Talk:Essay:Greatest Mysteries of World History

Dark Ages

I have to ask: does this really qualify as a "mystery?" Most people who have actually taken the time to study European history, I would suggest, would say that there's a clear and simple answer: "No, the so-called "Dark Ages" weren't really so backwards." Significant advances were made during the period generally termed the "Dark Ages" in many fields: music, agriculture, metallurgy, and philosophy spring to mind immediately. Historians today generally avoid using the term "Dark Ages" for precisely that reason.

Should it really be termed a "mystery" just because some people continue to hold misconceptions about it? --Benp 14:11, 28 December 2008 (EST)

Yes, it's not a mystery at all. Renaissance humanists hated the "dark ages" with a passion. Now we know just how much science and culture were developed during those centuries. Not so much a mystery as a myth, really (liberals love to claim early Christian Europe was fruitless) - Rod Weathers 14:14, 28 December 2008 (EST)

Perhaps a better question would be "Why are the advances of the early Middle Ages frequently overlooked or dismissed?" --Benp 14:19, 28 December 2008 (EST)

Humor

Perhaps this entry could be clarified: is there a particular form of humor that the author had in mind? There are examples of jokes, riddles, puns, comic figurines/images, anthropoligical notes of humorous conversations, etc. from both pre-Christian times and from post-Christian 'first contacts' with cultures that had had no previous exposure to Christianity.--Brossa 09:37, 8 February 2009 (EST)

Brossa: Can you provide some? --AbnerY 21:51, 8 February 2009 (EST)