Padoke said, the Dark Ages happened hundreds of years ago. Sorry, they didn’t happen at all. There was a period when the current Western Culture is very embarrassed about its lack of importance. So, it is referred to as the Dark Ages. In fact, the culture was doing very well for itself, but lost interest in military adventurism and expansionism. This period was the Byzantine Empire. When western Rome fell into decay from internal squabbles, Constantine, packed up his Roman Empire and move it to Constantinople. He adopted Christianity as the official religion and had a book written in Greek, called the Holy Bible. This was not translated into Latin, until the fourteenth century by a monk called Erasmus.
During this period the good folk of Spain were doing well for themselves with another version of heavenly leadership and they also took good care of what had been developed by the Greeks, Egyptians, Iranians, Indians and Chinese and probably many others who don’t currently get recognized for their contributions to everything and whatever.
Both these operations of humanoid endeavor were built on slave labor, that is Spain and Byzantium. Slave labor seems to have been a fundamental part of Western Culture from the outset. Culture is mainly perception, so it can be argued that enslavement is a state of mind, just imagine, those chains around your ankles are actually garlands of flowers and you will feel a lot better about yourself.
The Vikings were the big suppliers of slaves to both the Moors of Spain and Orthodox of Byzantine. At one point they were supplying so many slaves, a goat cost more than a slave. I suppose they didn’t consider cannibalism. That would have quickly brought the price of goats down and re-instated the value of the humanoid slave.
Dos said, where did you get all this information Padoke?
Oh, Bod is reading some good stuff at the present time, replied Padoke.