How long is an Age?

It seems to vary:

That makes sense. An age takes as long as it takes. It works, because the definition of the word allows for differing lengths of different ages:

The "age" is the length of time the historical age existed. Makes sense to me. They even have singular and plural forms where the same definition applies. So you could have the Middle Ages, which is plural because it contains "early", "high", and "late" stages:

My reasoning fails. There are three ages in the Middle Ages, the first being the Early Middle Age. But no, it is the Early Middle Ages. 

Yeah, it sounds better with the "s" on "age", but that's only because that's the familiar version. Why? Because that's how people say it, and that's how it is used. I'm sure it is not because if you say "early middle age" people think you are talking about people rather than historical periods. (I sure hope you think I'm trying to be funny, not just that I'm crazy.)

I don't really have a problem with the "s" on "Early Middle Ages". That's what it's called, and it sounds right. And people know there is just one of them, even though you say "ages". But I do have a problem with "Dark Ages".

Even Keynes, when he said "Yes, it was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years", he used the plural. What, an "age" is 100 years, and there were four of them in the Dark Ages?

I don't think so.

I know, people use the plural when they talk about historical ages. I know. I usually don't object. I do it, too. I was doing it today. That's why I got thinking about it.

I think when people say "the Dark Ages" they mean the time after the fall of Rome, the early days of Europe before nations started to jell.

Yeah, me too. But not being a history buff, I didn't know that our Dark Ages was not the only Dark Ages. Before our Dark Ages was ancient Rome. Before ancient Rome was ancient Greece. Before ancient Greece was a Dark Ages:

The Greek Dark Ages is the period of Greek history from the end of the Mycenaean palatial civilization around 1100 BC to the beginning of the Archaic age around 750 BC.

Before the Dark Ages before Greece, there was the Mycenaean civilization:

Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC.

Homer wrote about them:

Various collective terms for the inhabitants of Mycenaean Greece were used by Homer in his 8th-century BC epic the Iliad in reference to the Trojan War.

Before Mycenaean civilization? There was the "Helladic" Bronze Age. ("Age" singular, by the way.) According to the Wikipedia article,

The Early Helladic (EH) period (c. 3200–2000 BC) was a time of prosperity with the use of metals and a growth in technology, economy and social organization. The Middle Helladic (MH) period (c. 2000–1700/1675 BC) faced a slower pace of development...

The end of the Middle Helladic, together with the Late Helladic, make up the Mycenaean civilization. Let me stick my neck out and say that maybe the "slower development" part of the Middle Helladic was a dark (or dim) age that came before the Mycenaean civilization.

• 3200-2000 BC: Prosperity
• 2000-1700 BC: Dim/Dark Age
• 1750-1050 BC: Mycenaean Civilization
  
• 1100- 750 BC: Dark Age
• 750 BC - 476 AD: Ancient Greece and Rome
• 476 AD - 1000 AD: Dark Age
• 1000 AD - Present: Our civilization
  

See how that works? By this quick look back on it, there were two or three Dark Ages. No doubt there were other Dark Ages, along with other civilizations, that are not captured here.

I think our use of the phrase "Dark Ages" (plural) to describe the one Dark Age that followed the fall of Rome makes people think that there only ever was one Dark Age. But clearly there was more than one. Thinking there was only ever one Dark Age is a huge, huge mistake, because when you get a Dark Age, you lose a civilization.

So the point of this post is that from now on, when I talk about one Dark Age I will say "Dark Age" (singular). Only when I am talking about more than one Dark Age will I use the plural, "Dark Ages".

I had to go thru this. I hope it was worth your time.