<HTML>ISHMAEL wrote:
[...]
> The fall of Rome plunged the world into a dark age that
> lasted a thousand years.
Utter twaddle! I know that you LC types have a penchant for rewriting history, but this blatant untruth is just too much, not least because it denies the existence of thriving cultures in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and probably elsewhere. I suppose they don't count because they aren't (western) European?
The centre of Roman power was moved to Byzantium by Constantine (inaugurated as the capital of the Roman Empire, Constantinople, in 330). Byzantine culture flourished from before the fall of Rome to many centuries after the end of the dark ages in Europe, as did cultures elsewhere in the world. Even in Europe, to which the term 'dark ages' applies as a consequence of the lack of written records and (when the term was applied) paucity of archaeological records, the 'dark age' was only a few centuries long (normally considered to have ended with the reign of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor).
What sort of blinkered pseudo-logic do you use to jump from 'part of Europe for four centuries' (which is what the evidence supports) to 'the world for a thousand years'?</HTML>
