When were they and what caused them to be dark?
There was no electricity at the time. Once Edison invented the light bulb, then things got much better.
It was the time when science and knowledge were abandoned and superstition reigned. Lots of bad conditions (poverty, disease, etc.) and no progress. I’m sure someone here can provide the approx. dates (I’m thinking it was circa 500-1400 AD?)
A nasty time cured by the Renaissance.
question - was this just a European thing or did it occur elsewhere too?
Though I’m not a history buff I always thought it covered the period from the fall of the Roman empire to the middle ages. In Britain that’s about 410 ad up until 1066 when the Saxons were defeated by the Normans.
The “Dark Ages” was the name given by the people of the Renaissance era to the period in Western Europe after the Fall of Rome in 456 (436?).
After Constantine moved the political and cultural center of the Roman Empire to Byzantium/Constantinople/(current Istanbul) in the fourth century, the power in Rome, itself, dwindled over the next 100 years or so. When Rome was finally thrown down as a viable power in the mid-fifth century, the Roman legions no longer defended the cities and highways that they had built. Indigenous people rose up to reclaim their own lands, often with chaotic results. At the same time, the successive migrations of peoples out of Asia (Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Huns, etc.) overwhelmed whatever governments had survived the retreat of Rome. There was no longer any infrastructure to impose the sort of order needed to maintain roads, trade, mail, sanitary water supplies, etc. In that chaos, cities were destroyed by invaders and never rebuilt to Roman standards. With warfare a constant, more people had to eke out their own living while defending their homes or villages from marauders.
Under those conditions, there were no longer opportunities for people to go to schools, write poetry or drama, ponder philosophy, or any of the other activities that people look on as the marks of an “enlightened” culture.
When Western Europe had pretty well recovered from those problems (about 1,000 years later), the artists and writers of that period looked back to the glory of Rome and named the intervening period the “dark ages.” (Similarly, they named their own era the Renaissance, or Rebirth.)
There is a fair amount of validity to those depictions, although as scholarship moves forward without the prejudices of the Renaissance mindset, we know that there was not 1,000 years of darkness. Europe began rebuilding its knowledge base and culture almost as soon as the Asian invasions tapered off. On the other hand, comparing sixth century Europe to either third century or fifteenth century Europe, it is clear that there was truly a dark period during which it was neither physically nor esthetically pleasant to live.
One could argue that it is still happening in some places. For example, look at the horrors that were revealed when Rumania (is this the right spelling?) got rid of its oppressive dictatorship.
I will point out that much of the “time of surperstition” label attached to the dark ages is Renaissance propaganda. There was superstition, to be sure. (And if your view is that all religion is superstition, it was certainly true–but it would have been equally true of Pagan Rome or the Christian Renaissance.)
The period included a number of scientific and engineering developments (especially in agriculture and in the development of wind and water mills) that were glossed over by the Renaissance scholars in their desire to portray the preceding eras as badly as possible in order to make their own era seem more glorious. Later education has tended to accept the word of the Renaissance writers uncritically, failing to note that the foundations of everything that sprang forth in the Renaissance were established during the prior centuries.
But isn’t it true that there isn’t much of an historical record from this era? Very little literature of any kind. Why?
And wasn’t this one of the only times in history that an invading group didn’t incorporate the art and advancements from the invaded society into their own culture.
Again, why?
They did manage to build a few cathedrals which are quite impressive.
The dark ages were strictly in Europe. The Arabs had a very flourishing culture and much of the old Egyptian, greek and roman culture has come to us through them. Without them it would have been lost.
Not to mention China and other places where what happened in Europe had zero influence there.
Because there were so many knights…
Bad Joke number 376…
I’m sorry… 
Milossarian wrote:
[quote]
And wasn’t this one of the only times in history that an invading group didn’t incorporate the art and advancements from the invaded society into their own culture.[/paste]
They did incorporate much of what had lasted up until that point. The problem was that the western part of the Empire had seriously deteriorated before the barbarian invasions, from various causes (probably why the invasions succeeded in the first place). Civil wars had destroyed much of the infrastructure. Population had fallen because of mass epidemics such as the first wave of smallpox in the west- before Europeans had developed any kind of resistence to it. Because of the unrest and population loss urban areas, the centers for learning and culture, drastically shrunk in western Europe. The chaos caused by the barbarian invasions, compounded by more epidemics- bubonic plague first appeared in Europe ca. 540, continued the trend.
In answer to the OP, the Dark Ages are not precisely defined but generally refer to the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to about the end of the Viking invasions, c. 1000. Someone historians end them even earlier, at the accession of Charlemagne, c. 800. While very often they are popularly considered to be equivalent to the Middle Ages, lasting all the way to the Renaissance, that is not usually how historicans define them.
Milo, your post reminded me of that book, maybe a couple of years old with a title like: “How the Irish Saved Civilization” sound familiar? The book (and others) claim that while all centers of higher learning and books and whatever were lost in the dark ages in Europe, they were preserved in Ireland VIA the church?
I know this is vague but maybe someone will recall the rest!
Sorry for the messed up quote end. That’s the second time I’ve done that in 3 days- I guess its time to start looking at assisted living facilities 
The dark ages (5th to 11th century) are generally the time between the “Empire” age of Europe, when everything was rules by Rome, and the “Nation State” era, when governments of “the people” developed over governments of “land.” Generally, during the Dark Ages, Kings ruled lands not because they were populated by a people they shared a culture and language with, but rather because it was their right, either through heredity or war, to rule a certain chunk of land. The transition from Dark ages to Renaissance was marked politically by teh transition from King as ruler of land to King as representative of his people. During the dark ages it was not a given that the English people be ruled by a single King in Westminster, nor the French by a King in Paris, etcetera.
Actually, there was quite a bit of literature from that period. There was far less than there had been during the Roman period, as many of the invading peoples did not have a written language. However, there was still a good deal of literature produced. Unfortunately, it was written in a wide variety of now-forgotten languages. One of the prejudices of the Renaissance scholars was to define culture strictly in terms of Latin or Greek. (There was a somewhat grudging acceptance of works in more nearly “modern” (to them) languages, such as the works of Dante, but they dismissed as worthless works written in the various Gothic and proto-French or proto-German languages.)
And, of course, any number of stories would have been lost when the original documents were scraped to free up the parchment for a “more important” later work–especially if the original was not deemed worthwhile.
In addition, with few copyists around, not many copies of any work were made, so any time a monestary burned (through vandalism or accident) any unique manuscript was lost.
Well, while WESTERN Europe was a tad dark (not as bad as usually portrayed), remember that in Byzantium things were still very good, and there were brief periods of renaissance in the west, usually associated with close ties to Constantinople (like the Carolingian/ Ottonian times-- earlier versions of “the” Renaissance) and contact with the Arabs, who were keeping a lot of the older Greek information alive. Within the subculture of the church things were pretty lively, too. Don’t forget about Thomas Aquinas, Abelard, scholasticism and other 12th century developments (the “gothic renaissance” is usually overlooked). I’d say the real ‘dark’ ages more or less and around 800, with the Franks, and things really pick up around 1100.
Good point. One example is that a lot of astronomy info was preserved by Arab cultures (and many stars have Arabic names).
Jois - yep, another good example.
Basicallly all of the written documents from the Dark Ages come from the Cristian monestaries that were the only remaining bits of true civilization for almost a century. After that, they still were the only centres of learning in all of Europe.
One arguement I’m fond of about the Dark ages, is that you can, if you like, trace the rebirth of civilization in the west to the Crusades. Right, tho they didn’t accomplish much for Europeans (Or Arabs, who discovered Full Plate looks stupid, but protects really well), they did wonders for the people who came along and started translating works from Arabic into English/French/Latin/whatever. This is where the Zero, algebra, underwear (one of my favorite inventions) and astronomy come from. It also pulled Europe out of it’s isolation and prodded it to catch up with the rest of the world, which it did with a vengance.
Quoth Phobos: “One example is that a lot of astronomy info was preserved by Arab cultures (and many stars have Arabic names).”
This particular point can not be stressed enough.