[nathanbedford]

I take your point as well about the dark influences of Islam. The argument is that the Pirates of Islam shut down all commerce on the Mediterranean and so pitched northern Europe into a catastrophic depression as it extinguished virtually all Mediterranean commerce.

I think this is probably true, although I am not thoroughly educated on the subject and especially ignorant about the gap of at least 200 or 300 years between the fall of Rome and the conquests of the Mediterranean by Islam beginning no earlier than 620 A.D.

This was a comment I posted on your recent thread in which I cited the theory that the European dark ages were caused, or at least precipitated, by the advent of Islam and the shutting down of the Mediterranean Lake to Western commerce. So I read this article that you so timely posted today and it does appear that there is a gap between what must be described as the commencement of the dark age and the onslaught of Islam, that is, between 445 and 620 A.D.

Of course, we do not know if Western Europe would have recovered the splendor of the Western Roman Empire had it not been forced to contend with Islam.

[Rockingham]

Rome’s ultimate political form - empire - was corrupt, brutal, and stagnant. Its collapse was a necessay precondition for the development of the European nation state, a far more dynamic and potent political form that, in its greatest incarnation as the United States, looked to Rome’s republican ideals and the stock of experience generated by Europe’s nation states. Rome’s history thus proved to be far more useful than a continuation of the Roman empire could ever have been.

[SunkenCiv]

In the case of areas still ruled by Islam, the Dark Ages haven't ended.

But the Dark Ages in Europe began earlier and ended more quickly, and consisted of a large number of population movements, some of which filled in areas heavily hit by the invasions themselves and/or outbreaks of some pandemic(s).