Shear idocy. The "Dark Ages" were a purely Western European phenomenon caused by the western provinces of the Empire being detached by an influx of Germanic barbarians (initially pagan, but by the time of the Vandal sack of Rome almost all Arian Christian heretics). Classical learning and high culture continued to fourish in the Roman Empire, which did not fall with the retirement of the last Western Augustus to a villa in Naples in 476, but continued with its capital at Constantinople, eventually dwindling to a city-state and finally falling in 1453. (Though the Romanov house in Russia was by marriage a cadet line of one of the last Imperial houses, and thus claimed the mantle of the 'Third Rome', and Mehmet the Conqueror plainly styled himself as a Muslim Roman Emperor as did some of his successors, so that the Ottman Empire might be argued to have been an Islamized phase of the Empire, which would mean that both the Christian continuation in the North and the Islamic continuation in the old heart-land both fell early in the 20th century, but I digress.)
Literacy was very high in the Empire by the standards of any period prior to the 19th century, and not confined to the clergy, nor even the clergy and nobility. Women were often well-educated (witness Anna Comnena's biography of her father, the Emperor Alexius, replete with learned references to Scripture, classical literature and the scientific theories of the day.) The author of the piece reported plainly buys the anti-Eastern line of Western European historians like Gibbon who want to claim the mantle of (pagan) Rome for their modern Western ideas, and therefore have made up the false name "Byzantine Empire" for the (Christian) continuation of the Roman Empire after Constantine moved its capital to New Rome (Constantinople).
Looking for a global or cosmic catastrophe to explain the "Dark Ages" is a bit like looking for a global or cosmic explanation for the American Civil War (or War of Northern Agression, if you prefer).
You sound an awful lot like JasonC to me. Lots of pompous academic arrogance. Got all the answers. Not interested in talking TO anyone, just AT everyone. Do you really think you will convince anyone of anything, or is your own ego satisfaction enough? Maybe you can get the same result with loud farts!
Now why don't you and JasonC go outside and play and leave it to the adults to think great ORIGINAL thoughts, speculative or not. This thead is not for amateur thinkers and pedantic regurgitators.
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Literacy was very high in the Empire by the standards of any period prior to the 19th century, and not confined to the clergy, nor even the clergy and nobility....(witness Anna Comnena's biography of her father, the Emperor Alexius, replete with learned references to Scripture, classical literature and the scientific theories of the day.)Yeah, one emperor's daughter is a great sampling for the literacy rate of the Europeans in the late Roman empire.
Then there's those tree ring thingies. Do you suppose the Irish trees were in cahoots with the Chinese scholars of the time?