Ancient Dark Age

The Dark Ages is the story of the birth of Western civilization. It was a harrowing crucible of war, destruction, and faith. For over 100 years, Charles Oman's famous history has remained one of the finest sources for the study of this period. Covering a period of 500 years and an area stretching from Northern Germany to Egypt, this is the definitive history that will alter your conceptions of a period of history that gave birth to the civilization we live in today.

In 1177 BC, the Bronze Age world collapsed. Palaces burned. Trade networks vanished. Writing stopped. But people didn't disappear. For three hundred years, survivors adapted to a world without palaces, without long-distance trade, without the systems their ancestors had built over millennia. They simplified. They migrated. They forgot old skills and invented new ones. And eventually, they built something new—the foundation of the classical world we still inherit today. The First Dark Age tells the forgotten story of what happened after the collapse: How ordinary people lived when the ...

Prizewinning historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the Dark Ages in European history with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of new material and featuring a thoughtful synthesis of historical and archaeological approaches, Wickham argues that these centuries were critical in the formulation of European identity. Far from being a middle period between more significant epochs, this age has much to tell us in its own right about the progress of culture and the development of political thought.

They came from the silence of the vast Eurasian steppe, a force of nature that shattered the peace of the Roman world and redrew the map of a continent. The Huns were not merely a migrating tribe, but a terrifying military machine that drove nations before them and brought the mightiest emperors to their knees. This book plunges you into the chaos of late antiquity, where the old order collapsed under the hooves of a new, unstoppable predator. At the center of this storm stands Attila, a figure who transcended history to become the very definition of the "Scourge of God." You will go beyond...

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Updated throughout with recent developments and additional illustrations Reveals how solar outbursts caused the end of the last ice age, unleashed catastrophe upon ancient advanced civilizations, and led to six millennia of a Solar-Induced Dark Age Includes evidence from solar...

Late one evening, en route to visit a relative, an accident leaves Tory - the attractive, twenty-something daughter of a prominent history professor – stranded near a ring of stones in Britain. Tory resolves to spend the night at the stone circle and seek help in the morning... But across the vortex of time and space, she is taken back to the Dark Age.

When people think of ancient Greece, images of philosophers such as Plato or Socrates often come to mind, as do great warriors like Pericles and Alexander the Great. But hundreds of years before Athens became a city, a Greek culture flourished and spread its tentacles throughout the Western Mediterranean region via trade and warfare. Scholars have termed this pre-Classical Greek culture the Mycenaean culture, which existed from about 2000 to 1200 BCE, when Greece, along with much of the Eastern Mediterranean, was thrust into a centuries-long Dark Ages.

Filled with unforgettable stories of emperors, generals, and religious patriarchs, as well as fascinating glimpses into the life of the ordinary citizen, Lost to the West reveals how much we owe to the Byzantine Empire that was the equal of any in its achievements, appetites, and enduring legacy...

Magic, danger, and epic fantasy collide in this spellbinding first book of the Silent Archmage series, where an archmage seeking peace enrolls in a magic academy, only to be swept into a treacherous magical adventure. Syl, an archmage who tirelessly fought the monsters spilling from the magical...

In The Fall of Rome, eminent historian Bryan Ward-Perkins argues that the "peaceful" theory of Rome's "transformation" is badly in error. Indeed, he sees the fall of Rome as a time of horror and dislocation that destroyed a great civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Attacking contemporary theories with relish and making use of modern archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans.

Laurel Voss is supposed to be a student, not the spine of a haunted university. After surviving Ashbourne’s living foundations, Laurel knows the campus isn’t just cursed—it’s watching, remembering, and writing its own story through the runes carved into her bones. Now the High Arcanum has arrived with gray coats, null-stone, and polite threats. To them, Laurel is a rare asset: the girl who hears the Hollow breathe, a problem they can relocate to a lab or seal under stone. To the Hollow, she’s something worse and better—its chosen anchor, the one person who can nudge the ...

Alisa has spent the past five thousand years as a vampire, living alone and fighting for survival. In her loneliness, Alisa cannot resist bringing Teri—a descendant of her human family—into her life. But Alisa is surrounded by death and destruction, and just by knowing Alisa, Teri’s life...

Seeress Meddi has been restored to her rightful position of influence within the Eorlingas tribe. But a heavy cloud hangs over the tribe's survival with the escape of the treacherous Elen who seeks to exact a bloody vengeance following Meddi's reinstatement and her downfall. Meddi knows Elen will return to settle the blood feud and the tribe must be ready to face this deadly threat with iron. Meanwhile, Wærmund, a warrior of Saxon descent, has escaped his enforced captivity and vows vengeance against his captors.

“The Map of Knowledge is an endlessly fascinating book, rich in detail, capacious and humane in vision.” —Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, winner of the Pulitzer Prize After the Fall of Rome, when many of the great ideas of the ancient world were...

Laurel Voss came to Ashbourne University for dead languages, not living magic. She’s a scholarship girl with ink on her fingers and a strict promise to her parents: real subjects only. No dueling circles, no dangerous spellcraft, and definitely no getting attached to anyone with power over her future. Then she takes an archives job beneath the gothic library and finds a thin, nameless book that hums in her hands. To everyone else, its pages are blank. To Laurel, the runes blur into meaning—whispers of foundations that remember, “anchors” made of flesh and will, and a hungry presence...

Laurel Voss survived binding the monster under Ashbourne. Now the Arcanum wants to turn her into a manual. Almost a year after the infirmary circle, Laurel is back to lectures and late nights in the archives, carrying two heartbeats in her chest and a script along her bones. Ashbourne’s hum has settled from teeth to spine, and she’s clinging to the illusion of a “normal” life with ink-stained notes, stolen hours with Professor Graham Ellis, and a Covenant that’s supposed to keep both her and the world safe. Then other places start to go wrong. Mislabeled shelves in a sleepy town ...

The second thrilling installment in the epic Silent Archmage fantasy series unveils a tale of magic, war, and a kingdom on the brink of destruction. War is coming. The kingdom is not ready…but Syl is. Syl’s first semester at the Aurian Magical Institute has been more eventful than he hoped...

In November 1095, Pope Urban II stood before a crowd in central France and issued a call that would send tens of thousands of people on a journey most would never complete. What followed was not merely a military campaign but a mass movement that reshaped the medieval world, dragging peasants and princes alike across thousands of miles of hostile territory toward a city most had only heard of in scripture. The First Crusade remains one of history's most improbable ventures, a collision of religious fervor, political calculation, and raw human endurance that ended in triumph and atrocity in ...

The Greek Dark Ages, sometimes referred to as the Homeric Age or the Geometric Period, spans the era of Greek history from the end of the Mycenaean civilization around 1100 BCE and the emergence of the Greek poleis in the 9th century BCE.