AD 476 Dark Ages And 14--16 Century Renaissance, Destroyed Human Society

Despite the scholarly interest in Classical civilization that flowered during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Western man's knowledge of the ancient world was severely limited until the 19th Century.Than not only was the to hieroglyphic writing found, unlocking the Egyptian past, but the long-standing puzzle of cuneiformscript was finallysolved--a remarkablefeat of scholarship that brought to light lost languages, peoples and cultures and added some  2,000 years of human history to the meager Greek and Biblical sources that alone were available until then. 

From book titled: Cradle of Civilization, by Dr. Samuel Noah Kramer--Chapter 6 top paragraph