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Archives

Archive 1: Feb 2003 - Sept 9, 2008

The Discussion

I'd rather support the way the current article is written.

• There is only one recent book that uses the term, and even that use is quite special; critics, please, please, please provide us all with more recent books and articles that use the term seriously:

In addition, Perkins has said forthright, that the term Dark Ages is problematic. Even he doesn't take it seriously. He uses it by convention, in large part (I think) to appeal to a popular non-specialists audience, because the metaphor is so powerful, it churns up interest in the period. So he sort of uses it, then apologizes for it at the same time. BTW see the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Dark Ages (in the External Links). It takes the exact approach this article does. This article is standard mainstream, nothing wrong with the framing or approach. The problem really is readers who are so dead-set that the Dark Ages are real, they can't see past it as being just a metaphor, and so get upset when this article debunks a cherished myth. Fothergill Volkensniff IV (talk) 17:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

• It is absolutely inappropriate to use pejorative terms when speaking about fellow editors on these talk pages. In particular, I wouldn't support those who blame the professional medievalists using highly emotional words like "historiorectumy" (User:MartinDuffy). After all, those are people who bring in the primary facts you want to get, and nobody else.
• The point of those who blame deconstructionist approach of Doric and others is understandable. This approach clearly has (some) downsides, but it's inevitable. Misplaced Pages is a deconstructionist project, as it says: "no original research". This is a trap. When I write about Dark Ages, I need to use existing works only; but when I've written a good overview of these works, it turns out that what I did is original research on these books. But we should go on, and work around this trap, provide both the facts and the discussion - the question is: where and in what articles?

But whatever we decide, there is one point I insist on:

• The existing work of Doric and others should not be destroyed. Other points of view are welcome, but no destruction, please!

Michael Grinberg (talk) 08:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Archives and move

Where have the archives gone? Have they been lost in this move? Otherwise, (OK, restored) I can't see the move has been discussed, & it seems a bad idea to me. We are never going to have a main period article called "Dark Ages". I havew proposed a merge of the new Dark Ages with Early Middle Ages as a preliminary to restoring the previous title. Please comment at Talk:Early_Middle_Ages#Merge_with_POV_fork_Dark_Ages. Johnbod (talk) 02:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the move as justified given that Early Middle Ages covers the history already and was linked at the top of the old Dark Ages (and current Historiography of...) article. I wonder why some people are so attached to the expression as a description/name for the times.--Boffob (talk) 04:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I undid the move, as it had been done without any discussion. I don't necessarily disagree with the result, but consensus has to be gathered before we do anything as major as that. But whatever happens, we don't need an article titled Dark Ages to discuss the historical era, we already have that.--Cúchullain /c 15:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Too lazy to do it myself, but it needed doing. Angus McLellan (Talk) 16:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I can't imagine how this could have been seen as an uncontroversial move.--Cúchullain /c 19:47, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that history should be covered in Early Middle Ages, the historiographical overview should be here (Dark Ages). So I agree. Or at least the Dark Ages could be a disambig page pointing to 1) History (Early Middle Age) 2) Somewhat alternative (Dark Ages) 3) Historiography (Dark Ages in History). But it's better just to keep the status quo, cos I don't know any modern medievalist who uses the term seriously, without quotes. Michael Grinberg (talk) 20:08, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

That's how I feel. I wouldn't mind if Dark Ages was a disambiguation page and this one was moved, but "Dark Ages" can't be an article on the actual time period when we already have articles on that very thing. And we certainly can't just move it without discussion.--Cúchullain /c 21:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is a problem with the current situation. Johnbod (talk) 22:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Much scholarly discussion here whether a layperson actually means Middle Ages when they search Misplaced Pages for Dark Ages. You need to step outside for some air, talk with some regular people, and realize there is a very specific meaning when regular people use the term Dark Ages. This article seems to defend the Dark Ages as not all that bad, and many times attempts to correct misconceptions about the Church during this time period. Admittedly, this biased slant was much worse a year ago, when this article claimed the Dark Ages were so called only because of lack of illumination. In short, the common use of the term Dark Ages should be explained in this article, with links to clarification articles as necessary. Thank you for not letting this article get scrubbed clean by those seeking to polish the image of their religion. --WikiObserver, 05:41, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem with the "duplication" argument is that we already have two articles on the history of the period: Early Middle Ages and Late Antiquity overlap significantly. Why are these two OK as history articles, but Dark Ages — by far the most popular term, and the most likely to be searched — reserved for historiography? This is unfriendly to our readers. People who type in "Dark Ages" want to know about the historical period, not hear a lecture on why some deconstructionists and moral relativists think the term is bad. *** Crotalus *** 01:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

"Dark Ages" should be a redirect to Early Middle Ages or a disambiguation page. The current article is a lot of nonsense. It's just not true that "Dark Ages" is some kind of taboo word among historians of the period. A History of Medieval Europe: From Constantine to Saint Louis (2006) by R. H. C. Davis uses it as a section heading. Whatever historians think of the word, the most likely search term should direct the reader to useful information as opposed to deconstructionism. Kauffner (talk) 01:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Note this is Ralph Henry Carless Davis & the book was first published in 1957! Johnbod (talk) 10:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

the article scope is fine as it is: discussing the "Dark Ages" notion. The disambiguation note at the top is enough to make clear what this article is about. If the term is "deconstructed" too much, the solution is to fix the article, not to tear it down. I am not convinced that "Dark Ages" is more widespread in common usage than "Early Middle Ages". "Dark Ages" may occur more often in contexts of sword & sorcery fantasy, and it would be perfectly misleading to redirect such a term to the specific topic of Early Middle Ages which has little or nothing to do with swords or sorcery. --dab (𒁳) 07:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Dark Ages is not a more common term than "Middle Ages". As the article explains, the phrase "dark ages" is unclear because it has been used for the entire Middle Ages and just for the Early Middle Ages (and beyond). And as for the "duplication" argument; we actually have several articles covering the period(s), Late Antiquity, Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, Late Middle Ages, and Middle Ages. The difference between these and Crotalus' proposed version of the Dark Ages article is that these already adequately cover a specific period of time (which admittedly don't have set beginning and ending dates). Crotalus seems to want an article that discusses Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, but as pointed out that's only one way "Dark Ages" has been used, and so this title is not correct. As for moving the so-called deconstructionism and putting the disambiguation here, that's an idea that bears further discussion.--Cúchullain /c 19:34, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

On the "people get frustrated" argument. It's a good question how we should treat the "People who type in... want to know" (*** Crotalus ***) argument. The point is, should active contributors follow such wishes? Let's imagine Hannah has heard her mother talking about "Dark Ages". She types in "Dark Ages" and sees the current page. So what? It's not evident that she is that much frustrated. She gets to know that the term indeed refers to a period of history and that the current trend is to call it "Early Middle Ages". Because there's a disambig statement at the top, she's got options: read about the facts, learn why the epoch was called "Dark" etc. Is that bad? Certainly no. Now let's imagine another case. George is surfing the Misplaced Pages. One day he arrives at the Dark Ages page, where he sees mostly factual history. We assume that the article is quite well-written and tells some basic facts about the period (It's a good question, though, if we can use pieces of research that do not contain the term!). From my point of view, when George has read the article, he has got a not quite accurate vision that "Dark Ages" is a mainstream concept; even further, as the article has references and contains pieces of "academical" historical narrative, he can even imagine that this is a mainstream research concept, which is simply not true.

The aim of education and reference tools like Misplaced Pages is not only to provide readers with anticipated facts, to enrich their vision of problems with details, but also to correct their false assumptions, let them know the terms they use are deprecated; and — YES! — the truth is we cannot but shift these readers towards a more "academical" vision of things. This is obvious. I'm afraid I can't agree with those in this talk page's archive section who claim that we should act in favour of more popular visions of history. We are collecting knowledge, not lore.

To move on with this discussion, we need the following points to be clarified:

1. Who really feels uncomfortable, confused or frustrated with the current state of things? I mean, not "feels someone may feel", but actually feels. Is there a way we can measure that?
2. We should find a way to measure the popularity of the terms "Dark Ages" and "Early Middle Ages" both in recent research and historical culture.

Sorry for such a long monologue and for my English. What do you think? Michael Grinberg (talk) 20:24, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

"Dark Ages" is deprecated in a vast majority of current research. It is occasionally used with qualifications or as a colloquialism, but almost never as the preferred term for the period. Additionally, remember that "Dark Ages" is not used only to refer to the Early Middle Ages, it can also refer to the entire Middle Ages (as was the case for Petrarch), so that ambiguity should be factored in as well.--Cúchullain /c 20:30, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

FWIW Dark Ages had 49k hits this April, Early Middle Ages had 15K - a result that surprised me, I admit. But the disam page had only 1,500 hits, and Dark Ages (computer game) 5K. Perhaps this strengthens the case for making DA a redirect to EMA. Johnbod (talk) 20:50, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I did a search for both full strings on Google. "early middle ages" has approximately 551,000 hits. "dark ages" has about 5,120,000 hits. That's a difference of an order of magnitude. Even if 50% of "dark ages" hits are for other uses of the term, that's still five times as many uses.

One solution would be to move this article back to Historiography of the Dark Ages, redirect Dark Ages to Early Middle Ages, and put a banner at the top of Early Middle Ages that says: "Dark Ages redirects here. For the history of the term's usage, see Historiography of the Dark Ages." *** Crotalus *** 00:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Except that "Dark Ages" is a horribly shady term that doesn't only refer to the Early Middle Ages, but also to the whole Middle Ages, etc. I don't know why this keeps having to be reiterated.

This article is less about historiography than about the use of darkness as a metaphor. I'd move it to "Dark Ages (term)". There is also the Greek Dark Ages and the Dark Ages as a period in cosmology, so a redirect from "Dark Ages" to either EMA or the disambiguation page is fine with me. A lot of the readers of "Early Middle Ages" must be people redirected from "Dark Ages" or elsewhere. As a search term, EMA is just not the same league as Dark Ages. As for Petrarch, that's another problem with this page. The term "Dark Ages" was coined in 1640, long after Petrarch. Petrarch thought the world was dark after the Roman Empire fell because he was an Italian nationalist. This is different from the modern concept of a dark age as period of intellectual and civilizational decline.

"Dark Ages" is mainstream. Even the people complaining about it are using the phrase, not EMA. Here are some more examples of historians using the term non-ironically:

Barbara Crawford (ed.) Scotland in Dark Ages Europe, (Aberdeen, 1994)

Richard Hodges, Light in the Dark Ages: The Rise and Fall of San Vincenzo al Volturno. (1997)

See also University of Manchester Press Kauffner (talk) 03:07, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

My research, which has been fairly brief, turned up the following authors who all used the term "Dark Ages": Will and Ariel Durant, William Manchester, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Charles Van Doren, and Joseph McCabe. I keep hearing that the term is obsolete and that no historians ever use it any more and they all think it's terrible and pejorative, etc... Could someone please provide a citation for this? Not a citation of a historian saying "Early Middle Ages" (I know some of them do) but a cite of a reliable historiographer saying that the term is obsolete? *** Crotalus *** 03:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The "historians" you cite are unimpressive on this point, and I should not have to explain why. Just search "Dark Ages" at GoogleScholar and see what you get. Few of the hits are reference to the early Middle Ages. You will even find your sought-after references to "the period once called the Dark Ages" and, of course, Dark Ages in scare quotes. Srnec (talk) 05:59, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Especially interestingly, Theodore E. Mommsen refers in his 1942 paper "Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark Ages'" (Speculum, 17:2, 226–242) to the "term 'Dark Ages'" as something already abandoned or "increasingly restricted in its application" at some time before his writing. The Britannica had abanonded the term by 1928, stating that "the contrast, once so fashionable, between the ages of darkness and the ages of light has no more truth in it than have the idealistic fancies which underlie attempts at medieval revivalism". Srnec (talk) 06:07, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Could someone search a reliable scholarship database? I'm afraid I won't be able to do this during the next couple of weeks. Michael Grinberg (talk) 05:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Light in the Dark Ages is non-ironic? Frankly, I don't care too much what title the main article for the period is at ("Dark Ages" or "Early Middle Ages"), or what title the historiography is under ("Dark Ages" or "Historiography of the..."), but the article that Crotalus wrote was a POV-pusher. Though well-cited, its citations did not represent the balance of scholarship. Frankly, I support the current solution if only because it will not give those with an axe to grind a natural grindstone. Srnec (talk) 05:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Crotalus, I hope you are not serious. How about you try to answer your question yourself? Go to Google scholar. Search for "Early Middle Ages": 25,000 hits, all about the actual Early Middle Ages. Then search for "Dark Ages". 30,000 hits. Now look at the hits, and see how hardly any are about the Early Middle Ages, but instead about the Greek Dark Ages, the "First Dark Age in Egypt", deep sky astronomy, "Toddlers’understanding of intentions, desires, and emotions", the "Digital Dark Ages", and what have you. I hope this concludes this section, thank you. --dab (𒁳) 11:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I've been holding back here because I was slammed for dominating the page, but it is very gratifying to find FIVE wiki-editors of standing defending broadly the position I was asserting. It was getting lonely for a bit. This article needs to develop quite a lot, but I think it is on the whole going the direction it should do.

What we do need here is more quotes on both sides, so I would encourage both Smec and Crotalus to take the citations they have found and build them into the article proper. We already know what the result will be: they will prove that the term is NOT entirely obsolete, but is seriously out of fashion.

Can I just stress again that while sometimes 'dark ages' refers to the early middle ages, it also sometimes refers to the WHOLE of the middle ages. The semantic narrowing to the early MA became fashionable at the end of the 19th c, and historians were becoming disenchanted with the term altogether by the early 20th, so there actually is a relatively short window in the history of this term when it was linked with any precision to the early medieval period in scholarly writing. I'm afraid this muddies the waters for those who want redirect solutions, but really, the point of this article as it stands is to reflect the complexity of the term. --Doric Loon (talk) 13:15, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

On Google scholar, "Dark Ages"+"Middle Ages" gives you 9,100 hits and "Dark Age"+ "Middle Ages" -"Dark Ages" gives you another 2,440 for a total of 11,540 -- and only a tiny percentage of the hits are pre-1960. It's not as many as EMA, but it does show scholarly use. Besides, we are not writing for scholars, we are writing for our readership, which prefers "Dark Ages" to EMA by a margin of nearly four to one. I'm happy with the main article titled as "Early Middle Ages." I just think that when someone types in "Dark Ages" as a search term, it should return relevant history, and not stuff about Petrarch. Kauffner (talk) 13:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

so, the suggestion is, at good long last, to move this article to Dark Ages (term) and the present Dark Ages (disambiguation) to Dark Ages? That's certainly arguable, although you'd probably find my signature under "oppose". The question is why this entire debate was necessary instead of just making this perfectly straightforward suggestion. --dab (𒁳) 13:40, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Or is it to make "Dark Ages" redirect to "Early Middle Ages", with a hat note to the Dark Ages disam page? In view of the fact (above) that Dark Ages gets 3 times the WP hits of Early Middle Ages, I would support that. Johnbod (talk) 13:45, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

no. Here you get my dedicated opposition. Just googling for "Dark Ages"+"Middle Ages" is naive. How about sources that state the "Dark Ages" is the period separating Classical Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages? This is silly. "Dark Ages" is a fuzzy term, and there is no need to replace a perfectly valid one with something as poorly defined. The "Dark Ages proper" last from about 500 to 750, but there are immediately lots of caveats to that too. So you get 9,000 hits for googling "Dark Ages"+"Middle Ages" on google scholar? Well, I get 21,000 hits for googling "Dark Ages"+"Modern", and I am not suggesting we redirect Dark Ages to Modernity.

in my view, the mere amount of perfectly misguided and uninformed comments we get on this page is reason enough not to redirect this page to Early Middle Ages, Migration period, Societal collapse or any other serious article on a historical period. --dab (𒁳) 13:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I haven't been concerned about the ghits at all - meaningless in this case imo - but the WP traffic figures. Whatever they are looking for, 3 times as many people come to our Dark Ages page as to Early Middle Ages. I think, as none of the popular culture articles seem to get much traffic (the disam page gets only 3% of the traffic of Dark Ages), we can presume the majority are looking for the main historical article, and so we should take them straight to it. Johnbod (talk) 14:02, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry, "none of the popular culture articles seem to get much traffic"?? This must be the most out-of-touch statement I've heard in a long time. Soulfly has been viewed 38627 times in 200808 (Soulfly being a band with a 2005 album entitled... Dark Ages) I do suppose that most of the people coming to "Dark Ages" expected to read an explanation of the meaning of the term, which is precisely what this article is about, except those that may be looking for the Soulfly album.

this is all beside the point. We use neither traffic figures nor google hits for these questions, we use actual usage in academic sources. I can still see a possibility in making this a disambiguation page, of course, but if nobody is actually going to suggest this, I won't either. --dab (𒁳) 15:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Word. It's not a matter of hits, it's a matter of verifiability. And dab page idea which has been half-heartedly suggested by several of us bears further discussion, but any attempt to redirect "Dark Ages" only to "Early Middle Ages" is flat unacceptable.--Cúchullain /c 17:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

36k in 9 months isn't much in fact but of course the vast majority of these will have gone direct. As I keep saying, the disam page only gets 1.5K per month, to cover Soulfly & about 15 other entries - 3% of the total Dark Ages traffic. Now we have the selector in the search pages, that sort of disam page gets much less traffic. When we are looking at redirects and navigation we should take account not only of correct academic terminology but of how our users, very few of whom are academic in any sense, actually use WP. There are a HUGE number of users hitting "Dark Ages", with very few going on to the disam page, or apparently to "Early Middle Ages". I can't believe most of them want to read about the "historiography" so it seems to me we are leaving most unsatisfied. Johnbod (talk) 17:11, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I get it, we're stuck with Petrarch here. So let me scale things down and make a more modest proposal. Put the term "Dark Ages" on top of the EMA article, i.e. The Early Middle Ages, or Dark Ages, is a period in the history of Europe following... yakety yak. Then the article would show up in a Google search for "Dark Ages". Kauffner (talk) 15:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Once again, the term doesn't only refer to the Early Middle Ages, so that isn't a viable option.--Cúchullain /c 17:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Can you produce any evidence that any one since say 1880 has used the word seriously in that sense? I find it hard to believe. Historically that was a meaning, but people using the term today, like Crotalus and his references, surely only mean some part of the Early Medieval period, which is therefore legitimately the primary meaning. Johnbod (talk) 17:59, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

RHC Davis defines the Dark Ages as Constantine to 900. (3rd edition, 2006.) If you type "Dark Ages" into Encarta, you get redirected to EMA. Britannica defines the Dark Ages as "the early medieval period of western European history." (No other definitions given.) Merriam-Webster defines it as "the European historical period from about a.d. 476 to about 1000." (definition 1b.)

Judging from Google Trends, "Dark Ages" is at least 10 times more common as a search term than EMA. So most of the traffic EMA gets now is presumably the result of links from "Dark Ages" and elsewhere. Kauffner (talk) 19:14, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The resources you cite are encyclopedias and dictionaries. They provide us with definitions of terms to help us read any text mentioning "Dark Ages"... What we need is to see evidence from scholarship corpora (google scholar is good, but not enough, because it mostly reflects metadata and not full-text search) to see how history researches use the terms. As for google search, this is not a (strong) argument. We won't use slang or abbreviations to name articles even if they are more used than the "dull academic" terms, or am I wrong? Michael Grinberg (talk) 19:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

To answer your question, Jon, a very brief search revealed this [

http://books.google.com/books?id=nasOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=%22lively+centuries+which+we+call+dark%22&source=web&ots=NPsQ3CdRMC&sig=fj0pIQthRfZzSqG2VHpLQU5NfbM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result book] which says "In the lively centuries which we call dark and in the early Middle Ages we have abundant literary activity." I know other examples can be found. This on top of the fact that virtually no historian after about 1940 has used "Dark Ages" to refer to any period, makes that issue moot in my opinion. Even if the EMA is now the primary meaning, it is not the only or original one, and the term has become so deprecated that a simple redirect will not do.--Cúchullain /c 20:06, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Your example demonstrates my point not yours - clearly Hay is not using the term to describe the whole Middle Ages, but apparently a smaller (earlier?) part of the Early Middle Ages. He is not a latter-day Petrarch - the search goes on. Davies' book mentioned above has its "PART ONE" called "The Dark Ages", covering to up 900. He was then a fellow of Merton, Oxford (from 1970 Professor at Birmingham) and (rather oddly I agree) never felt the need to change this in subsequent editions. You don't seem to absorbed my point that titles are about what the scholarship says but redirects are about what the user needs. Johnbod (talk) 20:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it's fairly clear that Hay is describing the entire period (it's a discussion of chronicles and histories up to the 12th century) as that which we call Dark; his phrasing even suggests that the early Middle Ages are something else altogether ("In the lively centuries we call Dark and in the early Middle ages...") I maintain that a simple redirect to EMA is not what the user needs, as the Dark Ages concept is so murky.--Cúchullain /c 23:14, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The point is - what is the user actually likely to be looking for information on? It's clearly not the High Middle Ages, nor the whole Middle Ages. The full range of possible meanings of the term are not immediately relevant, since most of the people making the half million hits the page gets annually won't be aware of the tradition in historiography. It will be the Age of Migrations, or better, the Early Middle Ages. Johnbod (talk) 00:07, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not really seeing the scholarly consensus that other people are certain exists. In my Dark Ages article proposal, I cited, among others:

• Bryan Ward-Perkins who is "an archaeologist and historian of the later Roman Empire and early Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the transitional period between those two eras" (according to our article on him). His book was published by Oxford University Press in 2005. If that book isn't a reliable source, I would be interested to know why.
• William Manchester, a renowned historian. The book that I cited was published in 1992.
• Will and Ariel Durant, Pulitzer Prize-winning historians. In fact, they won the Pulitzer for The Story of Civilization, of which Age of Faith (1950) — the work I cited — is part. You can argue that the scholarly consensus has changed since 1950, but, again, I'd be interested in seeing some solid citations to this effect.

Someone said above that "The "historians" you cite are unimpressive on this point, and I should not have to explain why". Well, I looked over it again and I'm not seeing it. What is the problem here? I also don't see how you can argue that sources from 1950, 1992, and 2005 are out of date when this historiographical article is built around an article published in 1942. An obscure journal article from 66 years ago doesn't outweigh numerous other reliable historians.

And finally: Some people don't like the idea of having Dark Ages as a period article. They say that would be duplication. Well, why isn't Late Antiquity also considered a duplicate or POV fork? According to our own Early Middle Ages article: "Aspects of continuity with the earlier classical period are discussed in greater detail under the heading "Late Antiquity"." Well, what's wrong with discussing aspects of discontinuity in greater detail under the heading Dark Ages? *** Crotalus *** 00:23, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

now you are saying you want to write a WP:SS sub-article to Early Middle Ages. There is nothing wrong with this in principle. Just avoid {{duplication}}. We already have, as you note, Early Middle Ages (500-1000), Late Antiquity (300-600), Viking Age (800-1050), Migration Period (300-600), all treating different aspects of overlapping periods. If you think you can usefully add yet another article cleanly integrated in a WP:SS structure, you don't need anyone's permission to write it, just do it. --dab (𒁳) 07:18, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at your proposal, I think you should add a "Socioeconomic and intellectual regression during the Dark Ages" section to Early_Middle_Ages#Transmission_of_learning (since this is what you seem to want to talk about) and then follow WP:SS. I am not sure why you are so infatuated with the term "Dark Ages", but it is certainly permissible to discuss the "socioeconomic and intellectual regression", such as it was, taking place during the migration period. To extend the "Dark Ages" into the 9th, let alone 10th century still seems unarguable indefensible. You are looking at the 6th and 7th, maybe 8th, centuries, and even there you need to be careful where you want to claim a "regression" took place. Our EMA article has an aptly-titled section "Resurgence of the Latin West (700-850)", which would correspond to the end of your "Dark Ages". --dab (𒁳) 07:23, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

"Unarguable" means "hard/impossible to argue 'against in English, dab. Johnbod (talk) 08:34, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

you got me there. I was racing against a near-empty laptop battery, resulting in compacted syntax :) thanks for your attentive reading in any case :p --dab (𒁳) 09:42, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

You may also want to note that the article was doing what you seem to be wanting it to do, until July 2004, before its shortcomings were fixed by some judicious editors. This makes this whole debate a little bit of a deja vu. --dab (𒁳) 07:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Variation in reference

Kauffer, it is not acceptable for you to delete material after you have failed to achieve a consensus here on talk for such deletion. The phrase you want to delete allows the reader to know that there is an ambiguity in the term DA. That such an ambiguity exists, has been amply demonstrated. It is an important part of the history, but it is also current, particularly in the popular sources you refer to. (Wasn't it you who associated the term "dark ages" with the plague - which came to Europe in the 13th c? Maybe it wasn't you, but clearly some people who have written here and like the phrase use it for the whole of the Middle Ages.) If you want a modern academic reference, see the Dunphy quote in the article. The point is, there is no dispute about the fact that the Early MA is the main and most frequent reference. The question is why you want to stop readers knowing it can be anything else. --Doric Loon (talk) 19:26, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Dunphy specifically describes this usage as "popular if ignorant". I doubt if he is actually correct on "popular" - at least in Europe describing the whole MA as the Dark Ages is pretty extinct I would have thought, and long has been. That is not why it is in the article; it is there because of Petrarch etc. Personally I would welcome explanation in the opening para that it began as a term for the whole MA, but is now used for the EMA. I think the current opening is rather misleading to the uninformed. Johnbod (talk) 19:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The first graph should be a straightforward statement of what the term means in modern common usage, as you might see in a dictionary. That's the way I have rewritten it. Dark Ages = Middle Ages is an obsolete 19th century usage. No plague in the Dark Ages? What about the plague of Justinian? Kauffner (talk) 13:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with . The current wording allows for both definitions, the historical one describing the whole middle ages, which has become less common (though by no means is it gone entirely), and the modern conception which generally refers to the Early Middle Ages. Perhaps something like "Dark Age or Dark Ages is a term generally referring to the Early Middle Ages, or more broadly to the whole of the Middle Ages." Then we go into the development of the term and the historical context, etc. However, I still think the current wording is fine, as defining specifically the Early Middle Ages as "Dark" is a more modern development, while the concept is hundreds of years old.--Cúchullain /c 19:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

What classifies a period as "Dark"

I find it interesting that while this article could be more properly called The European Dark Ages, Historians are using the term for many other periods of history, for example "The Greek Dark Age" after the fall of the Myceanaeans, or the "Late Bronze Age Dark Age" before EIA IA, or the "Mayan Dark Age" with the collapse of the Classic Maya.

When we examine all of these periods we find the following symptoms

1. . Major depopulation of urban centres,
2. . Collapse of long distance trade.
3. . Resersion to subsistence peasant modes of agrarian production.
4. . Collapse of centralised authority
5. . Increased intra and inter-regional violence
6. . Simplified technological production in major technologies (eg pottery, architecture etc)
7. . Reduced literary output, and reduction of literate segment of the population to a tiny elite

(if literacy survives at all)

All of these features are found also in the so-called "European Dark Age" from Constantine to about the year 900. The population of Rome, for instance went from 700,000 people to less than 15,000 by 800 CE! If that does not qualify as "Dark" I don't know what does. John D. Croft (talk) 19:30, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

John, why do you do original research on Misplaced Pages? We report on what the latest and best scholarship says. Fothergill Volkensniff IV (talk) 04:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

OED

The OED is kind of an awkward factoid and its not clear where to place it. The only section which is really an etymology of "dark age" is the one about Petrarch. After that the article is about bigger issues and it gives the impression that "Dark Ages" is a more recent idea - it might be linguistically in English 19th century, but the concept is old, and that's what we need to clearly stress as being important. In fact its use in English is almost non-consequential - why not also detail its use in Russian, or Swedish - every country has its own etymology of the term. OK sure this is the English language Misplaced Pages, it's good to include it, but it should be explained. I know Misplaced Pages loves quoting the OED. If we do bring it up, we should say something about it - why did "Dark Ages" only show up in England in the 19th century? (I have some thoughts about that). Why did it take till the 17th century for the concept to reach England? That's really whats significant about the OED, its history of usage in English culture. Anyway, open to discussion to improve and refine the article! Fothergill Volkensniff IV (talk) 05:38, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I still think the "After the Renaissance" section is the best place for it (at least it's better than the Petrarch section). I also think the new wording was too wordy. Better just to say what the OED says than trying to explain why that's what it says. I've reworded somewhat to give a sense of which context the word was used in.--Cúchullain /c 18:03, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok.. I explained why I thought the Petrarch section was the better location, since topically, that section deals with the etymology of the term. You say "After the Renaissance" is better, but did not provide a rationale. Can I assume you believe so because of chronological ordering of events? Fothergill Volkensniff IV (talk) 15:17, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually see the section "Enlightenment" it deals with the various uses of terms such as "Medieval" and "Dark Ages" and when they were first used. The OED fact should be integrated into the main body of text, in the Enlightenment section and the previous one. Where it is now, is simply a header for the entire section, a lead in. It's out of place and jarring to the flow of the narrative. Why mention the OED right there at the very top of the section? It makes no sense. It seems to be giving undo importance to the fact and the OED. This stuff is already discussed in the main body of the section. Fothergill Volkensniff IV (talk) 15:24, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Also just to clarify, the OED is just a source. It makes no claim to authority in terms of earliest usage. The wording should reflect that, and not make absolute claims to being "first" or "earliest". OED makes no such claims. Fothergill Volkensniff IV (talk) 15:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me now. Good work.--Cúchullain /c 16:55, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually the OED does claim that it provides the earliest recorded uses: "The quotation paragraph contains a selection of authentic examples of usage illustrating a definition. The quotations document the history of a term from its earliest recorded usage, and are extremely helpful tools for clarifying grammatical and syntactic aspects of a definition." (emphasis mine; my link won't work here but it's #5 under "Sense section" in the "guide to OED entries"). As such we can refer to the uses as the earliest as long as the line is attributed to the OED.--Cúchullain /c 17:15, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Dating revert war

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the medieval European "dark ages" thusly: "a term sometimes applied to the period of the Middle Ages to mark the intellectual darkness characteristic of the time; often restricted to the early period of the Middle Ages, between the time of the fall of Rome and the appearance of vernacular written documents." Additionally, the article clearly demonstrates that the term has been applied to the Middle Ages as a whole, not just to the Early Middle Ages. This needs to be addressed in the lead, as this is not an article on a set time period, but on a conception of a time period.--Cúchullain /c 22:36, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I can't get into the OED site to check this. But I take it this is what footnote 1 points to. Can you please copy the exact words from the OED into the footnote, Cúchullain, so we are not dependent on a link which doesn't work for all of us? Probably it's just a temporary problem, but that quote should be on the page. Thanks. --Doric Loon (talk) 10:41, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

On second thoughts, I'm "being bold" and doing it myself. But you should check I've got it right, because I am working second-hand. That footnote is important because it is referenced three times. --Doric Loon (talk) 10:47, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi I hope this doesn't earn me another ban (I believe there is a broad consensus to unban). Anyway, the OED definition is clearly idiosyncratic - see the remarks on my talk page). The term is sometimes (I would say very rarely) used to refer to the whole of the middle ages. It is used by all modern scholars (I can't find an exception) to refer either to the period 500-1000, or sometimes to the narrower period 500-750, in order to exclude the Carolingian renaissance. The introduction should also mention the relativistic nature of the definition, as meaning Western Europe. Peter Damian (talk) 12:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Glancing up I noticed there has been lively discussion about this. I don't think it's correct to say that scholars no longer use the term. Russell while not contemporary has a whole chapter entitled 'The Dark Ages' meaning specificaly 500-1000, and the other three writers are definitely contemporary, and they use the term. Note that one of them uses the term 'the so-called Dark Ages', so perhaps the article should be called The so-called Dark Ages? Peter Damian (talk) 13:58, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

The OED is really the absolute authority on British language usage. You can certainly suppliment it with other sources, but you can't ignore it. It is the natural starting point for charting the history of an English word. --Doric Loon (talk) 15:39, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Can we continue on my talk page? I have been warned I will be blocked if I continue here. Meanwhile, my copy of the concise is not consistent with what is said here. All the sources I have correctly say that the main usage is 500-1000, although occasionally the whole MA is meant. Enough. Peter Damian (talk) 15:44, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

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