"Dark Ages" vs. "Middle Ages"
After the fall of Rome in 476 AD, the subsequent 1000 years made up a period of time called the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are often referred to as the Dark Ages because of the way of life in Europe during that age. William Manchester suggests that this time period was actually a dark age, in his A World Lit Only By Fire. Manchester describes the ‘Dark Ages’ as a “mélange of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness”. He also states how famines and plague repetitively thinned the population, and that “rickets afflicted the survivors”. Manchester strengthens his argument by establishing the fact that after a thousand years of neglect, the roads built by Romans were still the best on the continent, and that their was practically no stone buildings raised for ten centuries. Another situation that Manchester comments on is that only one of every hundred murderers was every......
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