What exactly is the "dark ages" in European history?

Question

What was going on during this time and why is it so hidden.

Answer 1

The dark ages as everybody said was from 500-1000 A.D. (ACE) It is called this because after the Roman Empire fall, my german ancestors took over what was the Western part of the Roman empire. By these two things happening, everything of knowledge was lost for almost five hundred years.(No medicine, law, art, u name it its all gone) Basically this is when the feudal era starts with kings, knights, squires, fiefs. There are a couple of important kingdoms, one is the Goths, another is Charlemagne, and then the Vikings. The Goths are the French who defied the Huns they begin what is known as Gual or the beginning of France as a country. Charlemagne has a empire from the 700's til his death about 830 AD. By then his three sons destroy the empire and France is established by then. The Vikings start attacking by the late 900's and start taking lands over which scrae the living daylights of the Europeans. The Moors they establish Muslim influence from Morrocco and they take over Spain and Portugal. Other than that you had plenty of diseades, the black death, mumps, measles, rubella, polio, small poxs,etc... Live in a kingdom was ordinary life, had a status quo of who you were and who u can marry. the death rate was at 30-40 years old. Other than that the knights were all for chivalry, dimsels in trouble and fighting for the lord or king. There was some art in this period but it was very gothic type, this kind of architecture/art becomes popular by the 900's-1400's when cathedrals become important. Other than that thats the dark ages in a nut shell.

Answer 2

there are 2 periods in European history called the Dark ages. One is at the end of Bronze age Greece and the rise of the Iron age and the other is what we more correctly refer to as the Early Middle Ages. This starts with the the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the end date varies depending on your nationality but in Anglo centric history it is usually the Battle of Hastings in 1066...
It is a pretty artificial term and it is tied up with a great many misconceptions mostly coming from Victorian times. This is why modern historians avoid the term. It was not the end of enlightenment, learning and civilised behavior that some would (or used to) suggest. In fact, it has been argued that much that is great about western civilisation came out of these times; for example Germanic Tribal law is the foundation of much modern law.

Answer 3

to boil it down and not give some answer copied and pasted, the dark ages occurred, this explained by saying that when Rome fell the world regressed back 200 years losing alot of knowledge. when the roman empire fell for the last time, Europe started using a principality system, having many small kingdoms all through-out Europe. The other "dark part" about the dark ages, was the many plagues coming through Europe, the biggest being the "black death" or bubonic plague, which killed like a third or half of the population, I'm not exactly sure about the percentage.

Answer 4

In the wake of the destruction of the Roman Empire, the Dark ages were a time of upheavel in Europe.

This time is often called the migration era, because this period was subject to frequent, often brutal, mass migrations.

Migrations in history were nothing new at the time. The Hebrew migration in the bible was a famous one. Caesar wrote in detail about Gallic migrations. The Quadi and Macromanni attempted to migrate during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. But by late antiquity, the game had changed.

Wealth had poured across the porous Roman frontier, both in trade, and conquest, both as Germans working as mercenaries and as booty collected from raids. This allowed for confederates of tribes to reach truly massive sizes, sizes that were certainly able to compete with the enfeebled Roman Empire. The Goths and Franks were two early migrators, who actually mobilized while the Roman Empire was still in existence, in the 4th and 5th centuries. By the 5th century, the Roman Empire was more a confederation of German tribes than an empire united under a single central authority.

Going into the migration era, after the fall of the Empire, you had the Lombards who migrated into Italy, the Slavs who migrated into the Balkans and Eastern Europe, The moors who migrated into Spain (which had already had visigoths, which had been mingling with native hispanics) and the Arabs who migrated into the Middle East.

This pattern of migration continued (with each movement often causing devastation in its wake) until the last of the migrations, the viking migration, around 1000 A.D. This is generally the dividing point between the migration era and the middle ages, though another potential candidate date was Christmas day, 800 A.D, when Charlemagne was crowned Emperor by the Pope. By 800 A.D, most of Europe had calmed down, and life was peaceful, albiet primitive.

Answer 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_ages

In European historiography, the term Dark Ages or Dark Age refers to the Early Middle Ages, the period encompassing (roughly) 476 AD to 1000 AD. This concept of a dark age was created by the Italian scholar Francesco Petrarca and was originally intended as a sweeping criticism of the character of Late Latin literature. Later historians expanded the term to refer to the transitional period between Classical Roman Antiquity and the High Middle Ages, including not only the lack of Latin literature, but also a lack of contemporary written history, general demographic decline, limited building activity and material cultural achievements in general (for example, as shown in the impoverishment of a number of technologies, eg. in pottery). Popular culture has further expanded on the term as a vehicle to depict the Middle Ages as a time of backwardness, extending its pejorative use and expanding its scope. The rise of archaeology and other specialties in the 20th century has shed much light on the period and offered a more nuanced understanding of its positive developments. Other terms of periodization have come to the fore: Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages, and the Great Migrations, depending on which aspects of culture are being emphasized.

Answer 6

Zina Rae has the erudite academic answer - well put. I would add that the lack of surviving writing from this time period in European history was related in some measure to Viking raids starting near 800 CE and continuing through 1000 CE. Norsemen liked to attack monasteries. There was loot there and the monks did not put up much of a fighting resistance. The monks had the time and education to write. Norsemen had no use for writing, so much of it was burned. History
(rather than archeology) depends on written accounts surviving

Answer 7

Not a lot in the way of the arts was going on at this time. There wasn't a great deal of growth and development occurring in Europe during the dark ages. Also, the bubonic plague devastated Europe (also Asia and the Mid East) at this time, which mostly contributed to this stagnate period in history. Since it wiped out the population in many regions by as much as half, the people were focusing primarily on what this disease was and how to stop it.

Answer 8

It took place from 476 AD-1000 AD. This time was also called the Early Middle Ages. There were very limited cultural achievements. Ignorance, barbarism, belief in superstitions, lack of Christianity and lack of written history really kept these people in the dark.

Answer 9

They were called the dark ages because there was no intellectual or scientific development. The knowledge of the Greeks and Romans was lost and had yet to be rediscovered.

Answer 10

also known as the islamic golden age.