crusades, *cough, cough

I would sell my soul to the devil just to go back in time and wander around in these Middle Ages with a Jeep Wrangler

#2: with no gas station around ? Come on...

Uhmm our generation invented iphone6, art of memes, Justin Bieber music.. (And the Aliens never came back to earth)

There are two meanings for the term Dark Age. One is the pejorative, indicating the the age was a period of economic and social deterioration. The other is informational, indicating that the age in question is poorly recorded (i.e. like a dark room, where you just can't see).

Used in the first sense, the modern time range is around 5th to 10th century CE. All of this guy's examples fall outside of that range, so aren't part of the Dark Ages at all. Which is no doubt largely due to the fact that however dark that age may have been in the first sense, it's certainly quite dark in the second sense.

He should have chatted with one of his history professor colleagues before making this video.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate this day.
Happy Thursday to everyone else.

#5 The question asked by the course teacher was "were the middle ages dark?"
That period lasted over a thousand years and much of it was dark.
The Black Death is usually associated with the dark period.

#7 Danke

#5 Thanks for your insight! I get a kick out of this Bible-rattling propaganda. Here's some more that recently tickled my funny bone:

http://www.americaherald.com/texas-proposed-textbooks-termed-as-politically-motivated-and-biased/2971/

#2 be sure to bring plenty of toiled paper. They didn't have that back then, 'cept in China. (Also, #3 has a pretty good point.)

Prager University, eh?
Impressive name for a Youtubechannel run by a rightwing religious douchebag.

The Renaissance began in Italy in the late 1200's and not in the late 1400's as he mentioned. It took about 150 years to spread to the rest of Europe because of the isolation of medieval populations, so it didn't happen all over Europe at once. Basically all he's doing is pushing the starting date of the Renaissance to the late 1400's so that he can label all those achievements as belonging to the Dark Ages, and not to the Renaissance.

He forgot to mention the prior 700 years of burning people at the stake for saying anything different than Church dogma, widespread torture and terror by the Inquisition, the shortest lifespan and highest child mortality in human history, plagues, violence, wars, book burnings, and systematic murdering of intellectuals.

The Dark Ages lasted so long because there was no economy. In other words, it was a subsistence economy. Peasants would live off whatever there was left from the harvest after they paid the landlord. There was nothing left to trade. The Renaissance happened because of the advent of a new profession that had disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire: trade. Probably because of its milder climate, Italy was lucky enough to have a small surplus in production, which sparked this new division of labor and it snowballed from there: suddenly people who were not land owners started accumulating wealth. They were traders and craftsmen. They gradually became powerful like the Medici and other families, and shifted the balance of power away from the Church and its landlords.

This guy Anthony Esolen is an English professor. Why is an English professor lecturing on History? Wouldn't it be better if we let a History professor talk about History?

#1 US Marines, cough, cough...

#5 & #12 Anthony Esolan also teaches courses on the development of Western civilization .
He also did not mention the centuries of Muslims slaughtering their way across much of the
middle east and northern Africa during that time period, so I guess he is just misinformed.
#11 At least he does not believe in hanging gays in the center of town, so cut him some slack.

#12 makes the most sense, I would like to see your video next.