What does the "Dark age" mean in Shin Sekai Yori?

Question

I was wondering, in the anime on the 4th episode "Bloody History", they refer to some period of time called the "Dark Age". I was wondering (maybe the people that can read the original Japanese Novel can respond this better) what exactly was meant by the "Dark Age"?

I tried to figure what the Dark age was and while searching for that answer, I approximately transcribed (from the subbed english version) when the False Minoshiro talks about that. In that scene he approximately says:

The turning point for Japan was when "Boy A" committed a series of crimes. He realized he could use his PK powers and open the most difficult of locks. “A” broke into the bedrooms of 19 sleeping women, assaulted them and eventually killed them. At this point Saki and her friends couldn’t comprehend how a human was capable of killing other humans. Even after his arrest people continued to use PK to commit crimes. It became a weapon for terrorists. It split society into a complex mix of opposing political, humanitarian, and ideological factions… ...and the world entered an era of war, unlike any known before. Ironically, the constant threat to the lives of PK users led to a dramatic evolution of their abilities. Meanwhile, the human population plummeted worldwide, until it was less than 2% of what it it’d been at its height. These events serve as an overview of the Dark Ages that lasted five centuries.

From that, I concluded that around 2011 A.D. society was something very similar to what we have now (with cars, iPhones, airplanes and normal technology). Then people with PK caused a war and for that reason, human population suffered a terrible decrease to 2%. Then this era lead to a war and then to an era where northeastern Asia divided itself into four distinct and irreconcilable units:

• 1st, Slave Dynasties, Where PK users controlled those without PK capabilities.

• 2nd, non-PK users who escaped the Dynasties and lived as hunter-gatherers.

• 3rd, Bandits who used PK to attack other settlements.

• 4th, a group of those who managed to preserve some remnants of the technological age.

Then we have the present time where Saki and the others live.

My question is, which time period does the "Dark Age" correspond to?

Is the following time scale correct?

Or is the Dark age before the dynasties/division of asia age? Also, what is known about the dark age?

Answer 1

My question is, which time period does the "Dark Age" correspond to?

Is the following time scale correct?

Your timeline is correct. The Dark Ages correspond to the period following the PK wars during which the slave dynasties held power (in northeastern Asia, anyway). In more detail:

• Ismailov conducts his experiments in 2011, leading to the creation of the first psychokinetiker.
• Psychokinetikers and ordinary people coexist peacefully, if uneasily, for a short time - perhaps a year or so? The exact duration isn't made explicit.
• Boy A and people like him start using PK to commit severe crimes, prompting the formation of powerful anti-PK movements worldwide. In response, PK users band together. Some of the groups of psychokinetikers become heavily radicalized and commit acts of terrorism.
• The PK wars begin. The war effort is particularly effective in the US, which almost manages to wipe out all the psychokinetikers within its borders (PK users decline from 0.3% of the population to a mere 0.0004% of the population - a few thousand people at most).
• Faced with this grave threat to their existence, the few remaining PK users develop tremendously strong PK in a short period of time. Using their newfound strength, the psychokinetikers topple every standing government on the planet.

The collapse of all governmental structure marked the beginning of the Dark Ages, so named because - like the "original" Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire - little was known about it. The "new" Dark Ages lasted roughly 500 years. During this time, global communication networks collapsed, and so little was known about what was going on elsewhere in the world. The slave dynasties rose and fell, eventually leading to the rise of Saki's society.

Also, what is known about the dark age?

Unfortunately, there isn't much known, what with it being a Dark Age, and all. In the novel, the false minoshiro does go into more detail about the four groups (and I can update this answer to include that information if you'd like).

That said, our knowledge of the Dark Ages begins and ends with the false minoshiro. The Dark Ages were hundreds of years out of living memory by Saki's time (even for telomere-manipulators like Tomiko), and it seems that all record-keeping was effectively delegated to the libraries - that is, the false minoshiros. It seems very likely that if you were to ask the people of Kamisu 66 about the Dark Ages, they would know virtually nothing about it - perhaps not even that the Dark Ages happened at all.

Answer 2

Something I would note, some of the initial PKers were also just literally going crazy from having their perceptions unlocked and opened. Imagine no filters, and suddenly your aware of every other human beings thoughts and can hear radio frequencies in your head, I believe they were literally just snapping and lacked any sort of control until the time they learned to come up with self imposed limitations and control elements for raising children to be to live with abilities that can alter reality without causing as much problems.