Dark Age Revisionism: has it gone too far?

[Guest Other-in-law]

[quote name='Lord of the North' post='1666503' date='Jan 29 2009, 00.27']but that knowledge had to [i]already[/i] be in existence for that to happen. [b]It was birthed out of the Dark Ages[/b]. This stuff was discovered through trial and error, over large gaps of time. It did not come from nowhere.[/quote]
A lot of it came from contact with the Islamic world through Iberia and the Crusader East, so native European cultures don't deserve that much credit for it; at least not until they expanded on it well after the Dark Ages were over. And those advances were birthed by the people who actually came up with them in the 12th and 13th centuries, not their predecessorsof the 6th and 7th centuries.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

I am not sure if I ever really saw the Dark Ages as being particularly dark. The Roman Empire was decaying from within and outsiders were coming in to fill the power vacuum. The characters that would be the focus for the next 1000+ years of European history were finding their assigned seats around Europe. I generally saw the Dark Ages as simply being the changing of the guard and merely a period of transition. It is like the time between card games when the deck needs to be reshuffled.

[Lord of Oop North]

[quote name='Other-in-law' post='1666514' date='Jan 29 2009, 00.41'][b]A lot of it came from contact with the Islamic world through Iberia and the Crusader East[/b], so native European cultures don't deserve that much credit for it; at least not until they expanded on it well after the Dark Ages were over. And those advances were birthed by the people who actually came up with them in the 12th and 13th centuries, not their predecessors of the 6th and 7th centuries.[/quote]
I won't deny that they made an impact, but this is partially what I am contesting.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Gothic style of construction evolved naturally out of the popular Romanesque style of the 6th to 10th centuries. The use of rib vaulting dates back a few hundred years earlier then the 12th and 13th centuries, and buttresses can be recognized even earlier, suggesting an rather early understanding of the physics behind the construction. There are also clear lines of arch development that are being analyzed by architects, which lead them to believe in a natural evolution of the pointed arch in certain areas of Europe (generally, the more northerly). It makes sense. Some crusader can't just go to Istanbul and come back and say "Hey, let's build a pointed arch!' and automatically know anything about doing it. Construction doesn't work that way. The local people involved need to know how to do it, and they need to try and master the technique. They have to understand how the physics work. That came through centuries of trial and error. It is not like trading small inventions along the Silk Road. You can import [i]ideas[/i], sure, but you can't really import understanding and expertise (Unless you import the people, I guess). I find it dishonest to say that the native Europeans do not deserve much credit for it.

[quote]And those advances were birthed by the people who actually came up with them in the 12th and 13th centuries, not their predecessors of the 6th and 7th centuries.[/quote]
In construction, especially ancient construction, this is not exactly possible. Your achievements are based on the past achievements of your forefathers. Inch by inch, year by year, they came up with new ideas, until the building stopped falling down. This was an exhaustive centuries long study of construction engineering, which helped to forge our modern understanding of the subject.

[Shryke]

[quote name='Elrostar' post='1666427' date='Jan 28 2009, 23.03']Ok, I've tried to read through most of the replies to this thread, but I guess what I keep coming back to is the extremely limited geographic region which one has to consider in order for the term 'Dark Ages' to be really useful.
As part of the basis for this argument in the first place, we had to assume that we were referring only to the portions of Western Europe which had previously been under control of the Roman Empire. But we're specifically [i]not[/i] including any area which is under the influence of the Arabs (such as the Iberian peninsula, the Middle East, and all of Northern Africa) or the Eastern Roman Empire (aka the Byzantine Empire), which would include a lot of Greece, Asia Minor, parts of Eastern Europe, etc.


And then there's some debate as to whether or not to include Britain (always the furthest flung part of the Roman world) and Scandinavia. Although there seems to be no question as to whether or not we include large swathes of Germany, even though it was beyond the reach of the Roman Empire.
But Ireland is definitely not included? (Perhaps I'm biased having read "How the Irish saved civilization")

The word that springs to mind is cherry-picking, I guess.

Why do people expect the Saxons, the Angles, the Geats, etc. to behave as if they had once been part of the Roman Empire and suddenly 'degenerated', so to speak. They were never Romans, as far as I recall.

But it just seems like taking a very narrow view to look at it through the lens of, say 'present-day France' only, and consider it alone. Or Italy, for that matter. Things were happening on a slightly larger scale. It's not surprising at all that the centers of civilization should move around a bit.

For 2000 years, the Silk Road was a centerpiece of civilization in the world because of trade going back and forth between the Mediterranean and China. All that was happening in 'the dark ages' was a small correction where the end point moved from Rome to Constantinople. Before Rome it was Greece. But the Dark Ages didn't interrupt [i]that[/i] trade route.[/quote]

What do you expect? This is history, where instant communication was a pipe-dream undreamed. A "Dark Age" is perfectly applicable if it covers a decent chunk of the world.

[Galactus]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1666265' date='Jan 29 2009, 02.46']Yeah, there are exceptions. Augustine got himself on the right side of things by personally going after heretics and by being a bishop of a far-flung region - he was a Manichean before and got all his own heresy out of his system early on. Plus, he was around during the founding of church doctrine and didn't have as much to run up against.

But mostly, the fact that many of the philosophers were clergy doesn't mean they didn't have problems with the church. Ockham, for instance, was excommunicated and exiled (which I'm pretty sure counts as fleeing the church....:)), and Aquinas had his own issues with the church as well (as the competing theory that religion superseding philosophy was more popular with Aquinas' position that they were reconcilable for a long period). Hell, Abelard was a monk and still spent a great part of his career fleeing from the church. And he only escaped the last attempt to condemn him by dying inconveniently before he could appear in Rome.

You could even argue that Ficino and Pico della Mirandola were able to get humanism and skepticism going because of the protection of the Medicis. Montaigne benefited from the religious upheaval in France due to the Reformation, but Descartes was forced to flee once it was back to being Catholic less than a century later. The list goes on...

ETA: Also, I'd say Aquinas is important for the history of ideas in a practical sense, in that he made the study of Aristotle acceptable to the church, but as far as pure ideas, I don't think he was the greatest philosopher of the Middle Ages.[/quote]

If you'll look at it more closely though, you'll find that with a few exceptions like Bruno, they aren't being persecuted by "The Church" but by certain elements within the church: They have their supporters, and some that are persecuted (like Aquinas) eventually have their ideas win.

Fact is that the church was the single most important institution for the transmission of ideas in the middle-ages. Not because they tried to stamp out on alternative routes (because quite frankly, for most of the period they didn't have that kind of power) but simply becuase they were an international organization with a common language and common methods of transition.

[quote name='Raidne' post='1666298' date='Jan 29 2009, 03.16']Really? I put so many qualifiers on it I thought I was cowardly skating around stating pretty much any definitive opinion whatsoever.

At any rate, that's the [i]argument[/i] I'm making. That's why I'm saying things like "you could say..." etc. I figured Galactus was saying that from his point of view, the church had little influence on the history of ideas in any positive direction, because, to the extent that the opposite is provable, we certainly haven't shown that it didn't have a negative impact. Therefore, the thesis that the church had a hugely negative impact on the history of ideas (which is the thesis I agree with and it's hardly uncommon) is still viable. I'm not saying it's proven.[/quote]

To be honest, that sounds like typical Reformation-era propaganda to me. There's some arguments that the church had a retarding impact in the 1400's and 1500's, but I haven't seen any serious scholar (recently at least) make the argument that the church as a whole had a negative impact. And I've studied History of Ideas too, of course. (although my main interest is mainly on other matters)

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1666388' date='Jan 29 2009, 04.28']I'm not ignoring cultural factors, just saying that this particular one is inferior and irrational.

Yeah cause it'd take a 'well lit' civilization to actually write shit down. :)

If the borrower dies, who throws the dirt?

I was going to mention the ordeal stuff, but I couldn't remember the term. I was gonna put 'trial by hardship' but I knew that wasn't right. Brain fart.[/quote]

Who is it that has witnesses swear on a sacred book again? :P (yeah, I know it's not compulsory) Ceremonies in the halls of justice are hardly uncommon.

Now, if you want to speak of strange, you should look up to the kind of compensation travelling musicians would get if they were beaten in medieval Sweden. (I wouldn't call it irrational as it had a very clear purpose)

[Red Sun]

:bow: @ Lord of the North: That's awesome. I'm not as much versed in technical history as I wished, but I'm always interested. You can talk to me about historical constructions every time.

As another postitive point of the clergy, you could also point out that they gave many Average Joes the opportunities for work. :) It's totally awesome that we can see how architectural forms wandered from Italy to Northern Europa, which might be an indication for a high mobility of construction workers.

ETA: Galactus covered the points I would make about "The Church" very well. It was much less monolithic than it's rumored.

[BranTheBuilder]

Back to literacy - just because a people have never been taught latin and thusly didn't leave any latin manuscripts for us to read does not mean they didn't write... check out the several Runic scripts from north west europe or Oggam - written languages that we have decyphered to one degree or another over recent years.

[Joanna vander Poele]

[quote name='tzanth' post='1665166' date='Jan 28 2009, 01.12']Try setting up an absolute monarchy in modern america and see how well that works for you.[/quote]
Oh, it was getting pretty close there for a while ;)

[davos]

I think its inaccurate to describe the whole period from the fall of the western roman empire the beginning of the renniciance as the Dark Ages. This time period is to complex to simply be lumped under one descriptive with any kind of meaning retained. The period from (and I'm going to use pretty damned round #'s, don't feel like trying to determine more precise dates from the beginning and ending of periods because they are almost always arguable) the fall of the Western Empire, say about 400 ad to a maybe 1000 was indeed a barbaric time that had little to recommend it beyond pure survival. At some point europe became stablized enough to start to scratch back out of the muck it had fallen into and developed an unique civilization with many features to commend it to future generations including highly developed art and archetexture. while this certainly wasn't paradise on earth, especially for those on the bottom of the fuedal power structure, it was also a vast improvement over life during the prior period. the medieval civilization peaked in the 12th and 13th centuries. It fell on hard times due to a number of disasters that struck it during the rather brutal and unfortunate 14th century that exposed its failings and undermined exsisting power structures. this paved the way for what we refer to as the renaicance, reformation and eventually enlightenment.

my point is that the period from say 400-1400 is not europes finest hours by any means, if one actually breaks down the period a bit there was a flowering of culture and civilization between say 1000 and 1300 that offers much to be admired. For that time the revisionist histories in many ways are reasonably accurate. For the first part of the period the term dark ages still can be rightly applied. the time from 1300-1400 can be seen more as a collapse of medieval society with consequences which can be seen to be nearly as far reaching as the fall of the roman empire, though in rather different ways.

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='Lord of the North' post='1666489' date='Jan 29 2009, 00.07']I’ll chime in with what I know, simply because it has been overlooked.

I know people like to wax on and on about the arts and philosophy....The craftsmen in the ‘Dark Ages’ were masters at what they did. There is no question about that. Their knowledge of construction and engineering was, in my opinion, greater than that of the Romans. The Romans were very well practiced in both these disciplines, but there were some fundamental problems that they were never able to overcome. They never really did understand the whole idea of “lines of force”, and as a result, were forced to build overly-gigantic walls to support large loads. This type of practice lacked efficiency, which was something that the master craftsmen of the ‘dark ages’ were able to overcome. All those ribs, buttresses, pinnacles, and pointed arches they built were not just for decoration.[/quote]

To pimp a former professor of mine a bit, there a book called "Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning" written by Charles M Radding and William W Clark that draws similarities between the architectural and academic advances from the 1000s to the 1200s as a period of discipline formation in both areas, as if there was a kind of specialization and discipline formation zeitgeist that was developing around the continent during those years. Both developments are part of the 12th century Renaissance, and, sadly for you maybe, architectural developments during the period can also be studied as the history of science or ideas, and not in terms of social history, i.e. how it affected the average Joe. And, at any rate, the builders of the period were renowned specialists and not exactly average Joes anyway....

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1666511' date='Jan 29 2009, 00.39']Wasn't it the activities of the Church (and Church-sponsored ones) that largely brought back and spread the Greek philosophers, which helped to thereby stimulate the history of ideas the led to the Renaissance?[/quote]

Nope, they fought Aristotle almost every step of the way. We're used to thinking about it like you say, because we all learn about the period later where the Church fought for Aristotle against the new wave of empiricism and that stuff about Galileo, etc., but Aquinas is noteworthy [i]because[/i] he made Aristotle acceptable to the church by showing that religion and philosophy weren't in competition with each other, but companions. They didn't even have Plato until it was recovered from the Arabs and Byzantines, and not by the church.

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1666578' date='Jan 29 2009, 01.59']If you'll look at it more closely though, you'll find that with a few exceptions like Bruno, they aren't being persecuted by "The Church" but by certain elements within the church: They have their supporters, and some that are persecuted (like Aquinas) eventually have their ideas win.[/quote]

Sure, it does look like they all had a rival, Abelard in particular, but as with Abelard, and because of the centralization you mention, they were mostly all brought before Rome (or, in the case of Abelard, were on their way when he died) in the end. And Ockham's conflict was [i]with[/i] the Pope in Avignon.

But look at it less as a question of agents and more of a question of [i]means[/i]. The church, and its vigorous persecution of heresy provided the [i]means[/i] for suppressing academic progress. What could Bernard of Clairvaux [i]do[/i] to Abelard if he couldn't have charged him with heresy?

[quote]Fact is that the church was the single most important institution for the transmission of ideas in the middle-ages. Not because they tried to stamp out on alternative routes (because quite frankly, for most of the period they didn't have that kind of power) but simply becuase they were an international organization with a common language and common methods of transition.[/quote]

No. During the dark ages, maybe, but after that the maesters and the developing universities were the most important institution for the transmission of ideas. It's not so simple, as the church was often the patron and ultimate governing body of the university, but I think we can draw a distinction between the two institutions, just like you would with the state and a state-run university. Basically, I think you could make a good case that it was a community of scholars, often working within the church, that were they key to transmitting ideas. Speaking of ideas that were transmitted during the Dark Ages, what ideas are you thinking of anyway? And when I ask that, let's not talk about Augustine, who was a product of late Rome. I'm talking about the 6th century through the 10th century.

To put as best as I can, I would argue that there were always individuals who were proponents of whatever the old system was, and fought whatever was new that was being introduced. Sometimes it was the Pope himself, more often some Bishop or Abbey or another. But it was the church, with the ever-present charge of heresy, that made it possible for individuals to systematically persecute anyone trying to make academic progress in philosophy - most often natural philosophy. In addition to what was suppressed, you have to also imagine what was [i]never even said[/i] because of fear of persecution.

So, the church as an institution was great in that it taught people (bad) Latin, and often sponsored academic study, but it also put a tight reign on what ideas could be put forth. You say that this was done without much effect because the church didn't have that kind of power, but when you can dictate what books can be taught in classes in which can't, what more power of censorship do you need? Even Aquinas was controversial until after his death.

Many of the ideas were transmitted anyway, but [i]slowly[/i]. And many of them probably weren't - we'll never know. I'll hold up the [i]very, very slow[/i] development of empiricism as an example though. Empiricism was on the rise back in the Roman Empire, and pretty early on, but it just [i]died[/i] for over a thousand years during the middle ages. Skepticism just wasn't even studied as a subject of interest during the entire medieval period, until Montaigne reconciled it with Christianity.

A good book on this is Luciano Floridi's "The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism." You can read the start of his chapter on the medieval period on Google Books [url="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=0eS8LC7fqgMC&dq=Floridi+Sextus&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=1G-Bm3djOl&sig=3hNY1BEVv2YCMgg-GnDvqHOCVpE&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPP1,M1"]here[/url] .

As far as what scholars currently say, I think we both know that scholars in history aren't going to say [i]anything[/i] determinative about the issue either way. Not very post-modern of them. And it is fashionable right now to point out the ways in which the church fostered academic development. But on the whole, I think it's evident than an organization cannot institutionalize the means for systematic and persistent censorship (with the added possibility of excommunication, exile, and even death...) without having a net negative effect on the transmission of fostering of ideas.

As far as background, clearly I'm a lawyer and, woe, did not end up attending a graduate program to study the history of ideas - particularly the history of skepticism - during the early Italian Renaissance and the later early French Renaissance, but that's my expertise and main focus on study, to the extent that I have one, which is to say it was my obsession for about two years and no longer. Plus the languages required were a bitch. :)

[BranTheBuilder]

[quote]about 400 ad to a maybe 1000 was indeed a barbaric time that had little to recommend it beyond pure survival.[/quote]

really?
so, the Holy Roman Empire was unimportant?
The formation of major nation states was only "barbaric " and a matter of survial?

come on, that is just rediculous - look at the art, poetry, social, religious and political influence of that era before making crackpot blanket statements.

On a related note - when talking about laws/justice it needs to be remembered that people thought differently back then, modern values would be as alien to them as theirs are to us.
also, why would a people with a culture and traditions developed over hundred of years adopt the Roman laws/justice system/language if they'd had little to no contact with the Romans.. let alone been conquered by them?

combine those two points and look at how people were expected to behave/ what was important to folk and you have a system based around personal honour - when a man gave an oath in Saxon lands he was expected to keep it even if it meant his certain death. to do otherwise was unthinkable to most people. (an example of this would be a Theign who had sworn an oath to his king. The king rewards him for this oath with land, silver, food and clothes. When war approached the Theign brought his men [who had sworn similar oaths to him] and fought for the king. If the king died in the battle his Theigns were expected, and honourbound, to avenge his death or die trying - to do otherwise was to make it known that you were the lowest of the low.. an oath breaker.)

alien to most people nowadays, but certainly not illogical in a harsher time.

eta: NB/ this value of honour was one of the main reasons why the supposedly more civilised Byzantine Emperors were so keen on having the Varangian Guard - a bunch of "northern barbarians" who were actually capable of keeping their oaths unlike the normal Byzantine troops who frequently schemed and plotted at a level to rival Littlefinger.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

[quote name='Elrostar' post='1666427' date='Jan 28 2009, 23.03']Ok, I've tried to read through most of the replies to this thread, but I guess what I keep coming back to is the extremely limited geographic region which one has to consider in order for the term 'Dark Ages' to be really useful.
As part of the basis for this argument in the first place, we had to assume that we were referring only to the portions of Western Europe which had previously been under control of the Roman Empire. But we're specifically [i]not[/i] including any area which is under the influence of the Arabs (such as the Iberian peninsula, the Middle East, and all of Northern Africa) or the Eastern Roman Empire (aka the Byzantine Empire), which would include a lot of Greece, Asia Minor, parts of Eastern Europe, etc.[/quote]

This. I find it extremely odd that we are ignoring half of Europe during this period.

[Ran]

[quote]The church, and its vigorous persecution of heresy provided the means for suppressing academic progress.[/quote]

The conflicts you're seeing aren't actually terribly different from some of the wilder arguments of the 18th and 19th century among philosophers, lambasting one another, running one another out of universities, etc. People were accused and cleared of heresy at the drop of a hat, it often seems.

It's hard to imagine a Western Europe without a Church in the notional "Dark Ages" managing to have preserved and maintain even a tenth of the scholarship that the Church actually preserved and maintained.

[BranTheBuilder]

[quote]The church, and its vigorous persecution of heresy provided the means for suppressing academic progress.[/quote]
to follow on from Ran's point - the Church was very interested in academic progress... just not in a way that is immediately obvious to modern eyes - when you have time, check out the massive debates that took place about the souls of animals/hybrids etc (a food starting point would be the "Dog People" debates).
in many respects the Church then was very active in the realms of philosophy, juts not modern philosophy.

[IheartTesla]

[quote name='Ran' post='1666228' date='Jan 28 2009, 20.08']Raidne,

If we're talking of the span of time from the founding of the Church to the Enlightenment... most all the notable philosophers on that period _were_ clergy, from St. Augustine on down through the centuries, William of Ockham was a Franciscan, and of course the greatest philosopher of the Western European Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, is also canonized.[/quote]

Look Ran, I know this is your board and all, but how dare you not include Roger Bacon amongst this list of luminaries. Although I'm not sure if he himself was a harbringer of change or just riding on the cusp of the waves of change. He was a Fransiscan as well, according to wikipedia.

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='Ran' post='1666864' date='Jan 29 2009, 10.55']The conflicts you're seeing aren't actually terribly different from some of the wilder arguments of the 18th and 19th century among philosophers, lambasting one another, running one another out of universities, etc. People were accused and cleared of heresy at the drop of a hat, it often seems.

It's hard to imagine a Western Europe without a Church in the notional "Dark Ages" managing to have preserved and maintain even a tenth of the scholarship that the Church actually preserved and maintained.[/quote]

They did, but without the consequences. Do you really think it would have been possible to have a Descartes or a Spinoza a few hundred years before? No one would have dared publish those ideas.

From my perspective the church did not really preserve and maintain very much at all. A bit of Aristotle. Maybe some Cicero? The history of these writings themselves is pretty interesting as an area of study in itself, but quite a bit of it came back through the work of humanists in early Renaissance Italy. Can you think of other examples of major ancient philosophical works that was preserved and maintained by the church?

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='cyrano' post='1666877' date='Jan 29 2009, 11.05']Look Ran, I know this is your board and all, but how dare you not include Roger Bacon amongst this list of luminaries. Although I'm not sure if he himself was a harbringer of change or just riding on the cusp of the waves of change. He was a Fransiscan as well, according to wikipedia.[/quote]

Yeah, [i]he's[/i] my pick for the most important philosopher of the medieval period, and a great example of a dude who had also some problems with the church.

ETA: I should add that I in no way think these people found science, philosophy, and religion to be contradictory interests in their own minds. I think - to simplify it greatly - that they are like the Christians who accept evolution and their opponents are like the fundamentalists who try to ban the teaching of evolution in schools.

Another ETA: I think you can see the influence of the modern approach to history as social/cultural/economic over the history of ideas approach all over this debate. From that perspective, it's no longer fashionable to talk about what ideas were lost, or the Dark Ages (and partly this is good because things really were exaggerated, like the whole flat earth thing), and so this is what is getting published. And so we have this focus on what value the church as an institution had. But in doing so, we've lost what we true about the original perspective on the middle ages, which is that a lot of the writings of the Roman and Greek philosophers [i]were[/i] lost. You can see the dichotomy now if you read, say, a philosopher's account of the life of Roger Bacon vs., say, the Wiki page which has been totally overrun by socio-cultural historians.

[Galactus]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1666899' date='Jan 29 2009, 17.24']They did, but without the consequences. Do you really think it would have been possible to have a Descartes or a Spinoza a few hundred years before? No one would have dared publish those ideas.

From my perspective the church did not really preserve and maintain very much at all. A bit of Aristotle. Maybe some Cicero? The history of these writings themselves is pretty interesting as an area of study in itself, but quite a bit of it came back through the work of humanists in early Renaissance Italy. Can you think of other examples of major ancient philosophical works that was preserved and maintained by the church?[/quote]

Put it like this, I don't think that, without the Church preserving those scraps, there would have been any interest in importing those byzantine and arab texts.

[Galactus]

[quote]Nope, they fought Aristotle almost every step of the way. We're used to thinking about it like you say, because we all learn about the period later where the Church fought for Aristotle against the new wave of empiricism and that stuff about Galileo, etc., but Aquinas is noteworthy [i]because[/i] he made Aristotle acceptable to the church by showing that religion and philosophy weren't in competition with each other, but companions. They didn't even have Plato until it was recovered from the Arabs and Byzantines, and not by the church.[/quote]

They did have some of Plato actually, in a latin translation, but only a few dialogues.

And the point is that "the church" fought Aristotle, but those who argued FOR Aristotle were *also* members of "The Church".

Quite frankly I think separating the medieval universities from the church is impossible: Without the church we simply put HAVE no education systme AT ALL. (and no, the church never really tried to monopolize education, it was simply that they were really the only ones interested in it)

[Jaak]

One simple and hard piece of evidence about how life got worse with the fall of Rome. Pottery.

A well-made, well-burned pot is not biodegradable. It can be broken, but the shards never rot and last forever in soil. It can be reused as a pot or a potsherd, for some purposes, but it stays recognizable as potsherd. It cannot be burned nor recycled by melting.

Glazed pot keeps liquids and can easily be cleaned.

In Roman context, there is a lot of mass-produced, decent quality pottery. Monte Testaccio, but there is also a lot of Roman pottery in villas and even in rather humble farmhouses.

Then look at what came in Dark Ages. Mass produced pottery vanished. There was some handmade pottery, poorly fired, porous and much more friable and brittle than the Roman pottery. The common people in Dark Ages were making do with much less useful and comfortable vessels. It was only about year 700 that some pottery produced for market returned to England - Ipswich ware.

Or look at tiled roofs. Again, an useful and comfortable thing. What came afterwards was thatch. Thatch rots much faster, is more prone to insect infestation and flammable.

Or small change in form of small-value bronze coins. The Romans had them, carried them and lost them. This meant that humble people could move about freely and pay their way in small transactions. Again vanished with Dark Ages.