We can blame 14th-century scholar Petrarch for believing the 'Dark Ages' were a time of primitive living. For centuries afterwards, historians repeated his idea that the early medieval period – roughly AD 400 to AD 1100 – was a dismal era when Western Europeans forgot the great achievements of classical antiquity in Greece, Rome, Persia and beyond. But many archaeological discoveries found in the centuries since suggest that the Dark Ages weren’t so bleak after all. Join us as we explore the surprisingly advanced civilisations of the not-so Dark Ages.