The term Dark Ages has been used to refer to a period in European history when culture supposedly regressed and civilization was in decline.

The idea of a dark ages is one that was prevalent among historians for centuries.

But lately historians have been reconsidering the idea of a dark age and questioning if there was even a dark age at all.

Learn more about the dark ages and if they were really that dark on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The term Dark Ages is one that isn't actually used that much anymore by

academic historians. However, it's one that was used for centuries and one that is still

in colloquial use today. The period, which is referred to as the Dark Ages, can vary, but it usually

refers to the early Middle Ages, which is the centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

There are no exact dates for the Dark Ages, but it is roughly given as the 5th to 10th centuries.

There are some people that may extend it out a few centuries

further. The starting point would be the end of the Western Roman Empire, which is usually

given as 476. This was one the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, advocated.

If you remember back to the very first episode of this podcast that the Roman Empire

didn't actually end in 476.

It only ended in the west.

It kept going for almost a thousand years in the east

using the city of Constantinople as its capital.

And today we call that Eastern Empire, the Byzantine Empire.

Even then, the end of the Western Empire wasn't a sudden thing that happened overnight.

If they had newspapers back then, there never would have been a headline that one day read

Roman Empire collapses. The idea of a dark age actually didn't develop until the 14th century

with the Italian scholar Petrarch. The 13th and 14th centuries saw a rediscovery of classical authors

and a renewed respect for the classical Greek and Roman periods.

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