Data : collections.louvre.fr/

Tools : Python, Matplotlib

I’m impressed by the sheer amount

Interesting the lack of middle age objects

They don’t call it the Dark Ages for nothing

Would be interesting to compare the Louvre (a European museum) to The National Museum of China. The profile might be quite different given the highs and lows of Chinese history compared to European history.

You can actually kind of see both the bronze age collapse (around 1000 BCE) and the early medieval dark ages (around 400 to 800 AD)

Add an overlay of art movements and empires

No self-respecting historian has called them that in decades.

This isn't r/askhistorians

And how is that a reason to promote long-disproved notions?

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And almost all of the objects from 750 to 1000 AD are from the Islamic department.

Then explain the gap. Are you saying no self-respecting historian works at the Louvre?

Very few historians, for a start. Custodians and art historians are a different category.

The gap reflects what's on display rather than what's held by the museum. The display is shaped by the pop history tastes of the public. Not to mention the Louvre simply specialises in the periods more known to the average tourist. Also, if you actually look at the graph, the late Roman period is the true nadir, followed by the period after Justinian's conquests. If this were an objective representstion of history, the contemporary Islamic and Chinese displays would have to be enormous.

The deepest part of the graph is in the 400s, when Rome was sacked, that's when the Dark Ages started. There's a very clear gap in this graph, from the year 200 to 1200. You can't say that this is simply because the average tourist isn't interested in this period. Just look at how many books, films and video games have medieval themes.

Another clear gap is at the Bronze Age collapse, around 1000 BCE. Historians have several different explanations for this collapse, none of them very satisfactory. It is a fact that civilizations collapse from time to time and historians don't have any consistent theory to explain why.

And that's why it doesn't really correlate. In the late 400s, East Rome and the Sassanids were doing just fine, not to mention the "Barbarian" kingdoms. And when you integrate periods, the gap around 476 smooths out. No-one even knew it when Rome fell, it was just a period of increased turmoil and slow institutional decline which was repeatedly slowed down and reversed. At any rate, we're talking about calling the Middle Ages the Dark Ages. The Medieval period wasn't even properly started when we see the lowest portions of the graph.

They have roughly nothing from the year ~400 or so?

How do/Can I use this tool to find the oldest and newest objects they have?

You can see where they got really good at looting.

There might be more Chinese historical objects at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan.

China went through a pretty hardcore "no fuck you dad" phase around the mid 20th century and destroyed a lot of stuff.

I can see the dark ages in this picture and I don't like it.

Our history teacher used to say "History gets thicker as you approach the present."

You cannot do it directly, I had to do some web scraping to extract the data.

Nice job scraping this data

I don’t know if it is linked, but in Paris you have the Cluny museum that is dedicated to Middle Ages (and has one of the most important collection of artefacts of this era in the world)

Wtf happened in the year 400?

The dark museum with the tapestries … really glad I went there.

Fall of Rome