China entered the "dark age" earlier when Easter Han fell in 220, but recovered faster as Tang dynasty in 618. That age isn't that "dark"; tons of stuff happened. (introduction of Buddhism, development of poem and calligraphy etc.) The period 400-900 actually roughly coincides with Chinese economy center moving south (Southern Liang in 502 to Southern Song in 1127), which is probably more heavily influenced by climate change.
Good point. Interestingly, if we look at the latitude of southern China, it coincides with the warmer areas in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Interesting.
@@linjie1213 right now. we don't even have central documents like the twenty-four histories properly translated to english. despite the wealth of material we don't have 1% of it in accessible form relative to say latin or greek works.
@@levitatingoctahedron922 It seems to be the truth 😕 according to wikipedia, The Records of the Three Kingdoms has not been fully translated into English... I find it hard to believe... On the other hand, now I sort of understand why there is a profound lack of understanding of Chinese tradition.
Since I live in Montreal and speak both French and English I'm aware of history from both an Anglo/American and French perspective. The notion of a Dark Age after the fall of Rome is a very Anglo/American idea, which makes sense for the British Isles as Romano-British society seems to have utterly collapsed around the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. The British Isles seem to have reverted to primitive tribalism for a few centuries until the Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity and began to organize themselves into small kingdoms with organized states. In France, on the other hand, the area around Paris held out as a Roman outpost long past the collapse of the rest of the Western Roman empire, until eventually being absorbed by the Frankish states. The Franks, of all the Germanic tribes, were the most closely allied with the Romans and were Catholic, unlike the other Germanic tribes who were mainly Arian Christians. The Gallo-Romans, although occupied by Germanic tribes, never were replaced or assimilated by them, never abandoned Christianity nor their Romance dialects, and the Franks seem to have maintained many aspects of Roman civilization, most importantly for the history of Western Europe, they maintained a standing army capable of fighting in formation. This allowed them to defeat first the Huns (in alliance with the Roman state that survived in the Paris Region)and then a few centuries later the Moors. So in France you had continuity between the Roman period and the Middle ages, and there was no Dark Ages to the same extent as you had in England.
France had continuity between the Roman period and the Middle Ages??? Really? How interesting. So, tell me, what percentage of writing from the Roman Empire was preserved in France during this period? 100%? No. 50%? No. 10%? Not even that? Was it at least 1% or was it even less? How much of the arts and culture were continued? Almost none? You have a very interesting definition of "continuity." Apparently, your definition of civilization only includes the ability to conduct war. Personally, I think that's very dark.
@gebbletook That's just inaccurate. The real change between the Roman period and the Middle Ages was the loss of a centralised state that can command the resources of basically an entire continent. Christianity cannot really claim to have had that much of an effect, if anything, it probably helped unify the successor states to Rome to a closer extent than would have happened otherwise.
There is evidence of a massive eruption of Krakatau in Indonesia at the time. There is a contemporary account of it in the Pustaka Raja Purwa, the book of ancient kings.
While I agree that climate generally has a deleterious effect on pre-industrial societies to the extent where "collapse" is applicable as a term, it leaves out that falling empires had to have someone to do the falling. This period also sees the rise of numerous states, especially from areas where states did not previously exist or were occupied by proto-states. These entities are normally less reliant on food and water as true-states, such as the Byzantines, Imperial Chinese and Persians were. This is why when Rome collapsed in the 400's it was readily and easily replaced. It's also why the Arabs fared so well after their conquests- they had no need for the giant bureaucracies and largely left people to their own devices, which helps a lot in an agricultural or economic crisis. This is probably also why we see a massive expansion and solidification of the Feudal system in Europe started by Diocletian; the inability of the replacement kingdoms to effect the same economic fortunes meant they had to devolve much of their powers and war-making capacity to a local level, with the continuous dividing of centralized empires into smaller fiefdoms probably preventing true prosperity but also saving the massive expense a new Rome couldn't actually afford in the ecological situation it would be in.
Surely being invaded from all directions -Vikings from the north,Magyars from the east and Arabs from the south played a huge part in causing the decline of western Europe.Concerning the last group of invaders (The Moors and Arabs) the great late fourteenth century north African historian/polymath Ibn Khaldun boasted that the Arabs dominated the Mediterranean Sea so much that the Christians were scarcely able to float a single plank in that sea.
@@ShahjahanMasood Not sure if Ibn Khaldun's works have been translated into English -He wrote a world history called the "Kitabi i'ibari" in many volumes and then thought it necessary to write an introduction to this history which in Arabic is known as "muquddimah" -this latter work is now considered to be a separate work to the world history.Though Tunisian i think IbnKhaldun worked largely in Egypt under the Mameluke rulers who he praises in his works as providing good government.
The Introduction to Ibn Khaldun's work, which stands alone as a sociology text, has been published by the Bolligen Series. Not sure about the rest of it.
There's some convincing arguments that climate change played some sort of role in classical and bronze age collapses. But I think it's overstated. Embedded in the methodology is a sort of presupposition that, unlike medieval or modern states, classical civilizations are inherently/eternally stable. For some reason they are exempt from the economic and class contradictions that have imploded countless states and civilizations in the last millennium.
I agree that there were other factors. Before the climate explanation, one of the leading causal theories involved international trade networks collapsing and that causing a domino impact. As for the stability of ancient societies, they only appear stable in retrospect, but all of the ones that I've studied are constantly subject to political instability. What I like about the climate model is that it finds a factor that would apply relatively equally in some way to all of the civilizations existing at a particular time and doesn't rely too heavily on the analysis of just one or two of them.
Whenever I am reminded of the Vandal Solar Minimum I wonder if that was when Voluspa was written. It’s a bit contrived but it could (could is doing a lot of work) have been seen as an omen of the end times to the Proto-Norse peoples
I love how RUclips attaches the United Nations statement on climate change on this video stating, climate change is caused by human activity… really not the video to argue that, I’m not one to deny our impact on nature in the sense of pollution etc but history shows us climate change is also a natural phenomenon, and can be extreme ie North America being under hundreds of feet of ice, the sahara being a jungle
@@MrDeicide1 you're just being intellectually inert if you assume anybody with a different stance as yours is ignorant on the language that you or they are using
It wasn't necessarily "dark" elsewhere, but it got dimmer in terms of the production of literary sources throughout most of the world due to climatic shifts. If I remember correctly, the New World wasn't really affected in the same way, but it was a global Dark Age for most of the rest of the world.
@gebbletook Yes, having Vikings come down the rivers and take whoever they could grab as slaves was really "doing well". Those Vikings go on to capture Kiev around 900 CE, initially to corral all those slaves they were grabbing more efficiently to take them upriver, collect taxes and tributes, and so on. It's kind of ironic that you reverse-causate the people who took the Rus as slaves as being the same as the slavers who came down into there and developed Kiev into the regional capital it was in the first place. Peak Kievan Rus' was about 300 years after the time you are talking about, maybe watch these vids and learn something.
That would prove that climate is the result of natural cycles and not anthropogenic because there was no industrial activity and human population was much smaller.
Not really. The Earth has cycles, but those cycles correspond to levels of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere. Since human industrial and agricultural activity alter those levels, humans absolutely can accelerate and intensify warming and/or delay or counteract cooling.
@@ThersitestheHistorian I would invite you to watch an excellent documentary from 2007 called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". In it, leading, internationally recognized climatologists demonstrate how variations in climate are more positively correlated with the thermonuclear activity of the Sun(i.e. Sunspots) than the flunctuations in levels of so-called "Greenhouse Gases" (a term from the last century with more political origins than scientific). Increases levels of gases CO2, however microscopic, are the result of natural global warming, not the cause, as the latter gas is both stored in and later emitted by the world's oceans during colder and warmer periods, respectively. This Solar activity or, conversely, the lack thereof can account for the "Mini Ice Age" that occured in Medieval Europe. Concomitantly, I'm confident it could justifiably explain the warming you outlined, that is if we could have reliable astronomical data, regarding Sunspots, from that period as well. Here's a link to the documentary: ruclips.net/video/oYhCQv5tNsQ/видео.html
It's good the environment was able to regulate the size of civilizations before the advent of the industrial/oil age. Too bad it can't do that anymore. The next crash will likely be catastrophic for the whole planet.
which caused which though? Was it harsher living conditions leading to people being more willing to accept mystic answers or the other way around? Certainly you don't believe that worshipping an imaginary god would cause global climate change?
Joe Bussa I feel like you’re projecting onto his comment. He was merely offering an alternate name; though it would only be accurate in Western Europe.
@@jbussa Before Christiniaty people all across Euroasia also worshipped their gods. Collapse of economies and international trade around 400 AD is completely unrelated to rise of any particular religion.
@@OkurkaBinLadin I agree with that statement. I was replying to the guy that said "Dark ages or rise of Christianity" implying that Christianity itself caused the dark age. When we know there was climate change. We know planted fields became forests. None of those things were caused by a religion. Also... That was 2 years ago man. You're lucky I even remember lol.
You really do deserve a MUCH larger viewer and subscriber base.
Thank you! If you share my videos, then my channel will hopefully experience some growth.
I subscribed. To support and to learn...
dude, its fine. Us history junkies are pretty niche crowd. Even more so - fans of long, scientific lectures lol 15k is quite nice
11:08 Vandal Solar Minimum.
Damn Vandals, not only did they sack Rome,
they also broke the sun.
China entered the "dark age" earlier when Easter Han fell in 220, but recovered faster as Tang dynasty in 618. That age isn't that "dark"; tons of stuff happened. (introduction of Buddhism, development of poem and calligraphy etc.) The period 400-900 actually roughly coincides with Chinese economy center moving south (Southern Liang in 502 to Southern Song in 1127), which is probably more heavily influenced by climate change.
Good point. Interestingly, if we look at the latitude of southern China, it coincides with the warmer areas in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Interesting.
one of the main reasons china is so dark is because none of their stuff gets translated to english.
@@levitatingoctahedron922 you mean China right now or back then?
@@linjie1213 right now. we don't even have central documents like the twenty-four histories properly translated to english. despite the wealth of material we don't have 1% of it in accessible form relative to say latin or greek works.
@@levitatingoctahedron922 It seems to be the truth 😕 according to wikipedia, The Records of the Three Kingdoms has not been fully translated into English... I find it hard to believe... On the other hand, now I sort of understand why there is a profound lack of understanding of Chinese tradition.
The byzantines would make a come back about 70 years after the medival warm period
Since I live in Montreal and speak both French and English I'm aware of history from both an Anglo/American and French perspective. The notion of a Dark Age after the fall of Rome is a very Anglo/American idea, which makes sense for the British Isles as Romano-British society seems to have utterly collapsed around the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. The British Isles seem to have reverted to primitive tribalism for a few centuries until the Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity and began to organize themselves into small kingdoms with organized states.
In France, on the other hand, the area around Paris held out as a Roman outpost long past the collapse of the rest of the Western Roman empire, until eventually being absorbed by the Frankish states. The Franks, of all the Germanic tribes, were the most closely allied with the Romans and were Catholic, unlike the other Germanic tribes who were mainly Arian Christians. The Gallo-Romans, although occupied by Germanic tribes, never were replaced or assimilated by them, never abandoned Christianity nor their Romance dialects, and the Franks seem to have maintained many aspects of Roman civilization, most importantly for the history of Western Europe, they maintained a standing army capable of fighting in formation. This allowed them to defeat first the Huns (in alliance with the Roman state that survived in the Paris Region)and then a few centuries later the Moors. So in France you had continuity between the Roman period and the Middle ages, and there was no Dark Ages to the same extent as you had in England.
Not quite true www.metanexus.net/essay/medieval-monasticism-preserver-western-civilization
Thank you for this ...sir..
France had continuity between the Roman period and the Middle Ages??? Really? How interesting. So, tell me, what percentage of writing from the Roman Empire was preserved in France during this period? 100%? No. 50%? No. 10%? Not even that? Was it at least 1% or was it even less? How much of the arts and culture were continued? Almost none? You have a very interesting definition of "continuity." Apparently, your definition of civilization only includes the ability to conduct war. Personally, I think that's very dark.
@kane benjamite go away
@gebbletook That's just inaccurate. The real change between the Roman period and the Middle Ages was the loss of a centralised state that can command the resources of basically an entire continent. Christianity cannot really claim to have had that much of an effect, if anything, it probably helped unify the successor states to Rome to a closer extent than would have happened otherwise.
There is evidence of a massive eruption of Krakatau in Indonesia at the time. There is a contemporary account of it in the Pustaka Raja Purwa, the book of ancient kings.
Eastern rome was still huge and powerfull. Constantinople was one of the biggest cities in the world.
It is quite curious that in practically all books I've read on this period I saw zero reference to climate.
Ya’ain’t read enough, then.
DIVINE JUDGMENT IS THE BEST EXPLANATION FOR RISE AND FALL OF CIVILIZATION
Very interesting, ordered the book. Thanks
While I agree that climate generally has a deleterious effect on pre-industrial societies to the extent where "collapse" is applicable as a term, it leaves out that falling empires had to have someone to do the falling. This period also sees the rise of numerous states, especially from areas where states did not previously exist or were occupied by proto-states. These entities are normally less reliant on food and water as true-states, such as the Byzantines, Imperial Chinese and Persians were. This is why when Rome collapsed in the 400's it was readily and easily replaced. It's also why the Arabs fared so well after their conquests- they had no need for the giant bureaucracies and largely left people to their own devices, which helps a lot in an agricultural or economic crisis.
This is probably also why we see a massive expansion and solidification of the Feudal system in Europe started by Diocletian; the inability of the replacement kingdoms to effect the same economic fortunes meant they had to devolve much of their powers and war-making capacity to a local level, with the continuous dividing of centralized empires into smaller fiefdoms probably preventing true prosperity but also saving the massive expense a new Rome couldn't actually afford in the ecological situation it would be in.
Surely being invaded from all directions -Vikings from the north,Magyars from the east and Arabs from the south played a huge part in causing the decline of western Europe.Concerning the last group of invaders (The Moors and Arabs) the great late fourteenth century north African historian/polymath Ibn Khaldun boasted that the Arabs dominated the Mediterranean Sea so much that the Christians were scarcely able to float a single plank in that sea.
Mate can give me the book name? I really want to read it
@@ShahjahanMasood Not sure if Ibn Khaldun's works have been translated into English -He wrote a world history called the "Kitabi i'ibari" in many volumes and then thought it necessary to write an introduction to this history which in Arabic is known as "muquddimah" -this latter work is now considered to be a separate work to the world history.Though Tunisian i think IbnKhaldun worked largely in Egypt under the Mameluke rulers who he praises in his works as providing good government.
@@kaloarepo288 thanks for replying mate. Even though I am an year late.
The Introduction to Ibn Khaldun's work, which stands alone as a sociology text, has been published by the Bolligen Series. Not sure about the rest of it.
There's some convincing arguments that climate change played some sort of role in classical and bronze age collapses. But I think it's overstated. Embedded in the methodology is a sort of presupposition that, unlike medieval or modern states, classical civilizations are inherently/eternally stable. For some reason they are exempt from the economic and class contradictions that have imploded countless states and civilizations in the last millennium.
I agree that there were other factors. Before the climate explanation, one of the leading causal theories involved international trade networks collapsing and that causing a domino impact. As for the stability of ancient societies, they only appear stable in retrospect, but all of the ones that I've studied are constantly subject to political instability. What I like about the climate model is that it finds a factor that would apply relatively equally in some way to all of the civilizations existing at a particular time and doesn't rely too heavily on the analysis of just one or two of them.
Whenever I am reminded of the Vandal Solar Minimum I wonder if that was when Voluspa was written. It’s a bit contrived but it could (could is doing a lot of work) have been seen as an omen of the end times to the Proto-Norse peoples
Another good video. Well thought out and presented AA++
What about greater availability of metal (iron) weapons as a cause of the Bronze Age Collapse?
Very good video. Thanks for doing it.
Did the Romans have access to portal travel, and if so how did they bypass the portal demon gaurds?
Repeat with me Thersites: Late Antiquity and High Medieval Period. Dark was really in the Bronze Age Collapse.
Love your content!!!
From one side I like this theory, from the other I'm kinda skeptical of the idea of states being that more stable without those climatic events.
it is because modern society is based on agriculture. with climate change agriculture collapses. the nomads take over
Interesting overview. Welsh written history cited comets at 548 and 562 adventing change. Heddwch
Key point being naturally cyclical climate change and not the fantasy of man made climate change.
The early middle ages was a dark age without doubt, but mainly for the English, this is why English historians wrote of it as such.
*all of the lights plays in the background*
4.2 kiloyear event, anyone?
I love how RUclips attaches the United Nations statement on climate change on this video stating, climate change is caused by human activity… really not the video to argue that, I’m not one to deny our impact on nature in the sense of pollution etc but history shows us climate change is also a natural phenomenon, and can be extreme ie North America being under hundreds of feet of ice, the sahara being a jungle
I will continue to use the term Dark Ages, mainly because of the murder of Hypatia.
Nice video. You got my sub
nice history
I don't care about vogue
I'm callin it Dark Ages till French Revolution
thank you very much...
based on what
@@ppaaccoojrf
ideology
@@MrDeicide1 seems like quite an ideological (and dare I say, dogmatic) stance to take
nuance is never a bad thing
@@ppaaccoojrf
I don't think you know what the word means
So... it's just a waste of time talking to you....
@@MrDeicide1 you're just being intellectually inert if you assume anybody with a different stance as yours is ignorant on the language that you or they are using
It wasn't dark ages in India
Dark age began after 1100s
references would be nice :)
I mean I agree with the data, but references would be nice ... I'm trying to persuade youtubers to show their sources
sources are the scientismists version of bible verses. it's just cringe at this point
Chicken eatza?
You mean climate can change without industrial development??? Who would've thought?!😄
If i am not mistaken it was not dark for anyone but western europe.
It wasn't necessarily "dark" elsewhere, but it got dimmer in terms of the production of literary sources throughout most of the world due to climatic shifts. If I remember correctly, the New World wasn't really affected in the same way, but it was a global Dark Age for most of the rest of the world.
@gebbletook Yes, having Vikings come down the rivers and take whoever they could grab as slaves was really "doing well".
Those Vikings go on to capture Kiev around 900 CE, initially to corral all those slaves they were grabbing more efficiently to take them upriver, collect taxes and tributes, and so on.
It's kind of ironic that you reverse-causate the people who took the Rus as slaves as being the same as the slavers who came down into there and developed Kiev into the regional capital it was in the first place.
Peak Kievan Rus' was about 300 years after the time you are talking about, maybe watch these vids and learn something.
That would prove that climate is the result of natural cycles and not anthropogenic because there was no industrial activity and human population was much smaller.
Not really. The Earth has cycles, but those cycles correspond to levels of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere. Since human industrial and agricultural activity alter those levels, humans absolutely can accelerate and intensify warming and/or delay or counteract cooling.
@@ThersitestheHistorian I would invite you to watch an excellent documentary from 2007 called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". In it, leading, internationally recognized climatologists demonstrate how variations in climate are more positively correlated with the thermonuclear activity of the Sun(i.e. Sunspots) than the flunctuations in levels of so-called "Greenhouse Gases" (a term from the last century with more political origins than scientific). Increases levels of gases CO2, however microscopic, are the result of natural global warming, not the cause, as the latter gas is both stored in and later emitted by the world's oceans during colder and warmer periods, respectively.
This Solar activity or, conversely, the lack thereof can account for the "Mini Ice Age" that occured in Medieval Europe. Concomitantly, I'm confident it could justifiably explain the warming you outlined, that is if we could have reliable astronomical data, regarding Sunspots, from that period as well. Here's a link to the documentary: ruclips.net/video/oYhCQv5tNsQ/видео.html
kingdom of eastern WOO lol my kinda place
not global but western dark age because then they are savage then
It's good the environment was able to regulate the size of civilizations before the advent of the industrial/oil age. Too bad it can't do that anymore. The next crash will likely be catastrophic for the whole planet.
They didn’t have a choice when their climate got fucked. We do.
Well, WE don’t but the powerful and affluent do - and they don’t care nearly enough.
Dark age or rise of christianity?
which caused which though? Was it harsher living conditions leading to people being more willing to accept mystic answers or the other way around? Certainly you don't believe that worshipping an imaginary god would cause global climate change?
???
Joe Bussa I feel like you’re projecting onto his comment. He was merely offering an alternate name; though it would only be accurate in Western Europe.
@@jbussa Before Christiniaty people all across Euroasia also worshipped their gods. Collapse of economies and international trade around 400 AD is completely unrelated to rise of any particular religion.
@@OkurkaBinLadin I agree with that statement. I was replying to the guy that said "Dark ages or rise of Christianity" implying that Christianity itself caused the dark age. When we know there was climate change. We know planted fields became forests. None of those things were caused by a religion. Also... That was 2 years ago man. You're lucky I even remember lol.
There is plenty of documentation. Its just that you cant and wont read it.
Very interesting, ordered the book. Thanks