rise and fall

The idea of a worldwide Dark Age or universal decline in man’s knowledge may be difficult to accept because the broad deterioration of ancient civilizations didn’t happen at an even pace in all geographic regions, and records are very sketchy. The Arab and Chinese civilizations, for example, are believed to have held up relatively well while many European cities succumbed to the worst of the Dark Ages. Some of the ancient Greek and Roman knowledge that was lost after the burning of the Alexandria Library and in the subsequent Dark Ages did survive under Arab protection, and when combined with their own knowledge, helped these people move ahead of Europe in the early phase of the recovery or Renaissance period