The Dark Ages is a term historians used to use for the period in European history roughly from 500 to 1000 AD, following the fall of the Roman Empire. The name makes it sound like a terrible time when civilization collapsed and everyone forgot how to read or build things, but this picture turns out to be quite misleading.

The name came from later scholars who noticed that fewer books and records survived from this period compared to Roman times. They imagined Europe had fallen into darkness and ignorance. In reality, while the massive Roman government did collapse and some knowledge was lost in Western Europe, people continued farming, trading, building, and creating. Monasteries preserved books and learning. Skilled craftspeople made beautiful jewelry and weapons. In other parts of the world, including the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic world, and China, civilization flourished brilliantly during these same centuries.

Modern historians often avoid the term Dark Ages because it unfairly dismisses the real accomplishments of the time. They prefer calling it the Early Medieval Period or simply the Early Middle Ages. The name stuck around partly because there genuinely are fewer written records from this era, making it harder to study, but that doesn't mean nothing interesting was happening. Sometimes the darkness was more in our knowledge of the period than in the period itself.