Why were the Dark Ages dark?
The more we learn about the so-called Dark Ages , the more it becomes clear that they weren t really dark at all. The phrase was introduced by historians to describe the period after Roman rule in Britain ended at the beginning of the fifth century AD. There is hardly any written evidence from this time and much of what we know from the early written sources was actually transcribed much later. Bede s Historica Ecclesiastica writings, for example, which provide us with the most complete account of the history of this period, date from the mid-seventh century. The absence of written records meant that the Dark Ages were seen as dark in the sense that we didn t know much about them. The description also came to be associated with the idea that civilised life collapsed in Britain after the Roman departure and didn t recover again until the Renaissance a thousand years later. Today the term Anglo-Saxon is most widely used to describe the period, which historians divide into Early (450-650
