Re: Topic 4 -- Early World History, Level I

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Date Posted: 18:15:31 04/04/02 Thu
Author: Marie Grunbeck
Subject: Re: Topic 4

I do believe that the Dark Ages were really dark. When I say dark, I do not mean literally, as in the sky was dark. But rather I mean that the way of life was dark, in the sense that life was terrible and the people�s only focus in life was �staying alive�. Also, when I say that the Dark Ages were dark, I mean in comparison to present day. There are many aspects of life in the Dark Ages that contribute to the reasons why they were dark. However I have only chosen a few to talk about. They are that the ruling system collapsed, transportation between cities was destroyed, and the people�s personal hygiene declined.
After the fall of the Greek and Roman Empires, the civilized ways of the people were also lost. People no longer cared about having an organized way of living, the only thing that mattered to them way �staying alive�. This caused an instable society, including the government, and everything else that goes along with living successfully and happily. The main purpose of living to the medieval people was surviving, they didn�t care how, all they wanted was to stay alive.
With the collapse of organized society, the transportation between different areas was also demolished. This caused the problem of people not being able to find out what was happening in other cities or towns. Which in turn caused the people to be unaware of an attack from an enemy, people�s deaths, and any other news that was necessary for them to stay alive. Another conflict that the decline of transportation caused was the ability to travel from one area to another. If a peasant had family in another city, they would not be able to communicate with their other family members. Since the nobles were the only ones to likely have a horse or way of transportation, this was only an inconvenience to the lower class. However, in the upper class, even if people did have a way to transport themselves, it was nearly impossible to do so without being killed or injured. The dense forests between cities provided the perfect hiding places for enemies to ambush a traveler. Therefore creating a fear of travel, along with the other aspects that made transportation hard.
During the Dark Ages there were so many obstacles that the people had to face, that taking care of their personal hygiene was not among their list of essentials. As mentioned before, the people�s main focus was �staying alive�, which caused them to only concentrate on this task, therefore allowing them to forget about staying clean. They usually only had only two changes of clothes, hardly ever washed themselves, and no one noticed that another person smelled bad because they, themselves, also smelled. This created a general unsanitary problem in society, which may be one of the causes of early deaths during the Medieval Period. The people had so many other conflicts they had to deal with in order to stay alive, that taking care of their personal sanitation was easily forgotten and unnecessary.
Finally, the Dark Ages were figuratively dark in the sense that the majority of the people�s lives was spent trying to stay alive, rather than being able to enjoy themselves and live their lives. There are many ways in which the Dark Ages were dark. A few of these reasons include the fact that their government was unstable, transportation was almost impossible, and no one took care of their personal hygiene. Therefore, the people who lived during the Middle Ages only cared about �staying alive� and did not take many things into consideration when living, except the things that were necessary in order to stay alive. This is a much different perspective than we have today, which is probably why their lives were so dark, and the majority of ours are filled with happiness.

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