Re: 'Antiquity...ended around 476 AD.'

When I was a mere tot, and would fly into paroxysms of rage at the thought that reality did not have sharp boundaries (I still do), my dowager aunt would sit me on her knee and try to soothe me and calm me down by assuring me that antiquity came to an end when Greek replaced Latin as the language of the bureaucracy under the emperor Heraclius (610-641), turning the Eastern Roman Empire into Byzantium (even if the Byzantines stubbornly and perversely persisted in calling themselves Romans). Gradually, as she expanded on her tale of the emperor's many administrative reforms, I would gradually fall asleep sucking my thumb within her gently rocking arms, and would end up being tucked up in bed. Since this is what I was told as a toddler, I have believed it without the slightest doubt or reservation ever since. I have just consulted Maurice Keen's Penguin History of Medieval Europe. He starts his history with the crowning of Charlemagne in St Peter's on Christmas Day AD 800, which seems a little late to me, but never mind. I am more willing to accept his date for the last day of the medieval period, the dissolution of the Council of Basel on 25 April 1449. The following morning, all round the world, from mesoamerica to Japan, people woke up and sensed that something had changed, that there was something new in the air, but at first they couldn't figure out what it was. Then all of a sudden it hit them: they had become modern. As you can imagine, there was much excitement and weeks of endless discussions about what this extraordinary new era meant and what it would have in store for mankind. Kings across Europe and even as far as China minted coins proclaiming the first year of the modern age. beracine seems to have changed his tune in this thread. In his earlier post he confidently asserted that antiquity ended at the time of the 'Fall of Rome', which he placed in "ca 431 AD" - a most peculiar and arbitrary date! Now he's changed that, very sensibly, to the date of the deposition of Romulus Augustulus by Odoacer. I quite like his notion, however, that scholars spend their time in "vitriolic debates" about the precise moment in time when "antiquity" ended. Hilarious!