Survival. The Middle Ages (earlier known as the Dark Ages) refers in Europe to a period that started with the precarious survival of enough men and women to reproduce themselves. The feat to keep its numbers up against malnutrition, poor hygiene, parasitic infections, and disease in order to cultivate the land and support a new generation so that they could carry on the societal groups and reproduce themselves was, as late as 1000, hard for the medieval populace. The natural hostilities of climate made many a poor infant defenseless with a mortality rate of several hundred per thousand. Many adults' lives were brought to an end in their thirties by death from war or disease. Yet, medieval Europeans were not wiped out because after 814 there was a remarkable economic growth that was to make Western Europe a rich and powerful part of...