What if there had been no dark ages?

[dmw16]

What do you think? Would we be signifigantly more advanced had the world never been put into the dark ages?
-doug

 

[Electric Amish]

Probably not, but the Catholic church may not be as large and influential...

 

[Vic]

The "Dark Ages" only occurred in Christian Western Europe.

 

[usualuse]

Catholic=Catolic

 

[dmw16]

I was under the impression that a lot of knowledge that was had by the Romans was lost during this period. Books burned and so forth...no?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: dmw16
I was under the impression that a lot of knowledge that was had by the Romans was lost during this period. Books burned and so forth...no?

We would have blown ourselves to bits hundred of years ago.

 

[amnesiac]

Originally posted by: usualuse
Catholic=Catolic

You noobs really should learn how to contribute to a post correctly.

LURK MORE, POST LESS.

 

[AbsoluteParadigm]

Architecture would be different... And correct me if I'm wrong but the Dark Ages was the result of the collapse of the Roman Empire, right? So if there weren't any Dark Ages, the Roman Empire might still be intact. That would effect a lot of Europe and possibly the development of America.

 

[amcdonald]

If we didn't have the dark ages, there couldn't have been a renaissance. And without that we wouldn't have a crapton of naked guy statues.

 

[Electric Amish]

Originally posted by: dmw16
I was under the impression that a lot of knowledge that was had by the Romans was lost during this period. Books burned and so forth...no?

There weren't many books around back then and the vast majority of them were the Bible.

amish

 

[n0cmonkey]

I thought the term "dark ages" was phased out a while ago...

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: AbsoluteParadigm
Architecture would be different... And correct me if I'm wrong but the Dark Ages was the result of the collapse of the Roman Empire, right? So if there weren't any Dark Ages, the Roman Empire might still be intact. That would effect a lot of Europe and possibly the development of America.

There are some who might argue that the Roman empire did not in fact fall until 1917.

 

[amcdonald]

Originally posted by: Vic

There are some who might argue that the Roman empire did not in fact fall until 1917.

Some people eat tuna & peanut butter sandwiches.

 

[usualuse]

amnesiac----->I'm Swiss,in my country you spell Catolic like i did.
I'm a junior and I have a few posts becouse i don't write bulls*it,like you.

 

[wyvrn]

Newbs schoolin vets. Woohoo

Originally posted by: usualuse
amnesiac----->I'm Swiss,in my country you spell Catolic like i did.
I'm a junior and I have a few posts becouse i don't write bulls*it,like you.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: amcdonald
If we didn't have the dark ages, there couldn't have been a renaissance. And without that we wouldn't have a crapton of naked guy statues.

Or more seriously, the rise of humanism and the weakening of the grip of religion on art, music, and (most important to this audience) science.

If Rome hadn't collpased it's hard to say whether the result would be flying cars and cities on the moon, or a stagnant world possibly centuries behind ours (horse-powered, steam-powered, maybe even slave-powered). Republicans might be happier either way, since we'd be living in an official plutocracy instead of a hidden one

 

[CubicZirconia]

Originally posted by: usualuse
amnesiac----->I'm Swiss,in my country you spell Catolic like i did.
I'm a junior and I have a few posts becouse i don't write bulls*it,like you.

Well done.

 

[ClueLis]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish

Originally posted by: dmw16
I was under the impression that a lot of knowledge that was had by the Romans was lost during this period. Books burned and so forth...no?

There weren't many books around back then and the vast majority of them were the Bible.

amish

That's not quite true.

Towards the latter days of the Roman Empire, vast amounts of documentation were lost as they were not christian enough for the people there. The remainers of the documents were kept by the church, but weren't put to much use in europe until the 12th century.

That said, I don't think we would be farther ahead of where we are now if the fall of the classical age never happened. First off, as Vic said, the "dark ages" only happened in europe. During this time, China and the Middle East actually went through an intellectual boom. China had expanded on the realm of mathematics, created paper, and developed ingenious navigational tools (such as the astrolabe and compass). Middle East inherited much of Greek culture, and greatly developed philosophy and medicine. (On an interesting side note, Islam only became so conservative after the arabs started to prove many facets of the religion wrong, such as finding indications that the solar system was heliocentric.)

Second, from the second century on, the Roman empire bacame stagnant, both politically and intellectually. Had the Empire lived on (in fact, it sorta did as the Byzantine Empire), it would have been an impediment to progress even though they seem more advanced than the proceeding middle age cultures.

 

[Electric Amish]

That's not quite true.

Towards the latter days of the Roman Empire, vast amounts of documentation were lost as they were not christian enough for the people there. The remainers of the documents were kept by the church, but weren't put to much use in europe until the 12th century.

That's true. I guess I was thinking "printed" books. I forgot about all the hand-written documentation that did exist.