The Dark Ages
Imagine yourself in a dark building not knowing what’s around each corner. You make your way through this building facing disease, hunger, war, pressure, and being stuck on the bottom floor of the building. This is exactly how the middle ages were. During the middle ages citizens were forced into religion and faced the issues following feudalism, hunger, disease, and war. In summary the middle ages were not a good period rather they were a time of darkness.
To start, the Middle ages were a time of disease. The black plague swept through Europe during the middle ages. The black plague was spread by bites of infected rats and fleas, it was also transmitted pneumatically through the air (Black Death Presentation). It was devastating, the plague wiped out 20,000,000 people, that was nearly ⅓ of Europe’s population (Black Death Presentation). When doctors came to treat the sick they wore special costumes. They had costumes that looked like a bird, they had beaks filled with vinegar and spices that covered the stench. They also wore outfits that were made out of leather or cloth to protect themselves from the disease (DBQ#2, Doc 6). So all in all disease made the middle ages the dark ages.
As well as disease another component that made the middle ages dark was hunger. According to DBQ 1 Historical Context, “The
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Feudalism was a social system during the dark ages. On the top of the feudalism triangle was the king, just below him are the lords and nobles, below them are the knights that protected the king(dom), at the bottom of the triangle were the peasants. They were the slaves on the fifes (DBQ#2, Doc 1). “For the majority of Europeans, life was hard. Serfs / Peasants were required to work the land.” (DBQ#2, Doc 2) This shows that feudalism was hard on the peasants. They were required to work making it a tiring and tedious job. Altogether the middle ages were dark ages because of