for it.
Ancient text surviving wasn't the "direct" achievement of the monesteries and the catholic church. Warring small states, plaugae, vikings, nomadic invasions, the supreme position of the bigot chatholic church-it it was a dark age.
Dark Ages Peasent: who needs aqueducts when we've got Bede to read.
Peasent 2: What's reading?
And so the Roman System was essentially maintained and nothing bad happened ever. The end.
This topic and video could get way more developed, analysed and get even better if it were longer. Your work is one of a kind in quality, you analyse more objectively, going straight to the root of the point, avoiding ready made answers by the academia. You're really exceptional. You can do whatever you want and I'm not one of your patrons, but this is my opinion and I think you could be even better.
2:00 I still find it funny how scholars and intellectuals in the 1300s and the 1400s wanted to prove so badly that "things were much better when the Romans were there" that, in order to deal with the fact that, well, the Roman Empire never left, and it still existed at that time, they came up with the term "Byzantine Empire" and pretty much retconned the last 1000 years as being something different
The general consensus here is that this topic needed more than three minutes. I would have preferred ten minutes or longer as I generally enjoy your videos very much.
Well, I finally considered becoming a Patreon
Glad to support you mate
I found these two days ago. They're addictive. Think I've watched 40 of then so far
Me: wide eyed from a week of lack of sleep
You've only just started, man!
I love your death animation, very expressive, worthy of many Oscars
2:22 Wait, if that's his mausoleum how come he's still (boop) oh
It was funny, because its packed with Boops.
Me and the boys taking apart the Northumbrian hegemony and dying for Cyning Wulfhere.
The little dolls falling off with a dry "thud" sound when they die got me laughing for several minutes non-stop!!! XD
It's like a post-apocalyptic classical period.
If there's obviously too many to speak of in any sort of detail, why not make a longer video instead of just pointing out some grand events without even providing much of a context?
Blame RUclips policies.
this is entertainment, not history lessons. If this video would have been longer, I wouldn't have clicked on it and History Matters wouldn't have made money on it. History Matters wanted to entertain me and make some money. I wanted to be entertained, everyone wins. You're the odd one here, who should look for history lessons wherever they have as a primary goal to provide history lessons.
@@nydydn Apparently I'm not the odd one, since at least 149 people have shown share my opinion by liking the comment and there's quite a few more comments on this video expressing the same opinion, together receiving well over 10000 likes.
@@mr.2083 which doesn't mean much out of 1M views to date, which is above average performance for his videos. I'm not saying you're not right, I'm just saying that your expectations are somewhat off from what this channel provides, and that he's unlikely to change a strategy that works.
@@nydydn Perhaps, but then again you're dismissing quite a couple of factors that heavily skew your comparison.
Also you're forgetting when the initial comment was placed and how his style was back then, it was right after his transition from 10 minute video's(hence his old name 10 minute history or something similar) to rather short ones, which yea did have an effect on expectations regarding more complex topics.
Could you make a video on how scholars in the XIV century kept saying "since the Romans left" while the Eastern *Roman* Empire was still there?
Because the byzantine empire and the Roman empire were not the same thing
@@Gabriel-ip6me Yes they were. Rome is similar but not dependent on latin culture.
@@ravioli3807 Unless to you "Rome" means a few bureaucrats and tax collectors, the Byzantine Empire wasn't Rome.
@@Gabriel-ip6me Rome is Rome and the East was Roman.
@@liamjm9278 Rome is Rome, which is why the Byzantine empire, which did not control Rome, did not speak latin, was not a continuation of the roman empire in any meaningful way and kept calling themselves romans simply as a way to keep their prestige even though literally no one else recognized them as such, was not Rome.
RIP Roman Empire
they got bullied by some mad barbarians
Actually only half of it. The other half was just fine
Francisco MM well yes, but actually no
F
Oof
The fall of Rome was the best thing that happened to Europe. Romanization would have made the continent another China.
Philosophers in the Renaissance and (especially) Enlightenment had a nasty habit of saying the several centuries before them sucked, largely because of their own prejudices. Lots of falsehoods are still widely taught as historical fact because of their chronological snobbery.
This video is completely wrong though. I can just point out that in Italy during the Greco-Gothic war (year 700) the death toll was 10-12M on 15M citizens with cannibalism and mass starvation this is PURE revisionism
Isn't darkness a relative term? Antiquity was overflowing with historians, philosophers and mathematicians but in the "Dark ages" they were few and far between. There's also the destruction of information such as the burning of the Library of Alexandria and the murder of Hypatia.
It still had a lot of new information especially in medicine such as the modern surgical tools with Qasim Zehravi
And let's not forget that ibn Haytham kinda researched really advances stuff for physics like optics
Mathematics also improved when Indian, Persian, and Greek findings were put together and combined with new findings of the era
It was also the period where modern engineering, hydraulics, and machinery was found with scientists like Rezzaz Jazari
It had a lot of more new inventions as these are only a small amount of examples from the small amount of books that survived when the library they were all stored in got burned down to ground along with the city so...
This was especially bad in England, where virtually nothing is known with any certainty between roughly 400 and 825.
absolutely and undeniably
I've never understood why so many people get their panties in a bunch over it
The Somewhat Worse In Certain Areas And Much Worse In Others Mostly In The West Where The Growth Of Knowledge And The Expansion Of The Populace Stagnated For A Few Centuries Ages is a mouthful
FROM A MILLION TO FIFTY THOUSAND!?
Disaster.
It was the result of the Byzantine - Ostrogothic wars.
@@alanpennie8013 Not really.
One of the main reasons for the large population decrease was the loss of Egypt. Egypt was a very important source of food for the Roman Empire. Also the water supply was drastically reduced. So thy couldn't feed a million people. Many died or left Rome.
@@renenerozar3954
It is generally believed that the population of Rome declined during the Fifth Century. But it was still a flourishing city in 500 according to the monk Fulgentius.
You gotta keep in mind, in the Roman Empire, taxes were often paid in the form of food, rather than money (most people were farmers). The Roman authorities shipped a lot of that food into Rome and other important cities, making those cities able to grow much larger than they naturally ever could. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, those massive amounts of food could no longer be shipped to Rome, thus, almost a million people had to move into rural Italia, to work on farms mostly.
but absolutely no reason to refer to this era as Dark Ages
nosireebob
What about the visigothic kingdom? It was also a good example.
Francisco Arboleda no it wasnt,where did you hear that?
Sure, same as Balkans.
@@nedimbajgoric2909 why wasnt it?
@@elhistoriero1227 coz they got conquered by some sand people
Francisco Arboleda it was so unorganized that they couldnt make any kind of form of resistance to the invading caliphate armies
The dark ages where dark...
... or Where they?
*vsauce theme*
Fun fact: No.
*were
It's important to remember that dark ages also referes to the invasions/mass migracion that terminated the bronze age and later used to refer to the middle ages by petrog
by the logic of people who passionately hate the term Dark Ages, since not everything collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age, it shouldn't be called the Bronze Age Collapse
I have taken a great amount of joy in the little 'thud' sound effect.
suggestion: How Hungarian was Austria-Hungary ?
I mean. It wasn't that Austrian either. Austria Hungary was a really Multicultural Nation. But compatible Cultures. So it kinda worked. Like compare it to Scottish, Irish, Welsh, English. All different but compatible. It's not like today's Multiculturalism which is a disaster.
@@VenomousSpyro oh yeah the famously compatible cultures of England and Ireland. That is why there was widespread anti anglo violence in all of Ireland from 15th century all the way to the Good Friday agreement - because they were so compatible
@@VenomousSpyro Welsh? Seriously? LOL
Well I don't see how an empire can be hungry
@@mantea3481 **laughs in russian**
The term "Dark Ages" (saeculum obscurum) has nothing to do with Petrarch (0:08). Petrarch divided history into "antiqua" and "nova". A modern historian would say "ancient" and "medieval." Petrarch wrote in 1330s and was not aware that the Renaissance was on the way. The term Dark Ages actually comes from Caesar Baronius, who wrote a history of the church in 1602. Baronius used the term to refer to the period between the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and beginning of the Gregorian Reform in 1046. So his idea of the Dark Ages was quite different than any of the various definitions that are currently in use.
Another way to look at it is that the populations shifted from the cities where they practiced trades to the country due to the lack of of a continent wide food network. Education rates plummeted in the 'dark ages' and wouldn't pick up again until the black death and the renaissance.
Though the only thing dark about the dark ages was the middle class being almost eradicated, but centres of learning remained in the church and thus continued to expand as the clergy were a protected class.
People out here saying dark ages weren't that dark while my ancestors were being persecuted and burnt in stakes in the name of christ
Awesome video! The severity of the "Dark Ages" really did depend on where you lived.
Commenting for the algorithm. Dude deserves it
HMS_THUNDERCHILD Same!
Autumn forever!
This channel is amazing. Keep it up.
The Dark Ages really started after the Gothic wars. The crisis was quite deep.
"How do you take your coffee?"
"Dark, like my Ages."
My teacher back when said the dark ages were dark because we know very little about what happened compared to other times.
This is kinda one of the correct interpretations of the term. We also had this theory at university.
We know a lot about the period, but we call it "dark ages" because literacy and scientific efforts were low during that period and many of the things that got written down were lost due to the turmoils of the times. Thus we don't have as many written sources from this time as compared to before and after. So we are literally in the dark a bit.
The people dying gag with the thump sound effect will never get old, I still laugh even though it's in every video.
Rome's population went from 1 million to 50K? Woah... I wonder if the city itself fell into a state of disrepair
Can you do "how did Granada survive the Spanish for so long"
lol I read Grandpa
The same reason the Ummayyads couldn't conquer Asturias.
Terrain
Thump! Best sound effect, ever.
And here I thought the Dark Ages was when the world was permanently Dark for like 800 Years.
dang that detail @1:52 of the starving person’s face structure. i see you puttin in that extra work
Ok civilization didnt come to a complete collapse. But it was really damn dark. As you said urban living nose dived. That means things like mass learning went away. Skills were lost. The secret to using concrete largely went away, for example. So few technologies were developed during the Dark Ages, but plenty went away. And no one really seemed to mourn its loss until Charlemagne. (Crowned HRE on Christmas 800)
Damn, if I was able to gain +1 more era score, I wouldnt be in this mess
The “dark” ages really were only that way because not as much was written during the time immediately after west Rome transformed into Europe ( a concept worth a video itself). Henri Pirenne is compelling in his view and I think remains correct at the heart of his theory. The Petrarchan theory has largely faded away, and the medieval period is now properly seen as a time when the foundations of modern western civilization were being constructed (using Greco Roman equipment and material). The “dark ages” is too romantic and poetic to give up, even if it is more myth than reality.
Every time I see someone suddenly fall on the ground, I lose it. 🤣
Byzantines be like : The Roman Empire is dead, long live the Roman Empire!
Roman Empire are byzantine
Stupid comment
I love the art work and the expressions with the context. It's quite good i love these so much
I wish you didn't keep making your videos shorter and shorter. I understand the need to keep churning out content but I'd rather wait a few more days for a longer video than get super short ones. Just my observation.
I like the shorter one's but I would like a mixture. Some long some short.
🖕you and your observation!!
@@nixonhoover2 You could never afford me so you won't be doing that. :)
@@ItsLunaRegina You're a girl?!?! I thought you were a dude. Bros b4 hos.
I agree with you and surely many more will too. Unfortunately it's not really up to any of us; it's mostly about the damn algorythms, that discourage high quality because of the effort and all the time it takes to achieve that.
The humor of this channel is great.
00:30 *Western Roman Empire.
Easily one of my favorite channels
Ok but how middle were the middle ages
Lol the names you give shoutouts to a always so funny I have so many questions....how does Kelly make her money
You are making the same mistake that many so-called history buffs make. The word dark in dark ages refers to a general lack of knowledge about the time period, not to any inherent evil or literal darkness or badness. The meaning is similar to that used in dark side of the Moon or darkest Africa. It's simply means we don't (at the time of the speaker or writer) know very much about the subject.
Very good for a short video. But I do recommend reading Hilaire Belloc’s commentary on the Dark Ages.
You should make “Why did Britain join the Common Market?” and for good measure you should release it on October 31st.
Funny thing is that it was Britain's idea to introduce the common market in the first place.
Well I’m gonna be fair the eu was good as an economic market but when it starts enforcing rules on member states they should have put the break through the floor
Perfect timing, concise presentation and fun. You have a new subscriber.
*_Meanwhile the Islamic world was groovin_*
The reason for the term the "Dark Ages" there is not many records or written accounts of events of the day.
Are you still doing a ww2 episode for September 1st?
Cough cough wasaw uprising 1st August cough cough
@@jankubiak324 extra credits did a video about the warsaw uprising. Check it out
Jan Kubiak SS has entered chat
@@jankubiak324 I feel like it's a bit late to have a 1st of august episode..
@@jankubiak324 I hope you feel better
0:21 Yes! Finally someone said it!
The first universities were founded during the Dark Ages and the great Gothic Cathedrals, chiseled by hand without power tools, were built during it
In many ways it really was forward thinking instead of backward
The "Dark Ages" were named by the same people who named their own time "the Renaissance." They also looked at buildings like Notre Dame de Paris and called that style "Gothic" because they thought it was ugly.
The Dark Ages are terrible when you can't find your sheep.
such an interesting perspective on this topic
Never forget those that financed the great feats of scientific and cultural exploration. Spain, England, Portugal, and James Bissonette
Wooo! Nuance! You're my hero. We don't get enough nuance these days so I get happy whenever I get some.
"Things weren't as dark as they may seem" is quite a different claim from "No, the dark ages weren't dark"
I mean life pretty much sucked since the Crisis of the Third Century, yet no-one calls that the Dark Ages.
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!!
Was this before of after daenerys burned kings landing with her dragon?
I think after.
Lmao
After
Really intresting subject definitely deserves a longer video
I just really enjoy your channel! So glad I subscribed.
Petrarch = Pet Rock, according to the captions
Ty! !! Lololz needed a video like this
I always thought it was called the dark ages because there was less recorded history after Rome fell
This is really only true of Britain.
I swear I don't remember learning this in school at all which is why I appreciate your videos so much
0:40 Where and where?
Thanks for shining light on this dark history
It does tell you something though about the general state of learning when all it took for Charlemagne to become known as a great patron of learning was to fund a few court intellectuals and have a library with a few hundred books. So yes, the term Dark Age is accurate. Nobody ever claimed that Western Europe was a complete black hole of ignorance at the time, but it was certainly a low point compared to what came both before and after.
Thank you !! I'm sick of the dark age apologists who look at the exceptions rather than the rule to disprove the obvious.
@@forsakenquery Italy proves you wrong so does England and Spain but whatever it was a beautiful paradise the Germans were in right for killing 20M people again
thanks, I enjoyed this. perhaps also check out the today I found out episode on did people throw sewage into the street during the middle ages (rarely).