TOP 10 DARK AGES (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

Hello darkness my old friend – there’s even more Dark Age darkness, with the usual twenty special mentions for my Top 10 Dark Ages.

As usual, it’s more of a Dark Age iceberg as I look beyond the historiographical usage of the term to various aspects or connotations of the Dark Age or Dark Ages – getting weirder and wilder the deeper and darker I go…

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

(1) SOCIETAL COLLAPSE

 

The defining characteristic that most people would associate with the Dark Age, or indeed anything that might be described as a dark age – particularly in combination with the loss or scarcity of historical records that societal collapse typically involves. I suppose the only distinction people might draw between the term of dark age and the concept of societal collapse is that the former arguably involves a society of some historical prominence, geographic range, and chronological duration prior to its collapse.

‘Nuff said, really, except that the concept or phenomenon of societal collapse probably deserves its own top ten list (or lists) and not simply as an offshoot of my Top 10 Dark Ages.

 

(2) POST-APOCALYPTIC

 

Well now, most people would see post-apocalyptic as synonymous for the society or whatever’s left of it after the societal collapse. After all, apocalypse or apocalyptic have become synonymous with societal collapse – at best that is, since at worst they are synonymous with extinction events or destruction on a planetary scale. So post-apocalyptic is essentially synonymous with a dark age – and the Dark Age itself can readily be described as post-apocalyptic, I would presume by reference to the Apocalypse by some living in it.

Of course, probably thanks to both science and science fiction, we tend to use the term post-apocalyptic by reference to some contemporary or future apocalypse rather than a historical one. In which case, regression to a new dark age would seem the best case given the apocalyptic scenarios we face – certainly Einstein saw the outcome of World War Three as regression to a new stone age.

 

(3) FEUDAL

 

Usually seen as the defining characteristic of the European Dark Age – the feudal economy and society – and often by extension to dark ages projected into other parts of the past or the future.

 

(4) PRIMAL – STATE OF NATURE

 

Alternatively, the defining characteristic of the Dark Age or at least a dark age is often seen as a reversion to the primal state of (human) nature conjectured by Hobbes – the war of all against all, in which the life of man is nasty, poor, brutish, and short:

“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

For that matter, the term dark age might well apply to the primal state of humanity in its prehistory. The Stone Age is the Dark Age – the Bronze Age too, for that matter. Of course, the Stone Age doesn’t so much reflect societal collapse as precede the formation of society itself to collapse, although the two resemble each other – and it doesn’t get much more lacking in historical record than prehistory, another point to invoke the Stone Age as Dark Age.

 

(5) PRE-INDUSTRIAL – MALTHUSIAN

 

Ultimately, I think that there is a strong argument to consider everything prior to industrialization and modern technology as a dark age, given the vast improvements in almost every metric for our standard of living and quality of life since – indeed, what might be called a Malthusian dark age, given the Malthusian trap humanity found itself in beforehand, such that most, if not all, improvements in material conditions or quality of life were swallowed up by the resulting population growth.

During this pre-industrial or Malthusian dark age, it seems at at best humanity mostly was treading water with its head barely above the surface, so to speak – and at worst, treading water below the surface.

 

(6) BARBARIANS AT THE GATES

 

Up there with societal collapse as the defining characteristic that most people would associate with dark ages, as most people associate barbarians at the gates – being overrun by barbarian, external or internal – as at least a symptom of societal collapse, when not actually the cause of it.

It certainly is associated by most people with the Dark Age, that is the European Dark Age and the fall of the Roman Empire. Interestingly, however, that is a matter of some debate between historians. Some historians argue that it was more peaceful transition rather than violent fall. Even when it is accepted to be a fall, there remains the perennial debate whether it was from external forces – the proverbial barbarians at the gates – or from its own internal decline.

It also tends to be associated with contemporary or future post-apocalyptic dark age scenarios, as in the Mad Max film franchise.

Interestingly, only some of my Top 10 Dark Ages involved barbarians at the gates – the European Dark Age (and sub-Roman Britain), the Bronze Age Collapse (and Greek Dark Ages), and the Byzantine Dark Age.

 

(7) VESTIGIAL EMPIRE

 

Up there with barbarians at the gates as the defining characteristic of the Dark Age or European Dark Age – the vestigial empire being the Roman Empire.

Imperial or political state collapse, whether that state is left shrunken or in remnants, tends to accompany societal collapse and hence tends to be a recurring characteristic of dark ages in general, when not actually definitive of them.

 

(8) CHURCH MILITANT

 

Something of a dead horse historical trope, there is or at least was a recurring association with the Dark Age or European Dark Age with an ascendant Church effectively exercising a monopoly over the human mind or imagination – and actively suppressing cultural or scientific learning or advancement. Sometimes that association is to the extent that the Church effectively caused or prolonged the Dark Age.

Fortunately, history has marched on but it remains something of an enduring force in popular culture or imagination, such that an ascendant Church or something like it often tends to feature in the post-apocalyptic dark ages of fantasy or SF.

 

(9) PLAGUE

 

Plague tends to recur as symptom or cause of the societal collapse that is a defining characteristic of dark ages – even the Dark Age, where the triple whammy of the Antonine Plague, the Cyprian Plague, and the Plague of Justinian played their part in the collapse of the Roman Empire, possibly even the decisive part.

If the plague is big and bad enough, it can readily overwhelm society to the point of societal collapse or close to it. While I would hesitate to call the period of the Black Plague in Europe as dark age, I would not hesitate to call it as coming close in the scale of collapse or destruction, particularly in the areas worst affected.

 

(10) VIKING ERA

 

Do you want Vikings? Because that’s how you get Vikings.

Now we come to a specific aspect of the Dark Age – in this case of the proverbial barbarians at the gates, albeit not involved in the fall of the western Roman Empire but after it.

However, more than any other group that might be labelled as barbarians after that fall, the Vikings and their era have effectively become synonymous with the European Dark Age – not least due to their pervasive geographical extent throughout Europe (and beyond) as well as their time span. I understand the very term Viking originated not from their ethnicity as such but their occupation as raiders – the same raiding that was symptomatic of the Dark Age’s societal collapse and lack of political states with the resources to effectively oppose them.

The Vikings had their parallel in at least one of my Top 10 Dark Ages other than the European Dark Age – the Sea Peoples of my second place entry, the Bronze Age Collapse. Beyond that, they often have their parallel in the mobile raiders, whether by land or sea, in the post-apocalyptic dark age scenarios of fantasy or SF. I tend to quip about Rohan as horse Vikings in The Lord of the Rings, although whether one would label Tolkien’s Third Age or some part of it as a fantasy dark age is another matter.

 

(11) MONGOL CONQUESTS

 

We come now to historical events or periods that are not labelled dark ages as such but might well be or at least be considered analogous to dark ages – perhaps foremost among them the Mongol Conquests, with their scale of destruction in some estimates rivalling the world wars in absolute numbers and substantially higher relative to the world population. When you’re dealing with destruction on a scale that it is estimated to have caused climate change, you know you’re in the big league.

That said, I don’t think it could be described as a European dark age for Europe, at least outside Russia. While the Mongol Conquests reached Europe, they remained on the fringes – it was more a matter of the long shadow they case into Europe, with, the Mongol bark being worse than their bite as it were.

However, for destruction elsewhere in Eurasia – China, central Asia, the Middle East, even Russia – it might well be considered a dark age, albeit obviously a golden age for the Mongols themselves (which begs the historical question of how many golden ages for some might be dark ages for others).

 

(12) COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

 

Although arguably a golden age for Europe – for whom the so-called Columbian Exchange with the Americas was on the profit side of the balance sheet – that same Exchange as well as the Spanish Conquest might well be considered a dark age for the original inhabitants of the Americas, or indeed as extinction events, predominantly through disease.

Of course, the Columbian Exchange wasn’t entirely one-sided, but the more beneficial exchanges by Europe to the Americas tended to be reaped by the European colonialists rather than the Americans. One exception that might have seen native Americans, particularly in the north American plains or tribes like the Comanche, pull off something akin to their own Mongol Conquests – the horse – mostly came too little and too late to have that effect against the odds of increasingly industrial and technological opponents.

 

(13) MODERN DARK AGE

 

One would have thought the world, particularly Europe, to be immune from dark ages after the Industrial Revolution – but no, some have compared twentieth century totalitarianism, fascism and communism, or the world wars to a new dark age, with some justice to such claims.

Indeed, no less than Winston Churchill used that exact phrase of a new dark age for German victory in the Second World War – and in his most famous wartime speech at that, his “finest hour” speech (and just before the finest hour bit).

Almost if not as famously, British Foreign Secretary presciently spoke of Europe darkening at the advent of the First World War – “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time”.

 

X-TIER (WEIRD / WILD TIER)

 

(14) COSMOLOGICAL DARK AGE

 

Now we move from historical dark ages to broader use of the term – in this case theoretical scientific cosmology, which proposes a Cosmological Dark Age after the Big Bang until the formation of the first stars. As such, it is a literal dark age in terms of the absence of visible light from stars, albeit I understand there were two limited sources of photons or light from elsewhere even if those sources get a little too science-y for my brain to wrap its big bang around.

 

(15) CULTURAL – AUDIENCE ALIENATING ERA

 

It occasionally pops up for periods in or aspects of culture, popular or otherwise, to be labelled as dark ages because of their perceived lack of aesthetic value or because people just don’t like them – a la the trope of audience alienating era in TV Tropes.

Indeed, my very next special mention entry features two commonly used dark ages in popular culture, albeit not necessarily for their lack of quality but also as part of a more general usage labelling “ages” within popular culture.

 

(16) DARK AGE OF COMICS & DARK AGE OF ANIMATION

 

Yes, there’s a Dark Age of Comics, used as a label for the period for comics published from the 1980s to 1990s, albeit more for a shift to mature or “darker and grittier” content in comics than a judgement of lack of quality – although this period certainly saw its notorious excesses from the former that overlapped into the latter.

It follows on from the labels for ‘ages’ in the publication of comics following on from the Golden Age of comics or dawn of superhero comics with Superman and Batman, although I’ve always thought the Bronze Age of Comics to be somewhat nebulous in defining characteristics between the Golden or Silver Age of Comics and the Dark Age of Comics.

On the other hand, the Dark Age of Animation from the 1950s to the 1980s is proposed as a term for the decline of quality from the preceding Golden Age of Animation

 

(17) FANTASY & SF DARK AGES

 

No, I’m not referring to a Dark Age OF Fantasy or SF as a term for a period in the publishing or production of fantasy or SF in literary or other media, although it may well have popped up in such usage by someone at some time or another.

Rather, I’m referring to a Dark Age IN Fantasy or SF – that is, for the usage of a dark age or even the Dark Age (as in the European Dark Age) within a fantasy or SF setting. There are certainly fantasies set in the Dark Age – indeed any fantasy setting involving King Arthur, as I discussed the latter for my entry on the British Dark Age or sub-Roman Britain entry in my Top 10 Dark Ages.

I would argue that the Third Age as setting for The Lord of the Rings in Tolkien’s legendarium is a fantasy dark age – at least in large parts if not the whole. However, the archetypal example of a dark age setting is in SF, involving as it does a dark age directly adapted from the Dark Age with the decline of a Galactic Empire directly adapted from the Roman Empire – and that is Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series.

 

(18) DUNG AGES

 

The Dung Ages trope in TV Tropes, the Dark Age (and usually the Middle Ages as well) as a trope for the depiction of medieval Europe as a crapsack world, often characterized by the omnipresence of literal crap – or at least dirt, filth, or mud. The archetypal example of the trope (indeed the trope codifier acknowledged as such by TV Tropes) is the Monty Python and the Holy Grail film, in which one filthy peasant observes to another about King Arthur – “He must be a king. He hasn’t got sh!t all over him”.

 

(19) PERSONAL – DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

 

“Some are born to sweet delight

And some are born to endless night”

 

Yeah, I got the latter option, damn it.

That’s right – it’s everyone’s own personal dark age or decline and fall.

We all inevitably face one with either old age or mortality, although I think describing one’s old age as your dark age or decline and fall sounds much more glamorous.

Of course that doesn’t stop personal dark ages from occurring earlier in life – from archetypal mid-life crises (I like to quip that I’ve had a mid-life crisis all my life – or an all-life crisis) to other periods of pain and sorrow, breakdown, or depression. Although again I think that describing such periods as your own personal dark age or decline and fall sounds more glamorous, perhaps even transformative for coping or healing.

Strictly speaking, the dark night of the soul is a descriptive term for part of a mystical or religious experience, but “in modern times, the phrase dark night of the soul has become a popular phrase to describe a crisis of faith or a difficult, painful period in one’s life”.

And that seems a natural segue to my final special mention entry.

 

(20) S€XUAL DARK AGE

 

My usual rule is to reserve my final (twentieth) special mention for a kinky (or kinkier) entry, where the subject matter permits – and I wouldn’t have thought that the subject of dark ages would permit it but here we are. Once again, you’ll be surprised what kink I can squeeze out of a given subject.

A s€xual dark age could refer to one’s personal such age – the proverbial “dry patch” or “involuntary celibacy” in the parlance of our times.

The latter suggests a more contemporary and widespread sxual dark age, one of societal s€xual collapse – of widespread celibacy, involuntary or otherwise, among the population, decline in testosterone, ambiguity or ambivalence about conventional sexual identities, or decline in fertility or procreation