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1st Answer The Dark Ages, while still interchangeable with the Middle Ages, is historically different. The Dark Ages are typically more associated, academically speaking, to the Early Middle Ages which spans from the fall of Rome to about 1000 AD. 2nd Answer This question is subjective, so perhaps it should get a subjective answer.

Both the terms Middle Ages and Dark Ages are misleading, and personally I think neither should be used.

The idea of the Middle Ages came about because the people after the time wanted to compare themselves favorably with ancient Rome, and did so by denigrating the people who had gone before them.

The idea of the Dark Ages is that people were ignorant.

But a study of the periods that get these names tells me, and other people I know who are educated on the subject, that the Middle Ages were not inferior to the Renaissance and might have been less ignorant.

Consider, witch hunts began very late in the Middle Ages and continued to become more common and more deadly through the Renaissance and Reformation.

Take a look at art of the middle ages. Admittedly it is less realistic than the art of Michelangelo, but I can hardly buy the idea that it is really all inferior to the art of the Renaissance in any objective way.

The Church and civil authorities did not try to regulate science in the Middle Ages, but they did in the Renaissance.

We look at the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages through a lens that was strongly colored by the people of the Renaissance, and the effect of this is misunderstanding. Calling the period dark is only a part of this, but it is not helpful.

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The Dark Ages was never a synonym for the Mediaeval period, but used to be applied to the less-well known, unstable time following the end of the Roman Empire and its relatively high standards of living; and possibly ending with the time of the Saxons.

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