A dark age is a time without government, without trade, and without any sense of community. It is a time of everyone for him or herself. During a dark age, mere survival is the only concern. No one has the leisure for any higher activity, including keeping records. That is why a dark age is dark. Its principal feature is that we know nothing of what took place in it.
A dark age is a melting pot when the old, exhausted institutions of a society are broken down and destroyed. Something new and better suited to human needs can then be built up in their place.
	The Fall of Babylon by John Martin (detail)

The Dark Ages is the popular name for the centuries that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe. This was by no means the first dark age. Such episodes are common throughout history, and have occurred on every continent.