Also maybe modern times is most commonly known as like the last 2k years or so. Egyptians and Mayans and Olmec and so many other cultures have left fingerprints of their engineering prowess. Listen to Graham Hancock with earnest and you'll have a mystery on your hands.
Err, ~ 850 years, maybe 1,000 years at most, from the fall of Rome ( ~470 CE ) to the beginning of the 14th Century (1301 CE) perhaps to 1501 CE depending on your historian of choice.
> held up as nadir of history.
Not so much a low point of human activity, but definitely a low point in the human activity of recording history.
If you think only Europe matters, sure.
Mostly as a result of Renaissance- and Enlightenment-era propagandizing. I think we’ve mostly moved beyond that reading of history, thankfully.
It seems straightforward - most of what we have is post-Middle Ages, from our political systems to our economies, science, technology, arts; and the results are orders of magnitude better.