What are the biggest mysteries of the Dark Ages?

[Hannibal The Bannable]

Here is a crackpot theory that probably has many holes in it: the legend of Kumari Kandam, the lost land of Tamil legend (often known as Lemuria in the west) said to have sunken under the sea in the remote past might be a very, very distant folk memory of the proto-Elamo-Dravidian urheimat in what is today the Persian Gulf, which was flooded thousands of years ago. Given how nearby Mesopotamia was a cradle of civilization, I have read speculation that even older signs of civilization might exist at the bottom of the Gulf, and that the post-Ice Age flooding which pushed survivors away from the coastlines might have helped inspire various mythical deluges

maybe but Kumari Kundam was more of a recent nationalistic legend rather than a popular folk tale . The only reason most people even in the south know of it is because of the Dravidian Movement. Also the Iranian Farmer migration took place around 8000BC-7000Bc about 500 - 1500 before the Anatolian migration to europe . This would make Elamo- Dravidian if proven the second oldest known language family behind Afro asiatic

 

[PsyloSurgeon]

I don't think IVC was Dravidian.

There are dravidian substratum in sindh and gujarat. Dravidian is a good candidate.

 

[PsyloSurgeon]

Or even the Mundas, for that matter.

Mundas are austroasiatic, and migrated around 4K years ago from burma, so I am doubtful.

 

[dcharles]

There's a lot of countries we barely know anything about before X dates. They feel like some newly-released expansion pack area with zero background.

Like, what were people doing in say, Roman-Era Scandinavia? What was happening during the territory of modern-day Russia before the vikings came? Were the Veneti actually slavs? Is Eastern Europe just an overpriced DLC?

Hell, what people were doing in that steppe nomad land all this time? I mean, aside from riding horses.

This is the best evidence I've yet seen that we're living in a simulation.

Our owner hasn't bought the Dark Ages DLC yet. Maybe we'll find out when it goes on sale.

 

[eltf177]

Exactly what happened to the Vikings in both Greenland and Vinland and the fate of the Greenland Vikings...

Also the true fates of the Easter Islanders and the Anisazi Indians...

 

[Practical Lobster]

According to what @Gloss has read, they actually shared ancestry with Iranian hunter-gatherers, not farmers.

Ooof, the field is changing all the time. I know I read farmers not so long ago, but that doesn't mean the evidence hasn't been updated. And hunter-gather / farmer is a difficult distinction at a certain point. There's a lot of transitional stages.

 

[Sully]

A few ones that spring to mind for me:

1. How long did paganism in the Latin and Celtic worlds persist? Obviously when it comes to religion and belief systems the lines are quite fuzzy and Christianity often ended up blending in existing pagan beliefs (especially in the case of the Celtic world), but when did the Ancient Roman religion and Celtic paganism truly die out institutionally, or in its original form? You could point to the last pagan emperor for example, or the last pagan High King of Ireland, but surely the beliefs and the practices persisted untouched in some form for longer than this? And given that most records from the time were penned in monasteries, it's unlikely they would have provided the full picture anyway.

2. Who were the Guanches? We know they were almost certainly a distant cousin of modern Berber peoples, but everything about them is quite mysterious. Above all, how did they manage to migrate between very distant islands, several hundreds of kms off of the North African coast, considering their sailing technology at the time of the Spanish conquest was almost non existent? And while they adopted agriculture in the centuries prior to their discovery by Europeans, they were essentially the last Neolithic people in that part of the world at that point in time (15th century). So how much contact did they have with the outside world? And of course importantly, how long did their culture survive the Spanish Conquest in some recognisable form (although that's stretching well beyond the timeframe of the "Dark Ages")?

 

[Whiteshore]

1. How long did paganism in the Latin and Celtic worlds persist? Obviously when it comes to religion and belief systems the lines are quite fuzzy and Christianity often ended up blending in existing pagan beliefs (especially in the case of the Celtic world), but when did the Ancient Roman religion and Celtic paganism truly die out institutionally, or in its original form? You could point to the last pagan emperor for example, or the last pagan High King of Ireland, but surely the beliefs and the practices persisted untouched in some form for longer than this? And given that most records from the time were penned in monasteries, it's unlikely they would have provided the full picture anyway.

For Greco-Roman paganism, well, Zosimus (who was writing during Anastasius' reign) was probably a pagan owing to his writings.

 

[Father Maryland]

Not quite Dark Ages but what was the deal with the Khazars?

Also the possibility of pre Columbus non Vinlandic European ships reaching the Americas. Even if it was say basque fisherman secretly reaching the Great Banks and assembling temporary coastal villages for a few months where they could salt or dry their catch before heading back home.

Or the idea of say a drifting wreck making it to some bit of the Americas due to random luck and beaching itself even if all the crew was already dead.

 

[Mr_Fanboy]

For Greco-Roman paganism, well, Zosimus (who was writing during Anastasius' reign) was probably a pagan owing to his writings.

Maniots were largely pagan until the 9th century, no?

 

[ImperialxWarlord]

When did Latin stop being spoke and when did the people of Italy (or anywhere in the former western empire) stop thinking of themselves as Romans?

 

[cmakk1012]

When did Latin stop being spoke and when did the people of Italy (or anywhere in the former western empire) stop thinking of themselves as Romans?

First is a trick question, as Latin never stopped being spoken, it simply evolved and diverged over centuries into the Romance languages. The second is trickier, but I’d argue it happened fairly quickly as the “barbarians” asserted their identities on regions (even though they assimilated to the Latin majority in a cultural and linguistic sense) and provincialism quickly came into vogue.

One quirky exception to this is the city of Rome itself, whose citizens supposedly tried to raise one of their own as “emperor” in the 7th or 8th century…

 

[Whiteshore]

One quirky exception to this is the city of Rome itself, whose citizens supposedly tried to raise one of their own as “emperor” in the 7th or 8th century

Well, it was under the authority of the Roman Empire during this period (and would remain so until 751), so there's that.

 

[Nivek]

When did Latin stop being spoke and when did the people of Italy (or anywhere in the former western empire) stop thinking of themselves as Romans?

Was a gradual stuff like the Senate, I think Justinian brutality and the Longobardi invasion ended the Roman indentity in the Italian peninsula and started the regional ones.

And why Italian and no Roman peninsula btw?

 

[ImperialxWarlord]

First is a trick question, as Latin never stopped being spoken, it simply evolved and diverged over centuries into the Romance languages. The second is trickier, but I’d argue it happened fairly quickly as the “barbarians” asserted their identities on regions (even though they assimilated to the Latin majority in a cultural and linguistic sense) and provincialism quickly came into vogue.

One quirky exception to this is the city of Rome itself, whose citizens supposedly tried to raise one of their own as “emperor” in the 7th or 8th century…

Ok so when did it truly diverge from Latin to a Romance language? I ask because I swear I once heard here that some folk in southern Gaul were still speaking latin till the 700s. So when records show it going from latin to an early Romance language?

Once again do you have a date for when people stopped calling themselves Roman? From what I’ve read it seems like after 600 but not sure when.

 

[ImperialxWarlord]

Was a gradual stuff like the Senate, I think Justinian brutality and the Longobardi invasion ended the Roman indentity in the Italian peninsula and started the regional ones.

And why Italian and no Roman peninsula btw?

Yeah those two things definitely seemed to have wrecked what remained of the Roman state in Italy. Yah gotta wonder what would be different if he’d either never invaded or had done a better job and taken over as easily as he did in Africa.

And what do you mean?

 

[The Tai-Pan]

Ok so when did it truly diverge from Latin to a Romance language? I ask because I swear I once heard here that some folk in southern Gaul were still speaking latin till the 700s. So when records show it going from latin to an early Romance language?

Once again do you have a date for when people stopped calling themselves Roman? From what I’ve read it seems like after 600 but not sure when.

Neither of these questions have hard answers. Such questions are very fluid.

 

[Nivek]

And what do you mean?

Why we call it Italian peninsula and no Roman one as that was the very heartland of Rome

 

[The Tai-Pan]

Why we call it Italian peninsula and no Roman one as that was the very heartland of Rome

If I recall 'italy' is based off Greek names for the area that are way older then the Romans.

 

[DanMcCollum]

Ok so when did it truly diverge from Latin to a Romance language? I ask because I swear I once heard here that some folk in southern Gaul were still speaking latin till the 700s. So when records show it going from latin to an early Romance language?

Once again do you have a date for when people stopped calling themselves Roman? From what I’ve read it seems like after 600 but not sure when.

One of the problems with this, of course - is that most the learned peoples would have continued to write to Classical Latin during this time and so records (unless they're commenting on the vernacular speech of people) aren't a good determiner of whether people were still speaking 'Latin' in Southern Gaul or anywhere else. For instance, the Treaty of Verdun is considered to be some of the first evidence we have of Old French. It was written in 843, yet no one really suspects that the people of Northern France were speaking Classical Latin before this date, and that Old French just spontaneously developed that year.

The fact of the matter is, there was likely numerous varieties of Latin dialects being spoken throughout the Western Empire for centuries - with varying levels of mutual comprehension, and these continued to diverge more radically once central political authority disintegrated. Although education and the Church would have maintained Classic Latin as the Lingua Franca of the educated classes, this doesn't mean that this was the form of Latin spoken by the common people of, say, Picardie, Aquitaine and Verona. But, that doesn't mean that the people of these regions wouldn't have self-identified their language as Latin.