I wrote a while back about how King Arthur definitely didn't exist.
If there was a "real" Arthur, he would have been a Celtic, Latin-speaking soldier living somewhere in what is now the north or west of England, fighting the Saxons who were invading/settling.
But the evidence for even that much is thin. The thing is, we know a bit about Roman Britain, but not that much. The Roman records that have survived don't talk about it all that much – it was a bit of a backwater, compared to Rome or Byzantium or Alexandria.
And after the Roman military left, sometime around 410 CE, we know almost nothing.
For the next 150 years or so, there are only a few scraps of knowledge. An angry rant by a monk called Gildas about corrupt and weak kings. A few writings by and about religious figures, including St. Patrick and a bishop named Germanus.
There's not much else. Archaeology tells the rest of the story – populations declined, people stopped building with stone, few or no coins were minted. It looks like a dark age.
But there are contradictions. The site of Tintagel Castle in Cornwall has poured forth archeological discoveries in recent decades, showing that while Britain was in a dark age, the local kings or nobles were feasting with imported pottery from Turkey and Spanish glass goblets. Graffiti carved into a slate windowsill records Latin and Celtic names together.
People could read and write, they had trade links across the entire Mediterranean. We know a little about these people. But nothing that could be pinned down and called proper history.
That's what led legends of King Arthur to take root in this era. There's nothing to replace them, and barring the sudden discovery of some miraculously damp-proof, flame-resistant, insect-repelling chronicles of that era, we're never going to have anything like a complete picture.
None of this is actually uncommon.
Vast swathes of history, even across eras where literacy was relatively widespread, are poorly known. What we think we know may be true in general, but the details are often mythologized.
Professional historians know all this. After all, historians and archeologists spend their lives filling in the gaps. Having some really big gaps can be frustrating, but it's also an opportunity to learn more, to add a little bit more knowledge.
What drives people to frustration – and what makes nonsense like "the real King Arthur" endlessly popular – is that many people just hate and despise the idea that some things are not knowable.
Unfortunately, we'll probably never know the names of the early Saxon warlords, or the Romano-British generals and kings who fought them. We may never know if there really was a Battle of Mount Badon, Britons versus Saxons. We may not ever pin down exactly when St. Patrick or Gildas were born and lived and wrote the few scraps of knowledge we do have.
Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. What we know is a sliver of a sliver of that time.
Dark ages? It's mostly dark. The light is the exception.
