What were the middle or dark ages?

Answer 1

Many people use the two phrases the same way. But as far as professional history writing goes, the Dark Ages was the Early Middle Ages (476-100).

AnswerYes. AnswerThere are clearly some who make the names interchangeable.

In the UK, and some other places, the term Dark Ages covers the years from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Norman Invasion, 476 to 1066, and the Middle Ages is from the end of the Dark Ages to the 15th century, making them two entirely different periods.

In the US, and some other places, the term Dark Ages has been condemned by historians, and the term Early Middle Ages is used instead. By this thinking, the Dark Ages is an old term for the first half of the Middle Ages.
No, the dark ages are known for being an era of ignorance and a small collapse of civilization after Rome's downfall. It has a lack of records.

The middle ages is reguarded as the rebirth of society. It created a new era of creation despite being torn by war.

The main differences is warfare and technology.

Politically the remained similar.
Most people who use the term Dark Ages intend it to mean dates from 476 to 1000 AD, with the Middle Ages coming after, from 1000 to 1453. There are a lot of different starting and end dates for these ages, but these are typical.

The term Dark Ages has been going out of use, because it is misleading. Many historians use the term Early Middle Ages for the time, with the High Middle Ages from 1000 to 1300, and the Late Middle Ages from 1300 to 1453. This system makes the Middle Ages a time from about 476 to about 1453. Again, there is variation in the dates.

Answer 2

The two shouldn't be used as synonyms for one another. The 'Middle Ages' is by and large a reference to the Medieval Era (exact dates are highly debated but everyone more or less agrees with that this era is from about the late 5th century, with about a century or two lee-way back in time, to the late 15th/very early 16th) in Europe and the Middle East. However a 'Dark Age' can be categorised simply as a period in which either the intellectual and cultural progression of a society/region was stunted or a period in the past which we know very little about. For example, the fall of Mycenae and the events there after (c.1100BCE - c.800BCE) is fairly widely considered by historians and archaeologists as a 'dark age'. But truthfully this is very much a term used with relevance to the particular region, and therefore is perhaps more closely related with the concept of a 'Bronze Age' (Chalcolithic) or a 'New Stone Age' (Neolithic) which is generally relevant to the global location.

Often these terms are considered somewhat synonymous because there is a trend in the Renaissance to view the Medieval era as a bit of a 'Dark Age' due to what they considered as the overbearing presence and dominance of the Church and Papacy in society which often caused a reduced level of progress in scientific and reason-based fields. To some extent this is probably a fair view on certain elements of the Middle Ages but I personally believe it is too sweeping a generalisation on the period (and actually doesn't really do the period justice). The point however is simply that a Dark Age can occur anywhere/anytime whereas the 'Middle Ages' are a specific reference to Medieval Europe.

Hope that helps!