Posted on 04/19/2016 11:42:49 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Contemporary chroniclers wrote about a "mystery cloud" which dimmed the light of the sun above the Mediterranean in the years 536 and 537 CE. Tree rings testify poor growing conditions over the whole Northern Hemisphere - the years from 536 CE onward seem to have been overshadowed by an unusual natural phenomenon. Social crises including the first European plague pandemic beginning in 541, are associated with this phenomenon. Only recently have researchers found conclusive proof of a volcanic origin of the 536 solar dimming, based on traces of volcanic sulfur from two major eruptions newly dated to 536 CE and 540 CE in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica...
The relationship between the "mystery cloud" of 536 and the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages is an issue of great popular interest. Volcanic eruptions in the more recent past have impacted human societies. For example, in 1815 the Indonesian volcano Tambora hurled so much ash and sulfur into the atmosphere that the year 1816 became known as "the year without summer" in Europe and North America, where unusually low temperatures led to crop failures and famines. For eruptions of the more distance past, connections between eruptions and societal impacts become less clear...
Which volcanoes exactly were responsible for these aerosols clouds is still enigmatic...
(Excerpt) Read more at geologypage.com ...
What if this tectonic stuff happened during during a sunspot minim? I think that if you go back you can find several earlier events on a roughly 1000 year time line.
Gribbin and Plagemann (sp?) did that book, about 35-40 years ago, "The Jupiter Effect", which claimed that a somewhat superficial review of the data from the previous couple of Grand Alignments of the planets suggested that disastrous, basically apocalyptic quakes occurred (interval something like 178 years, if memory serves). Either that book, or a review of it, pointed out a 22 year (?) cycle of sunspots appeared to correspond to the intermittent alignment cycle of Jupiter and Saturn alone. Thanks Little Bill.
Thanks OT.
There are some interesting stories about the Mandan Indians which may relate to this. I think someone on the Lewis and Clarke expedition had a Welsh speaker who commented on linguistic similarities, and they also had a different cultural organization than other Indians.
The Mystery of the Mandanas
http://100777.com/node/373
Origins of The Mandan (written by a purported descendant of Madoc)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos217.htm
That Mandan is not Welsh
http://www.languagegeek.com/siouan/mandan_is_not_welsh.html
Setting the Record Straight About Native Peoples: Norse and Welsh Explorers
http://www.native-languages.org/iaq10.htm
The Mandans and the Corps of Discovery found ways to keep each other warm during the harsh Dakota winter. Baby it’s cold outside . . .
;’)
:’)
Earth Lodges helped.
If the Birth of Christ is the reference, "Common" doesn't work: there are other timelines and year references (Islamic, Jewish, Japanese, Nepalese, Chinese, to name a few, especially noted dating coins), so it isn't completely "common", after all, except in modern usage.
If you're doing archaeology, it doesn't hurt to preserve the history of the timeline, too. Anno Domini (in the year of Our Lord) 2016, for instance.
“The Dark Ages May Have Really Been Dimmer”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/01/010102061812.htm
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