Where would humanity be now if the dark ages never occurred?

[breadisfunny]

In what sense? It sucked real hard for ex-Romans, who'd been living off the largesse of a massive empire. Didn't have nearly the same impact outside the Roman empire (which was by no means all of Europe), and the Roman era wasn't without its own horrors.

for the gaulic villages who had some roman support.

[Deleted]

Where would Arabian Peninsula be now if Islam never occured :^)?

Considering Islam during that same time period was responsible for a lot of great things...far worse off.

Maybe don't be a smartass next time you want to make an idiotic comment.

[Endus]

Where would Arabian Peninsula be now if Islam never occured :^)?

Or without it we would still be in the dark ages like most of the middle east. :-/

Islamic fundamentalism is basically a 20th Century phenomenon. It essentially didn't exist for any of the remaining history of Islam, when it was a strong competitor to Europe in many ways. There's a reason "algebra" is from an Arabic word, and why we use Arabic numerals.

[breadisfunny]

Considering Islam during that same time period was responsible for a lot of great things...far worse off.

Maybe don't be a smartass next time you want to make an idiotic comment.

the crusades also resulting in the invention of one of the first banking systems.

[Endus]

the crusades also resulting in the invention of one of the first banking systems.

To be fair, that was the Templars, who really didn't do much actual Crusading. They nominally formed as an order to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, but there's little evidence they every really did so.

[Deleted]

To be fair, that was the Templars, who really didn't do much actual Crusading. They nominally formed as an order to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, but there's little evidence they every really did so.

Oh man, you are tiresome.

I have an uncle like that too, that constantly nitpicks and corrects every fact and detail.
Not fun being around people like that at all...

[Endus]

Oh man, you are tiresome.

I have an uncle like that too, that constantly nitpicks and corrects every fact and detail.
Not fun being around people like that at all...

History is nothing but facts and details. You don't get to just make up a cooler story and ignore those details. If you want to do that, just be clear that you're writing fiction, not history.

[Deleted]

Oh man, you are tiresome.

I have an uncle like that too, that constantly nitpicks and corrects every fact and detail.
Not fun being around people like that at all...

Learning something new is tiresome and not fun?

[nextormento]

invented by Enlightenment-era scholars

One can easily trace it back a few centuries from that to the Renaissance.

[Deleted]

Withdrawn my question. Please close thread.

[nextormento]

Withdrawn my question. Please close thread.

You could instead contest the ridiculous agenda-driven exposition that you're being presented with (in the name of facts and details, no less). Because the breaking with the church is nothing else than the second co-option of the terminology, whereas the first was an acknowledgement of documents being scarce.

[LiiLoSNK]

Pretty sure the dark ages were real and they stemmed from Endus crushing kids on ye olde mmo-champion forums.

[Skroe]

Oh wow this is tough. For one, I don't think it's nearly clear cut as saying "Earth would be 800 years ahead and we'd have colonies on the moon or mars" or anything.

The key development I think would have been that the ship building technology that arrived on the scene during the age of discovery would have shown up far earlier. Perhaps as early as the 10th century or before. But it would have required the correct conditions for that to happen in the first place. Rome had advanced shipbuilding technology, and at times a powerful Navy, but as the Pax Romana bore on (and after the entire medditeranian was theirs), it atrophied, first as Rome shifted to conquering lands in Northern Eurpope (Germany, Brittain), and beyond the Levant. Naval power, important in it's rise, fell off.

Basically we're saying "Rome needed to survive and thrive again" under this model I lay out below, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. It's not like technological progress stopped in Europe during the dark ages. It's that Europe looked inward and then to deeper into Eurasia, much like the Romans did in the late empire. An Alternative universe where the "Dark Ages never happened" really means that whatever constitutes "the West" was still expansionist, a great deal more unified and outward looking.

So for the age of discovery to arrive hundreds of years earlier and for the New World to be colonized by the West earlier, Rome would have had to find a core motivation to invest in building larger ships, larger fleets, and pulling them further away from shore than ever before. During the real age of discovery, this was chiefly economic. And it may have well been the case for Rome during a hypotheized alternative timeline as well. The Late Roman Empire made the conscious decision to fix it's borders and focus on consolidating its hold over such a vast territory. However this deprived the Roman Empire of the slaves and plunder that it relied upon to to grow it's economy and work force (urbanizing Rome had a declining population). Perhaps if a reformed 9th century Western Empire would have looked "beyond the map" for new lands to plunder, especially if, in such a world, the growth of the Islamic Caliphate in it's south east offered a far more formidable wall (as it did to the Byzantines/Eastern Romans) than their territorial predecessors ever did.

The truth of the matter is, in reality, Rome was moving ever further away from the Atlantic, and ever further into Asia by the time the Western Empire fell. Getting Rome to eventually colonize the Americas would have required this early change - such as emphasizing Constantinople/Byzantium/Nova Roma over the Western Empire - to have never happened. But Rome did that because thats' where the money was and it was closer to the resource rich west-Asian domains it was plundering and/or trading with after it had conquered Western Europe.

So now that we've established the conditions, the question is "why". I think in terms of progress, we could talk about maybe specific technological developments (like infantry guns, or electricity or the vaccine) showing up hundreds of years earlier. But the fact remains that we'd be being somewhat arbitrary: Western civilization was around thousands of years before the Dark Ages, and more technological, social, political and economic progress has been made since the Renaissance, and really in the last 300 years, than the previous 3000.

In my opinion, it comes down to resources, which makes an earlier Age of Discovery and colonization the single most important thing that could have happened. In the real world, it more than doubled the size of the West. It offered it exclusive access to resources that East and South Asia simply did not have in comparison. It offered vast swathes of unsettled, fertile land. It had all the conditions that, in the real world, allowed the West to more than double it's population, economy, productivity... everything. Probably far more than double.

If that had happened early, sure there probably wouldn't be an "America" as we know it, and for all we know, in the 15th century the Roman Empire could have moved it's capital to where New York City or Roanoke are. And maybe eventually distant 'Roma Americana' would have lost it's European lands, much as Constantinople lost Western Europe. There is no way to tell that kind of resolution.

Rome arguably would have had an easier time populating the Americas. There were far fewer American Indians in the 10th century. Powerful Central American empires were nascent, if they existed at all. The Maya existed and were powerful, but the Aztec and the Inca arose in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Do I think technology would have been more advanced? Hard to say. Probably? But not 800 years more advanced or anything. Post-Middle Ages Europe and Colonial America through the Present day were 'innovation factories', with innovation driven by pressures of population, politics and security. East and South Asia entered near millennium long periods of decline for reasons that had nothing to do with the West, so a Roman Empire that survived, colonized the Americas and somehow managed not to fracture, without the right conditions, could have easily stagnated as much as the mid-late Empire did. I don't think for example there would have been a "nuclear world war" in the 18th century" between the Roman Empire of the West and the Japanese Empire of Asia, or something like that, because the non-Roman regions in the world were out of contact reach to a degree that that kind of competition leading to innovation leading to revolutions (like the nuclear bomb) wasn't possible yet. The world hadn't globalized enough. It's possible it could have, if Roman ships showed up off of the Coast of japan 300 years earlier, or the industrial period began earlier. But in both cases, what actually happened was more an emergent property of a global phenomenon. Simply saying "the Roman Empire lived on" only feels like "fixing" half the equation, if you get what I'm saying.

A huge degree to which dodging the Dark Ages that happened could accelerate development is simply dependent on the enduring Roman Empire's ability to avoid other pitfalls. If it Stagnated for hundreds of years, as the real one did, it would have arguably retarded development further. If it fractured and warred against each other, as the real one periodically did, it could have unleashed a conflict that dwarfed the Crusades. But there is also tremendous opportunity. Rome managed a vast empire, arguably better than anyone did until the British Empire arose, across a supremely vast area for many centuries. Colonizing the Americans plus holding onto it's Eurasian holdings would have been a challenge of even a greater magnitude.

There is of course the "Balkanaization Scenario too". That Rome could have fallen in the 15th century in such a secnario, 500 years after Colonizing the Americas, which would leave as many successor states, with likely as focused ethnic and cultural divisions, as arose in the wake of the Empire's collapse in Europe and the history of migrations thereafter. North America today only has 3 countries, for example, which compares favorably to say, an alternative model based on what was left over when the Carolingian Empire fractured (or it's subcomponents). With a content as vast as North America, having 150+ countries as successor states would have been easy, and could have been an even greater set back to human progress than the Dark Ages.

[mrinvisable2]

Dark ages did happen, it didnt affect everything. When Rome fell population of all cities declined by 50% or more, or hundreds cities were abandoned. After Rome fell noone knew how to build aqueducts masive stone bridges. Many roman inventions and techniques were lost and we even now dont know how to replicate some and after romes fall crtstianity became way to important and influential as it didnt stop advancements but slowed significantly, and when people started to separate religion from state, progress was made faster

[Rothg]

In what sense? It sucked real hard for ex-Romans, who'd been living off the largesse of a massive empire. Didn't have nearly the same impact outside the Roman empire (which was by no means all of Europe), and the Roman era wasn't without its own horrors.

I apologize for this being completely off topic, but I'm really curious. What do you do for a living Endus? You seem to have a very wide array I'm knowledge and debate skill and I'm curious what type of career you apply it to.

[Nadiru]

The Middle Ages weren't named the Dark Ages because people suddenly became stupid or stopped advancing science. They were named the Dark Ages because a bunch of Renaissance-era historians derided the Middle Ages for not aping Greece and Rome.

This isn't to say the Middle Ages were kind to Europe: the fucking bubonic plague wiped out significant swathes of the European population, and both the Mongols and the Caliphate appeared poised to invade a weakened European peninsula.