What If?

[tlclark]

So the idea that the fall of the Empire and the ‘Dark Age’ fragmentation that followed retarded technology is a bit too simplistic. In fact, it seems to have stimulated it substantially.

Brilliant post! and dead on.

I'm always having to remind my students that no one woke up one day and said..."I'm living in the Middle Ages/Dark Ages!" In fact, quite the opposite. In fact when speaking of Gothic Architecture, it's important to remember that it was applied by Vasari in his Ars Technica as a slur against Northern European arts "invading" Italy a second time. The term used by N. Europeans to describe Gothic was "Lavori Moderni" or the "Modern Work".

What defines the middle ages as "dark" in the view of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment (who coined the terms as perjorative) was the lack of central authority, and the degradation of classical institutions, such as art and architecture. We now know that Roman Arts had been moving towards the mannerist, primitive and linear LONG before the 'Fall of Rome'. You can't blame the Barbarians for the change it art. The Romans simply changed styles and had no impetus to return to the historical style.

Likewise its important to remember that almost all of the cultural institutions of the Roman Empire continue, unabated, in the Byzantine Empire, who consciously thought of themselves as 'Roman' right up until May 20 1453!!

Crop rotation, the plowshare with throwboard, the windmill, the perfection of steel and smelting furnaces, the creation of genuine coordinate map systems, improvements of all types in textiles, tanning, weaving, BUTTONS, and many others are all innovations of the middle ages, and modern democracy owes as much to the markets and Rathhauses of N. Europe as it does to the ancient Greeks.

In fact, feudalism is not an invention of the Medieval world, but the late Roman one. By the end of the Middle Ages, feudalism was under assault by market forces.

Similarily, the degradations of sanitation/roads and other public works was not due to a loss of economic means or technical ability, or else we wouldn't have the cathedrals of Europe. Rather it was a lack of coherent state-wide authority (and at times I wouldn't mind a little less gov't authority in my own backyard)

There is a clear reduction in economic activity between the 5th C - 10th C. but we have to view these as "Crisis" centuries that included, amongst other things, the arrival of the black plague, a drop in the water levels of the mediterranean that closes many portages, massive migrations of steppe peoples, the Persian invasions, the Muslim Invasions, the Iconoclasm and a host of other social problems that would have just as easily sunk the empire had they happened in the 2nd C.

It was not a 'dark' age unless you define 'dark' to mean the lack of the resources and order of empires and classical art.

Anyway, great post.

Travis