The barbarians were fierce, wild fighters. They plundered the palaces of the rulers of Rome. They let the famous roads that led to Rome fall into decay. The barbarians could not read or write and cared nothing at all for the learning that had come down from the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians and Greeks. Life in the lands they overran came to be not very much better than the life lived by the cave men in much earlier days. No wonder the time is called the Dark Ages.
At last, however, the barbarians began to settle down. Many of them became farmers. But much of Europe was covered by forests, roamed by bands of robbers. Towns were small and far apart. There was little trade between these small towns. Not many people felt safe outside them.
But all through the Dark Ages the Christian Church grew in strength. The monks in their monasteries kept alive the learning of earlier times. Without the Christian Church the Dark Ages would have been much darker than they were.
While Europe was in the Dark Ages, other parts of the world were moving forward. The Arabs, who spread from the Near East across Africa into Spain, and the Chinese were going far ahead of the people of Europe. Art and learning flourished also in the great Byzantine Empire to the east. The Dark Ages were dark chiefly for Europe. And even in Europe there were the beginnings of ideas about government and trade that at last let the people work their way out of the Dark Ages.
