I WAS COOL, I THOUGHT!

This map is extremely inaccurate.

1) China was not going through business as usual China was going through the TANG DYNASTY i.e. the Golden Age of Chinese culture, which would lay down legal and social and poetic norms for the rest of Chinese history. The Tang is so influential that a lot of languages call Chinese people 唐人 (People from Tang.) (We call Chinese people “people from Qin” so.)

2) Japan is _first becoming literate_ during this time period (due to the influence of the Tang they adopt Chinese script), which is a BFD for poetry, religion, politics, society. Japanese court culture develops, which near the end of this period (11th century, around the time Europe enters “high middle ages”) will produce The Tale of Genji (by a totally awesome woman named Murasaki),widely regarded as the world’s first novel because of it’s deft use of irony and social commentary.

3) The southern part of Korea is experiencing the emergence of Unified Silla, a state that will last the entire period and will see the importation of Chinese and Indian buddhism, the construction of the first Confucian college in Korea, and so on.

4) In Mesoamerica, the Mayans are inventing astronomy, writing (the third and final independent invention of writing in human history), and a whole crapload of other stuff. This is the triumph of their culture.

5) The Umayyads in Spain are a massive center of technology, learning, and (comparative) religious toleration.

6) The Eastern Roman Empire, which spans both the green and yellow portions of your map, isn’t doing too badly either, bouncing back after losing territory to the Caliphate.

7) The Polynesians are colonizing the ENTIRE PACIFIC using amazing advanced navigation technology not rivaled until the INVENTION OF GPS.

8) I am not equipped to talk about Sub-Saharan Africa in detail (cue rant about how we never learn about subsaharan africa in the western educational system) but you can bet there are some major, amazing developments going on there too. I’d be shocked if there weren’t.

9) HOLY SHIT INDIA.

10) OMG SOUTH EAST ASIA. SOUTH. EAST. ASIA.

11) THEY WEREN’T BURNING WITCHES IN EUROPE DURING THE MIGRATION PERIOD (dark ages). Witch burning took off in the EARLY MODERN PERIOD, nearly 1000 years after this. Europe was going through some tough shit, which would leave them backwards compared to the rest of the world for 1000 years, but also there were some amazing things happening there, at least have the decency to be like “angry dudes with swords stabbing people” not WITCH BURNINGS FFS.

1) The Christian Kingdom of Aksum/Axum in what is now Ethiopa and a small part of Saudi Arabia had control of the Red Sea and much of the Arabian coast (and thus a lot of trade) and they had a major port at a place called Adulis. They also thrived on trade in the Indian Ocean where they created trade routes. The kingdom developed a written script called Ge’ez and the Axumites were reputable architects whose buildings are still standing. Other places, like Yemen, were also a part of the kingdom for some time. Unfortunately, the Christian kingdom fell with the spread of Islam happening all around them.

2) As mentioned above, the Mayans were doing a lot of great stuff, but they did not “invent astronomy”. Different people all around the world discovered the uses of astronomy at different points in time. However, they were extremely precise and their measurements were only a few seconds off (I can’t remember the exact number but I’m 90% sure it’s under 20) from modern astronomers’ calculations. They were going through the Classic Period during this time in which they built most of the structures they are known for today.

3) The Islamic Empire conquered North Africa, Persia, much of the Middle East/Asia Minor, and the Iberian Peninsula (that last of which through the help of Constantinople and done by black Africans, not Arabs). It was the Moorish Empire in the Iberian Peninsula that influenced the European Renaissance. During this time, cities such as Kairouan were founded.

Anyway, it was more or less anarchy until people got themselves consolidated and pulled themselves out of the mud or whatever, BUT. The term “Dark Ages” was coined in the 1300s by a guy who was making comparisons to the “light” of the glorious Roman Empire, and more or less ignored the advances made in various locations throughout that time period. I mean, yeah, you had the Norse vikings pillaging the hell out of everything, but they had to have something to pillage, right? Have you seen the Book of Kells? Charlemagne was in the Dark Ages. This alphabet that we read now was refined by his tutor, Alguin, intended to be easy to teach and read to the masses because you can’t have a good empire without good communications. William the Conqueror, 1066, that was in the Dark Ages. The Merovingian dynasty, which united most of central Europe from France across to modern day Poland or so, from north coast to south coast, that was in the 500-700s.