Ancient Garbage Heaps Show Fading Byzantine Empire Was 'Plagued' By Disease and Climate Change

LiveScience ^ | March 25, 2019 | Mindy Weisberger

[SunkenCiv]

Archaeologists recently investigated accumulated refuse in trash mounds at a Byzantine settlement called Elusa in Israel's Negev Desert... trash disposal -- once a well-organized and reliable service in outpost cities like Elusa -- ceased around the middle of the sixth century, about 100 years prior to the empire's collapse. At that time, a climate event known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age was taking hold in the Northern Hemisphere, and an epidemic known as the Justinian plague raged through the Roman Empire, eventually killing over 100 million people. Together, disease and climate change took a devastating economic toll and loosened Rome's grip on its lands to the east a century earlier than once thought...

Unlike the architecture of an ancient city, which could be repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, landfills steadily accumulated over time, creating continuous records of human activity. Clues found in preserved garbage dumps could thereby reveal if a city was thriving or in trouble... a variety of objects: ceramic pot sherds, seeds, olive pits, charcoal from burned wood and even evidence of discarded "gourmet foods" imported from the Red Sea and the Nile... The scientists carbon-dated organic material such as seeds and charcoal in layers of trash mounds located near the city... trash had built up in that location over a period of about 150 years and that the accumulation terminated in the middle of the sixth century. This suggested there was a failure of infrastructure, which happens when a city is about to collapse... Elusa's decline began at least a century before Islamic rule wrested control of the region from the Romans... Elusa was struggling during a period that was relatively peaceful and stable; it was during this time that the Roman Emperor Justinian was expanding the empire's boundaries across Europe, Africa and Asia...

[ClearBlueSky]

And before hairspray, incandescent lightbulba, pesticide and carbon footprints.
That simply cannot be. History must be rewritten. Wait for it.

[gleeaikin]

The biggest problem is not the small temperature changes, it is the sea level changes.