Rhaedas

Throw in some geologic science here.

Were the Dark Ages Triggered by Volcano-Related Climate Changes in the 6th Century?

Didn't help things a lot.

Catherine Bain

Things were pretty dark for many at the time of the Roman expansion.

The Roman historian Tacitus described this in the famous phrase:-They make a desert and call it peace which he ascribes to the Scottish leader Calgacus.

In what is now the county of Norfolk genocide was perpetrated on the Iceni after the defeat of their queen Boudica.

I've just been reading a local Natury History book which notes the decline in grasses and increase in woodland following the Roman advances in south east Scotland. Good for the wildlife maybe, but an indicator of reduced farming and presumably population at that time.

Antipope Innocent II

Ummm, that's overstating things by a very, very long chalk. It was published way back in 1956 to begin with, and there's been decades of excellent work done since then.

RareBird

:boohoo:

Janus

Honest question to those of you who are more versed in history than me (which is pretty much everyone): As a layman, how do you know which historian has got it right?

In the hard sciences, all one usually has to do is wait long enough for a consensus to emerge. It's also not too difficult for laymen to get a fairly accurate idea of how conclusive the evidence is that a certain theory is true. If there is lots of conclusive evidence, and there has been a consensus for a few decades, one can be pretty certain that the theory is right.

But what about history? It looks as though the various "interpretations" of history pop up in a way that's more dictated by fashion than by evidence. What can I do short of reading everything there is about a subject and making up my own mind?

Antipope Innocent II

Read overviews of a period or subject to work out what the major differing positions or interpretations on it are and then track down the scholars acknowledged to be the leading proponents of those differing views and read their works. Then read some more. And some more. Then make up your own mind. And be prepared to change it.

It doesn't work the way the hard sciences work, but it still works. And don't believe this post-modern crap that there is no truth and so you can believe whatever the hell you like.

No Robots

Don't go for the gushing hyperbole, eh? I was the director of research for a multi-volume general history of Christianity, and I had no expertise in history at all (it's a long story). Finding this book was a godsend. Here I had all the major events of the Middle Ages contextualized by a master historian. I just put up my feet and relaxed.

Ya liked that, eh? Here's my fave:

I shudder when I think of the catastrophes of our time. For twenty years and more the blood of Romans has been shed daily between Constantinople and the Julian Alps. Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, the Pannonias—each and all of these have been sacked and pillaged and plundered by Goths and Sarmatians, Quades and Alans, Huns and Vandals and Marchmen. How many of God’s matrons and virgins, virtuous and noble ladies, have been made the sport of these brutes! Bishops have been made captive, priests and those in minor orders have been put to death. Churches have been overthrown, horses have been stalled by the altars of Christ, the relics of martyrs have been dug up.

Mourning and fear abound on every side
And death appears in countless shapes and forms. [Virg. A. ii. 369.]

The Roman world is falling: yet we hold up our heads instead of bowing them. What courage, think you, have the Corinthians now, or the Athenians or the Lacedæmonians or the Arcadians, or any of the Greeks over whom the barbarians bear sway? I have mentioned only a few cities, but these once the capitals of no mean states. The East, it is true, seemed to be safe from all such evils: and if men were panic-stricken here, it was only because of bad news from other parts. But lo! in the year just gone by the wolves (no longer of Arabia but of the whole North) [i.e. the Huns have taken the place of the Chaldæans described in Hab. i. 8, LXX.] were let loose upon us from the remotest fastnesses of Caucasus and in a short time overran these great provinces. What a number of monasteries they captured! What many rivers they caused to run red with blood! They laid siege to Antioch and invested other cities on the Halys, the Cydnus, the Orontes, and the Euphrates. They carried off troops of captives. Arabia, Phenicia, Palestine and Egypt, in their terror fancied themselves already enslaved.

Had I a hundred tongues, a hundred lips,
A throat of iron and a chest of brass,
I could not tell men’s countless sufferings. [Virg. A. vi. 625–7.]

Jerome

Catherine Bain

Just this morning I've got hold of a book I've long wanted: The Illustrated History of the Countryside by Oliver Rackham. A renowned botanist, his speciality is landscape history: he takes to task "experts" who rely too fully on possibly biased written records without taking other evidence into account: "to rely on documents cuts one off from ever knowing what was going on at times when people were not writing"

David B

I have a very interesting couple of documentaries on dvd that suggests that Britain was far from dark in the period following the Roman's leaving, for a couple of hundred years, anyway.

The evidence presented there, from a variety of sources, seemed convincing to me.

However, the 6th century tree ring was far bigger than that associated with Tambora in 1815 - and that caused problems enough.

http://www.physicsforums.com/archive...p/t-90232.html

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

David B

jeffevnz

When you read about Roman history it strikes you just how similar their society was to what we have today. Literacy, law and order, a professional army, infrastructure, an elaborate civil service providing everything from mail delivery to sewage disposal, a highly developed economy with coined money and specialized professions, large population concentrated in the cities... They had all of that 2000 years ago. And when the Western Empire collapsed, it all disappeared overnight. People become illiterate and go back to subsistence farming. Bridges and roads cease to be maintained. Money goes out of circulation. Armies are replaced by bands of mercenaries. The system of government devolves from a highly developed bureaucracy into primitive tribal crap...

In the 5th and 6th centuries, you have an almost total historical blackout for Western Europe. The handful of surviving documents, such as the Groans of the Britons, are written from a terrified point of view and describe society coming apart. It's not until the barbarian migrations settle down around 700 that the lights turn on again, though very dimly. You start to have a few, scattered writers who give us some idea of what's going on, but at that point it's not pretty. It's more or less a bunch of cavemen clubbing each other over the head. Society takes several centuries to recover.

No, there was definitely a dark age.


And whatever the reason the Western Empire fell, it's just as well it fell when it did. No way it would have survived the plague and the Muslims. It was just too old and corrupt, and there was too much pressure on it already.