We read about knights in shining armor, hassles with moats and towers, but when were the Middle Ages? The simple answer, the Middle Ages in Europe are the roughly 1,000 years from the fall of the Roman Empire, and to be particular, the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire continues on for most of the Middle Ages, but it starts in roughly 476, and it continues on for 1,000 years as we get into the 14th and 15th centuries, and it's really the time period that connects the world of Rome, Europe during antiquity, and connects it to the Europe that begins to emerge in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, the Europe of the Age of Exploration, the Europe of the Renaissance. Now, what we're going to do in this video is we're going to look at maps of the various time periods of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are broadly divided into three major sections, the early Middle Ages from the fall of the Western Roman Empire till about the year 1,000, the high Middle Ages, which was a high point for the Middle Ages in Europe, which goes from about the year 1,000 to the year 1,300, and then the late Middle Ages, which gets us to the 15th century and is considered not that pleasant of a time to live in Europe. So let's just start with what Europe looked like right after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. So as you can see here, this map is referring to the time period between 476 when Odoacer, or Odoacer, takes over Rome in 493, and you can see the Eastern Roman Empire is still here, but the Western Roman Empire is now fragmented amongst many Germanic kingdoms. You have the Visigoths, you have the Franks, you have the kingdom of Odoacer.