Then there are the Iconoclasts. There was some stir in the 4th century, but there was a significant pause until the 8th century, and then only in the Eastern church. The Dark Ages began on or about 538 AD (and there's a fellow who has scientific evidence regarding the specific date the catastrophe that precipitated it happened). Anyway, 538 is in the 6th century.
BTW, BEFORE the Dark Ages began there really were more places of interest in the Roman world than AFTER. Things did not really revolve around Byzantium and its environs.
Yeah, but if you want to have any sense in claiming a "Dark Age" affecting the Empire, you need to go to the 7th century, not the 6th: the 6th as I pointed out saw the reestablishment of direct Imperial control over coastal Spain and Western North Africa and all of Italy, the construction of the Hagia Sophia with its original iconography, the completion of magnificent churches in Ravenna, where the icons escaped the iconoclasts.
And this in spite of bad harvests and a plague ravaging the Empire.
I mention the iconoclasts to point out that your claim of no significant works of art is ill founded: there is ample evidence that the art, particularly significant public art, from the period was destroyed rather than never made. The iconography in Ravenna, and the encaustic icon of Christ at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai with its magnificent pictorial presentation of dyophysite Christology are some of the most significant works of art ever produced in all of Eastern Christendom, and both are 6th century, and survived the iconoclasts because they were outside regions under their influence.
The sparse period in the Empire was the 7th century when external conflicts with the Persians, the Muslims, the Slavs and the Avars are quite sufficient to explain troubles without any reference to astronomic events. But even it produced the literary figures I mentioned in my last post.
Serious troubles and pressures on the border, but hardly the overthrow of the old order or the loss of learning the catastrophists are talking about, and a century off from when it should have been according to the theory.
I am not an expert on China, but I have a passing interest in the silk road due to a fondness for Central Asian cuisine. The sixth century saw the collapse of demand in the Empire for imported silk with the establishment of an indigenous industry. The seventh with the external pressures on the Empire was hardly a time when monies would have been spent on luxuries from far away. By the eighth, Islam had expanded into Central Asia, bringing wars which disrupted trade. And then trade relations were supposed to reopen after an haitus of two centuries? It took unified government (moreover by a power which didn't have an antipathy toward either Christians or adherents of the various religions of China) along the entire route under the Mongols to reestablish trade.
Yup. I believe I posted that article on FR but, I can't locate it. Maybe our expert SunkenCiv can.