But in 536 A.D., much of the world went dark for a full 18 months, as a mysterious fog rolled over Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The fog blocked the sun during the day, causing temperatures to drop, crops to fail and people to die. It was, you might say, the literal Dark Age.
Thus the 5th and 6th centuries in Britain, at the height of the Saxon invasions, have been called "the darkest of the Dark Ages", in view of the societal collapse of the period and the consequent lack of historical records.
#1: The Black Death
The pandemic that swept Eurasia was one of the most cataclysmic in history, with anywhere from 75 to 200 million people dying, about 30-60% of Europe's population, between 1346 and 1353.
“Dark Ages” usually refers to the 900 years of European history between the 5th and 14th centuries.
Modern scholarship has determined that in early AD 536 (or possibly late 535), an eruption ejected massive amounts of sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere, which reduced the solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface and cooled the atmosphere for several years.
Yes, people in that time did and wrought wondrous things. But few of them are known to us – far fewer than in most other historical periods. The Dark Ages may not be darker in this sense than the long ages of prehistory, but they are very dark indeed in comparison with the periods that precede and follow them.
The cause of the Dark Ages is associated with a series of events related to the downfall of the Roman Empire. In 395 CE after the death of Emperor Theodosius, the Roman Empire was divided in half. In 410 CE, the Visigoths entered Rome and destroyed much of the city, to the extent that it was never the same.
In the year 1000, the Byzantine generals Theodorokanos and Nikephoros Xiphias captured the former Bulgarian capitals of Pliska and Great Preslav, along with Little Preslav, extending Byzantine control over the northeastern portion of the Bulgarian state (Mysia and Scythia Minor).
The Roman army became overstretched and needed more soldiers than they had. Without adequate protection or the means to supply it, the city of Rome finally fell to Germanic Tribes in 476 AD.
500 AD Arthur's Victory Over Saxons-The legendary Arthur won a battle against the Saxons at Mound Badon in Dorset, in Southern England. This slowed the Saxon conquest of England.
But we can be grateful for at least one thing this Thanksgiving: It's been worse. That's what a team of scientists and historians determined after looking back at humans' history on Earth and identifying the year 536 AD as the absolute worst time to be alive, according to CNN.
Shortly after midnight on December 26, 2004, a rupture between tectonic plates beneath the eastern Indian Ocean set off the longest and third largest earthquake on record. Its aftermath generated a tsunami that battered the coastlines of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand and reached as far as South Africa.
In the eyes of the historian and archaeologist Michael McCormick, the absolute “worst year to be alive” was 536. Why was 536 so bad? You could certainly argue that 1918, the last year of World War I when the Spanish Flu killed up to 100 million people around the world, was a terrible year by all accounts.
"The Darkest Hour" is a phrase used to refer to an early period of World War II, from approximately mid-1940 to mid-1941. While widely attributed to Winston Churchill, the origins of the phrase are unclear.
Book details
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. The Darkest Year is acclaimed author William K. Klingaman's narrative history of the American home front from December 7, 1941 through the end of 1942, a psychological study of the nation under the pressure of total war.
Early in Era 4, the two pillars of the Eurasian trading network, the Roman Empire and Han Dynasty China, collapsed. These weren't the only societies to go into decline or break down during this era. As a result, European historians in particular have labelled much of this era a “dark age”.
The West was severely shaken in 410, when the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, a wandering nation of Germanic peoples from the northeast. The fall of Rome was completed in 476, when the German chieftain Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus.
Instead many historians point to a number of different problems combined that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire. There were 3 main reasons for the fall of Rome which are: political instability, economic and social problems, and finally a weakening of the frontier or border.
Latin and Greek were the dominant languages of the Roman Empire, but other languages were regionally important. Latin was the original language of the Romans and remained the language of imperial administration, legislation, and the military throughout the classical period.
This calendar era is based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus, AD counting years from the start of this epoch and BC denoting years before the start of the era. There is no year zero in this scheme; thus the year AD 1 immediately follows the year 1 BC.
Ibn al-Haytham (Book of Optics), Avicenna, Averroes, and Abu Rayhan al-Biruni all flourished around the year 1000.
Certainly there was no year zero. But nor was there ever a year one, two or three, or for that matter a year 100, 200 or 300. The Christian calendar was devised as late as the sixth century AD by a Scythian monk, Dionysius.
(220-581) The collapse of the Han Dynasty signaled the beginning of what some historians refer to as China's “Dark Ages.” This was a time of almost constant warfare and intrigue.
The Loss of Classical Culture
Philosophy, literature, art, law, and religion all spread out in a hundred different directions. With the ascent of the Dark Ages, though, Western civilization took a new course, and all this branching out ended. Many branches of culture died off or were cut short.
Of course, the Dark Ages also refers to a less-than-heroic time in history supposedly marked by a dearth of culture and arts, a bad economy, worse living conditions and the relative absence of new technology and scientific advances.