Dark Ages

Dark Ages may refer to:

In history and sociology

• Dark Ages (historiography), the concept of a period of intellectual darkness that supposedly occurred in Europe following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
  • the European Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries AD), especially:
    • depiction of the Middle Ages in popular culture
    • the Western European Early Middle Ages (ca. 500 to 1000 AD)
    • the Migration period of ca. 300 to 700 AD
    • the saeculum obscurum or "dark age" in the history of the Papacy, running from 904-964
  • Note: medieval historians today usually avoid the term "Dark Ages" for the above periods, see Dark Ages (historiography) for further discussion.
• the Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1100 BC–750 BC), a period in the history of Ancient Greece and Anatolia from which no records, and only scant archaeological evidence, survive. Tied into the wider Bronze Age collapse.
• the Dark Ages of Cambodia (ca. 1450-1863)
• a hypothetical Digital Dark Age

In astrophysics

• Dark Ages, in Big Bang cosmology, a nickname for the time between Recombination (of electrons with hydrogen and helium nuclei) and Reionization

In music

• Dark Ages (album) by Soulfly
• The Dark Ages, an EP by Andrea Parker
• "Dark Ages", a song by Jethro Tull on their 1979 album Stormwatch
• "Dark Ages", a song by the Yngwie J. Malmsteen on his 1986 album Trilogy
• "Dark Ages", a song by NoMeansNo on their 1988 album Small Parts Isolated and Destroyed
• Dark Age (band), a German melodic death metal band
• Dark Ages (band), a Ukrainian dark ambient band

In entertainment

• Dark Age of Comic Books (1986-late 1990s), a period in the American comics industry
• Dark Ages (1991 computer game), a platform game by Apogee Software
• Dark Ages (computer game), an MMORPG by KRU Interactive
• Dark Ages (TV series), a 1999 ITV comedy series set in England in AS 999, parodying 1999's millennial fears
• The Dark Ages (2007), a 2-hour History Channel documentary directed by Christopher Cassel
• "The Dark Age", an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer