The End of the Roman Empire Wasn’t That Bad
I realize I don&#x27;t have the chops to argue against a professional historian, but here&#x27;s what I&#x27;m seeing:<p>The period after the fall of the Roman Empire is often called &quot;The Dark Ages,&quot; though a lot of revisionists try to make us think this wasn&#x27;t nearly as ominous as it sounds. OK, we know that time wasn&#x27;t called &quot;dark&quot; because the Sun failed to shine; it&#x27;s called &quot;dark&quot; because we have a dearth of historical information about it.<p>What does this tell us? The Greco-Roman civilization produced truckloads of books on all topics of interest; there were libraries both public and private, and schools to support general literacy, often bilingual, among the upper class, at least. A good part of the literature from that age survived the multiple sackings and burnings of Rome, etc.<p>In the Dark Ages, on the other hand, literacy was heavily monopolized by the clergy, and a preponderance of new books dealt with theology. It&#x27;s a period where even many kings signed an &quot;X&quot; for their names. A period where intellectual energy went into religious ruminations and little else. A period of intellectual barbarism, in other words. A thousand years of barely any scientific progress.<p>In another top-level comment, user &quot;causality1&quot; mentions a large handful of side effects of this intellectual decline, including decreases in population, life expectancy, trade, infrastructure and technology. Unlike the author, I believe a decline in a whole slew of markers of societal functionality is bad indeed.