The middle ages referred to the period of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the discovery of Columbus of the new world but there is no true indication to verify this fact. This happened between 500-ca-1500 AD. This age was further divided into three stages: the early middle ages, the high middle age, and the late middle ages. The three were characterized by influence of Christianity in day-to-day living. Christianity had a huge hold over the people. It was referred to as dark ages because of low levels of learning and the backward ways that used to prevail. It was an era of ignorance, superstition, or social chaos or repression, the general population was more concerned with agriculture to maintain their livelihood. In this era, there were many important innovations in farming resulting in greater crop yield and therefore greater stability.
In these dark ages, the literacy levels were very low. Learning was infamous. The New and the Old Testaments were viewed as the only source of truth and wisdom. The observations and explanations of the natural phenomena were not supposed to contradict the divine truth recorded in the bible. These are the beliefs for example that made the great Copernicus Nicolaus and his knowledge on heliocentric (a model of the solar system that has the sun as the center), as opposed to the geocentric (a model of the solar system that has the earth as the central point) withhold until he was on the death bed. They perceived the wilderness to be realm of evil power that the church had to overcome.They overcame these evil spirits by clearing the world forests and went to the extent of cutting down the grooves used by pagans to pray. They built their houses with small and high windows covered by sheets of oily paper.
Glass windows were a preserve for the churches and the mighty. The glass windows were very thick, blurry and embossed with lumps like beads or bottle tops. Lamps were fairly common and consisted of a wick floating on vegetable oil or fish oil. They produced foul smell but burnt long. The church alone dealt with education whereby it conducted informal training which was mostly embroidery and goldsmithing for making the church ornaments and vestments. However as the middle age progressed to late middle age, reading and writing were introduced although done in Latin where students were trained to be clerks. They were later to work in the governments and churches. They were taught with the aid of grammar mostly from chanting recitations rather than visual configurations. The learners acquired morphology in the present time. They later associated this learning with what they knew to be passive. Most of the work done in this era was characterized by many errors. It was also marked by shortage of good literature and cultural achievements. Works written by pagans were interpreted biblically.
It is in the late middle age that higher education was introduced. Works previously written in Greek begun to be interpreted to Latin. These works included those done by Aristotle and Plato. This era was a beginning of a laborious process by which the whole edifice of the western culture singularity was erected. It is in this that the reformations nurtured in the later ages begun to bear fruits and individualism sufficed. In the late half of the century, England came up with industrial revolution. This period to some extent remains unclear. The hardships of the era and the religious conflicts all worked together to shroud the era in dimming light.