in Design, History | December 18th, 2025 6 Comments
In the video above, UsefulCharts creator Matt Baker suggests that we not refer to the period spanning the fifth and the late fifteenth centuries as the “dark ages.” In justification, he doesn’t put forth the argument, now fairly common, that the time in question was actually full of subtle innovation occluded by modern prejudice. The real problem, as he sees it, is that the slowing, if not reversing, of the progress of human society that we’ve traditionally regarded as occurring in what are commonly known as the Middle Ages only occurred in Europe. What’s more, there have been multiple such eras in the world: take the earlier “Greek dark ages” associated with the Bronze Age civilizational collapse of 1177 BC.
All this and more comes across at a glance on Baker’s Timeline of World History, whose design is explained in the video. With characteristic UsefulCharts clarity (also demonstrated by the World Religions Family Tree and the Evolution of the Alphabet, previously featured here on Open Culture), it lays out all the periods of history we may know better by their names than by their relationship to actual events.
