Comment by peckrob

> In fact, without the rising Arab civilization undertaking huge efforts to acquire and preserve what the Western countries were discarding as "unchristian", we would have lost even more knowledge than we did.

Not to discount the advancements of Arab world during this time period, but this is not an either/or thing and is much, much more complex than you are portraying it. Large amounts of knowledge were actually preserved by the church (mostly in monasteries) and the parallel church structure set up during the latter periods of the Western Roman empire helped cushion the decline of the West as Rome shifted East.

The "Dark Ages" were not dark (which is why historians have almost universally quit using that term in favor of "Middle Ages") and are a very complex and interesting time period.

I highly recommend Dan Carlin's excellent Hardcore History episode "Thor's Angels" [0]. He spends four hours talking about just this very specific period (what happened in Europe when Rome declined), and spends lots of time talking about the church's role in stabilizing what could have been a whole lot worse.

[0] http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-41-thors-a...