I don't know. With the cognitive relativism of our times, we want to make sure each civilisation, and each of its ages, are "equal". They certainly can be equally interesting for studies, but if we take a simple way to measure its effect on the human race by checking out how many books that are still read today have been written during these periods, you'll see that ancient Greece and Rome (and ancient China, and French enligthment) have been periods of great fertility, while for the normally educated man it is hard to find more than 2 or 3 books from the Middle Age that are still read and having influence nowadays.

So, at least following a few similar criteria, the Dark Ages were "dark". And it is not very surprising: when all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates, you get very few results.

I don't know what a previous poster meant by mentioning Augustine and Aqunas and then saying "the morality developed during that period" (Augustine 4th century BC, Aquinas 13th century). The truth is that Augustine was especially heavily influenced by Plato and Aquinas' entire philosophy was mostly an attempt to synthesize Aristotle with Christianity. There is a tendency by some Christians to think morality somehow can't exist without God, but the truth is otherwise. The Greeks certainly had well-developed modern morality, along with brilliant moral theory. And the reality is that most of the important advancements in morality have come from "liberal", often secular, thinkers, while Christianity (and other religions) get pulled upward from old barbarisms only while kicking and screaming.

Any references for this? I find it highly doubtful.

The Greek philosophy was universal in that it applied to anyone who was a "person". I don't think that's different from any morality that's followed, it's just that the "universe" has always been limited, e.g., in U.S. rights were created universally for "all men", but that didn't originally include women or slaves.

Pretty much every philosopher is influenced by the great philosophers who came before them. If you look at philosophical (or indeed scientific) work today, it is no less under the influence of previous work. Augustine and Aquinas were very original in many respects, but they quite rightly built on the best philosophical ideas that they knew of rather than starting from scratch just for the sake of it.

He died in 430 AD, 20 years after the sack of Rome by Visigoths. Pretty much what people call the beginning of medieval period.

Lots and lots of innovation was done during Middle Ages, as was interesting philosophy. Ancient Rome and Greece get the attention because they are the oldest stuff that is somewhat preserved, not because they would not have been surpassed in the following centuries.

First of all, medieval builders constructed churches and palaces that were bigger and higher than ancient ones. That's what Gothic architecture is all about (even though the name "Gothic" is a later pejorative). This was possible because of new innovations in structure of arches etc.

They were also able to construct these buildings with real windows, which was not actually the case in ancient times. (For instance, look at Pantheon: ancient, and quite big and impressive, but no windows, just the oculus at top).

For construction tools, medieval times came up with e.g. the wheelbarrow (although this was independently developed in China much earlier) and various types of cranes.

If we look at politics, law and economics, well, medieval politics was sophisticated in many ways and I cannot see why we should call it regression. As I wrote in another comment, during Middle Ages the development achieved, for instance, abolition of slavery and things like Magna Carta. As well as the start of merchant banking and foreign exchange contracts.

And many of our well-known poetic legends are medieval: Roland's Song, Carmina Burana, The Canterbury Tales, the Divine Comedy, Beowulf, and if you go to religious arts, people like St. Francis.

Edit: regarding sculpture, I'd imagine that the Greek had easy access to sculptable stone materials that medieval Central Europeans had less so. There's even less stone sculpture in northern Europe where the bedrock is granite and it takes absolutely modern tools to sculpt them.

You can keep on going down the list. Medieval poetry and literature developed extensively into forms we take for granted within our modern culture. The ideas of chivalry, nobility, and courtly love are so deeply ingrained within our society that we take them for granted.

As for architecture? Come on! Take a look at Aachen Cathedral[0] (built in 800 AD) and tell me that's a "regression" compared to the Romans.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Aachen_C...

What's great about this sentence is how it brings the whole narrative full circle, back to fascism and Germany.

The Papacy in the middle ages was basically a fascist institution - ridiculing and condemning anyone that didn't agree with it.

But it wasn't till the 16th century that a German named Martin Luther dealt that fascist regime a serious blow by nailing some thoughts to a Cathedral door.

Luther wasn't the first to have those thoughts, though. He was simply the first credible mind to have those thoughts outside the sphere of influence of the Pope. The German politics Luther lived under enabled him to contradict the Papacy without fear of punishment.

In Europe perhaps, but there's a whole world out there.

The Dark Ages weren't "dark" in the sense that many understand them, but they were a period of fragmented power, small empires, and warring dynasties - much as much of the Roman period was, but the fact that their structure disintegrated is undeniable.

In their case, it all tied back to lines of communication and an increasingly inefficient taxation system, which lead to declining revenues for Rome, rot at the fringes, and eventual atomisation.

The 'dark ages' witnessed the high mark of Western Christendom, which had its own fascinating form of 'international' unity and an impressive legacy of achievements, and it certainly shaped modern Europe. I mean, I think everyone knows that 'Dark ages' is a made up label from centuries ago during the Enlightenment era.

Either way, neither of those labels are endorsed by any serious modern historian as far as I know.

And quite a number of low marks in terms of industrial production, technical knowledge, public health, collective wealth, individual freedoms and so on. In fact, without the rising Arab civilization undertaking huge efforts to acquire and preserve what the Western countries were discarding as "unchristian", we would have lost even more knowledge than we did.

There are so many reasons the "dark" attribute stuck and survived for almost 700 years (it wasn't an Enlightenment construct but rather a Renaissance one, although technically coined even earlier). It might be too generic a term to survive the contemporary level of analytical debate of history, but ignoring it would be a disservice to the cause of science and progress.

What makes you claim this? The growth of population, economy and individual freedoms continued through the Middle Ages. Ancient Rome was not a particularly "civilized" place if you look at it by, say, medieval English standards.

And lots of technical innovations were made during Middle Ages (both through interaction with Middle East and Asia, and through independent development). Technical knowledge accumulated. Public health learned some lessons - yes, some of those very slowly, it took 200 years to fully recover form the Black Death - but the population and economy grew, except for this plague anomaly which the ancient civilizations would hardly have handled any better.

Throughout Middle Ages, agricultural output grew and new tools were brought in and new crops were introduced, as well as crop rotation in farming (from just farming to fallowing and then to three-field rotation).

New scripts were developed, e.g. Carolingian minuscule enabled faster writing and producing of books (prior to the printing press which is seen as the starting point of Renaissance but was developed by medieval people).

Regarding individual freedoms: slavery, common in ancient civilizations, was largely abolished in Europe during medieval times. Magna Carta is clearly a medieval document.

Medieval times were not dark. Development was not as fast as later on, but it existed, almost continuously, with some (mostly local) setbacks.

One of the odd things about the fascination with Greece and Rome as the basis of all civilization (ahem) is the failure to understand how alien those civilizations were.

Not to discount the advancements of Arab world during this time period, but this is not an either/or thing and is much, much more complex than you are portraying it. Large amounts of knowledge were actually preserved by the church (mostly in monasteries) and the parallel church structure set up during the latter periods of the Western Roman empire helped cushion the decline of the West as Rome shifted East.

The "Dark Ages" were not dark (which is why historians have almost universally quit using that term in favor of "Middle Ages") and are a very complex and interesting time period.

I highly recommend Dan Carlin's excellent Hardcore History episode "Thor's Angels" [0]. He spends four hours talking about just this very specific period (what happened in Europe when Rome declined), and spends lots of time talking about the church's role in stabilizing what could have been a whole lot worse.

[0] http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-41-thors-a...

Actually, the idea comes from Petrarch, who was a late Mediaeval writer who was upset at the disrespect paid to ancient Latin and Greek literature and culture during the Migration and Mediaeval periods. Of course, Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment intellectuals all picked up on the idea for their own reasons.

It is a historic fact that Constantine the Great moved the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 to Constantinople, where it remained the center of the Empire for the next 1100 years.

To be more precise in Nova Roma or Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) and this since the 11th May 330.

It remained the center of the Roman empire until 1453, this was long after the Roman culture in the west was almost completely destroyed. (and with it western Christianity turned into a tool of oppression)

So while the West during these times faced oppression and feudalism, the Roman empire certainly did not.

The term "dark" should not be used, as it still much too frequently is, as some negative value judgment that covers a thousand year period which encompassed hundreds of different societies and cultures spanning an entire continent.

It is understandable why people think this way, since European history (at least in the United States and Canada) is still largely taught in a way that skims over the Middle Ages: check out how awesome Greece and Rome were, then, well, the Middle Ages when they had these grand churches, but who cares because then came the Renaissance when everything was cool again.

I've taught European Medieval history survey courses at the university level and one of the most difficult challenges was getting this idea of a horrible "dark" age dispelled from the students' minds. This is not to say that everything was somehow great or that all ages are "equal" in "value" (whatever that really means), but you can not begin to study a period of history without facing your own preconceptions of it (and, really, your own society).

Summary is that though Rome didn't fall overnight, there was a massive economic collapse first in the west and then several centuries later in the east (the latter coming on the heals of a devastating outbreak of the plague).