Juli-Newsletter
Geschrieben von Andreas am 09. November 2003 11:11:49:
Als Antwort auf: Afrika und das Dark Age geschrieben von Andreas am 09. November 2003 10:48:33:
THE COMING DARK AGE
Newsletter
July, 20031. INTRODUCTION
This month's edition contains an explanation of the idea that we are
heading for a dark age, dealing with some of the common objections that
I tend to encounter, and a description of the 'Dark Ages' of barbarian
Europe.
Past editions of the newsletter are now available at the following
address: http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/Newsletter.htm
I welcome all comments, suggestions and contributions, especially the
latter. Please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be
interested.
Marc Widdowson2. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WESTERN CIVILISATION
Western civilisation will decline, collapse and disappear. What, am I
such a pessimist? No I am a historian. I know what happens. Rome,
Athens, pharaonic Egypt, the Mayans of Chichen Itza, you name it-these
were all great civilisations in their day. "But Western civilisation is
different," you will say. Perhaps it is, but the Romans thought they
were different too. Their climate, their legal system, their military
organisation-these all seemed to make their domination natural and
destined to last forever. "Yes, but our democratic principles, our
belief in free enterprise." What of them? In the world's first cities,
they elected town councillors, while business enterprises borrowed
money and issued shares. "But our high technology, surely that changes
everything." Such delusion! Of course we are more advanced than earlier
civilisations. That is inevitable. But everything we have done was by
standing on their shoulders. Don't think science and technology started
with us. It has been a long, continuous development, in which the whole
human race took part. The people who built the pyramids did not do so
without excellent engineering skills. Pythagoras's theorem was known in
Babylon a thousand years before Pythagoras was born. Paper, gunpowder,
the magnetic compass-these things that underlay western achievements
like printing, exploration and world conquest-all came from China.
Today our inventions are being spread round the globe. Anyone could
climb on our shoulders. "Yes," you will say, "but this globalisation is
something new-the fact that the world is now one." Sorry, that proves
nothing. The world has always been one. Did you know that Egyptians
were trading with Ireland hundreds of years before even the Ten
Commandments were laid down? We communicate much better than our
ancestors, but the Romans could have said the same. The world is more
connected than it was, and less connected than it will be. All
globalisation means is that the world will collapse together. "I can't
see our high tech society with TV, computers and so on just collapsing
and disappearing." Of course you can't. As T S Eliot, said, human
beings cannot bear too much reality. Consider the NASA managers who
launched the space shuttle in spite of many warnings. It cannot happen
to us, that is what people always think. You probably wouldn't have
believed that people could fly hijacked airliners into the Twin Towers
and destroy them. Today, you cannot imagine the demise of our society,
because it is a living, breathing reality. But to future historians its
collapse will seem completely natural-just as the collapse of Rome and
Egypt seems natural to you, now that those civilisations have been
reduced to museum curiosities. When civilisations collapse, information
is wiped out. Our DVDs and VHS videos will become as mysterious as the
hieroglyphs. Even if some genius succeeds in decoding them, most will
have been molten or destroyed by centuries of trouble. I am not saying
these things because I have some unusual ability to see into the
future. It is based on my study of the past. Everything I am predicting
for our civilisation has happened to civilisations before, and not once
or a few times, but over and over again. "Okay, if what you say is
true, well, it's a gloomy prospect, isn't it?" Actually no. That is to
look at it in the wrong way. Why should you care about the ending of
western civilisation? That will not be the end of our planet. Would you
have it that civilisations never came to an end? In that case, you are
wishing for Egypt still to dominate the world. No, it is not western
civilisation that you should be worrying about, but the human race.
Surely it is good that people move on to new and better kinds of
society, and that different regions get a chance to pick up the baton
of human progress. Our society is fairer and better at meeting human
needs than societies of the past. We have abolished slavery, for
example. But we are still a long way from perfection. I am not just
talking about things like drugs, crime and family breakdown. There is
also the ongoing waste of Africa's human and natural resources. Don't
think that these are minor issues. They have been getting worse for
fifty or a hundred years, and are tied in with the whole logic of our
situation. When civilisations collapse, the decades that follow are
times of great destruction but also of great creativity. These are the
dark ages out of which new civilisations are born. They are like forest
fires, which clear out dead wood and allow new life to come through. Of
course you fear disruption of the status quo, because it brings you
great advantages. But for many citizens of our planet, a dark age can
only be an opportunity. In any case, life in declining civilisations or
in dark ages has pros and cons just like any other time in history. It
is not the times we live in that determine how happy we should be, but
what we as individuals make of them. "Okay, so how long have we got?
When is this going to happen?" Look around you. It is already
happening. These are the signs that have always accompanied failing
civilisations: an upsurge in war; ever more laws but crime rising
anyway; a growing gap between rich and poor; mushrooming social
welfare; people turning away from traditional religion; buildings
cramped and using cheaper materials; art bizarre and restless;
immigrants growing in numbers and less willing to adapt; fear of new
energy sources. I could go on. Civilisations are judged by their
ability to create order and wealth on a global scale, and to win the
respect of lesser nations. In these areas, America is doing less well
than it was thirty years ago, and the west as a whole has been
declining for a hundred years. Stand back. Study history. Stop
congratulating yourself. There are big changes ahead.3. THE EUROPEAN DARK AGES
Historians first applied the term 'Dark Ages' to the centuries that lay
between the fall of Rome (AD 476) and the flowering of the Middle Ages
(AD 1000 onwards). The darkest period of the Dark Ages occurred in
Britain between AD 400 and AD 600. This was from the withdrawal of the
Roman legions to the arrival of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, the
missionary who brought the British church back under the control of the
pope. These two centuries encompassed the reign of King Arthur, whom
many historians no longer believe to have existed, given the complete
lack of tangible evidence. It says something about the darkness of
those times that one of its most important figures should leave no
trace except some medieval legends.
During this period, the Angles and Saxons arrived in Britain. This was
a hugely important event, as Britain thereafter became an Anglo-Saxon
island, yet virtually every detail is obscure. We know far more about
Caesar's visits to Britain than we do about the arrival of these
settlers. It is unclear whether they were outright invaders, or whether
they were originally invited in. It is also unclear whether they came
in a single episode or gradually over many decades. Nor do we know
whether the Anglo-Saxons ethnically cleansed the original Britons out
of England into Cornwall and Wales, as was once imagined, or whether
they mingled with the existing population in a much more benign
fashion. The whole thing is a complete mystery.
The reason that we are so in the dark about this period is, in the
first place, because there are almost no documentary records. There is
something called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but that was written in
later centuries and much of its information is unreliable. The only
contemporary record is by a certain monk named Gildas, who wrote a book
called On the Ruin of Britain. In this Gildas lamented the destructive
behaviour of the 'tyrants,' or petty warlords, whose constant feuding
had brought the country to a state of anarchy. As with everything about
this period, we are unsure precisely when Gildas lived and we do not
know how much of his account might be exaggerated.
Another reason for the period's obscurity is that the archaeological
record is much sparser than it is for the times either before or
afterwards. At one time it was thought that this reflected a dramatic
fall in the population, thanks to the turmoil and fighting that Gildas
describes. There may have been an element of that. However, the main
reason was probably a change from the use of mass-produced durables to
home-made items. In Roman times, the British used beakers and cooking
utensils made of pottery, often imported from factories in France. In
the later period, they turned to leather beakers and wooden bowls,
which have not survived so well in the soil. This change seems to imply
a severe breakdown in the economy.
The archaeological record is also poor because of a near complete
cessation of building work. People abandoned the cities and villas, and
that seems to point to a collapse of law and order on top of the
economic collapse. They fled to the countryside because large
settlements attracted criminals and were unsafe, and urban living
became impossible anyway if the shops were going out of business. These
were desperate times. Survival was the main concern, and it is only to
be expected that educated individuals who could provide us with a
written record were few and far between.
In its outlines, the Britain of AD 400-600 looks very much like, say,
modern Somalia-chaotic and impoverished. Or to put it the other way
around, if Somalia's turmoil continues for another two centuries, then
its archaeological and written record is likely to be as sparse as that
of post-Roman Britain.
At any rate, the two centuries that followed Roman rule are a missing
chapter in the history of the British isles. They saw the introduction
of new races, new culture, new language, and the beginnings of the
settlement patterns that have characterised Britain down to the present
day. Yet they left no trace of how this happened. It is as though a
veil came down, and when it lifted two hundred years later it was to
reveal a society utterly transformed.
In Spain and France, and to some extent Italy, the dark age came a
little later. Here it was the seventh and eighth centuries that were
the most obscure. However, this continental dark age was never quite as
dark as that of Britain. For a start, we know the names of the kings.
Unlike Britain's Arthur, historians have rescued them at least from the
realms of mythology. Similarly, on the continent, there was no general
abandonment of the cities, although in many cases they shrank
dramatically. Trade with Africa and the east Roman empire also seems to
have continued on a reasonable scale, although again it was much
diminished in comparison with imperial times.
Overall, the whole period from the fifth century to the tenth century,
in Britain and on the continent, is problematic for historians and
archaeologists. While we may be wary of the term 'Dark Ages' as a way
of writing off a whole era of European history, the term 'dark age' in
a narrower, technical sense seems very logical. Quite simply, a dark
age is dark in the sense that we do not know what happened in it.