Posted on 12/10/2024 8:21:39 AM PST by SeekAndFind
If you’re ever despairing about the state of the world, you can — at least, according to some scholars — be thankful it’s not the year 536 CE. To be fair, it’s medieval scholars, not 21st-century ones, who called 536 CE the worst year to be alive. But hear them out, because it sounds pretty bad. That year, a massive volcano erupted, historians believe, filling the air with volcanic ash. Of course, the majority of people affected by the disaster had no idea what was happening — they just knew it was very suddenly very dark for a very long time. The sun didn’t shine in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia for 18 whole months — or as the Byzantine historian Procopius put it, “The sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.”
That summer, temperatures dropped more than 30 degrees in parts of Europe and Asia (it even snowed in China), so crops failed, leading to widespread famine, starvation, and economic stagnation. Many people who were literate wrote about this at the time — the sun disappeared overnight, after all — but academics didn’t take the accounts seriously until the late 20th century. In 1983, a volcanic eruption was theorized to be the source of the darkness, and researchers examining tree rings in Ireland in the 1990s noted a severe temperature drop occurred in the sixth century. In 2018, researchers published a study pointing to a volcano as the likely culprit after analyzing ice cores drilled from glaciers.
Historian Michael McCormick told Science that 536 CE wasn’t just the worst year up until then, but “the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive.” The climate still hadn’t recovered five years later when the first bubonic plague broke out, wiping out up to half the population of the Eastern Roman Empire. Two more eruptions in the 540s certainly didn’t help matters, either. The Late Antique Little Ice Age, as the period is known, lasted more than a century, clearing up between 660 CE and 680 CE, depending on the location.
AD.
I agree. But where did the use of CE come from and is it the more popular usage nowadays?
Climate change!
ARSH: Anno Reparatae Salutis Humanae
Must not have been alive yet in 1968.
Perfect timing for the onslaught of Islam.
Christian Era. After our Lord.
I agree, beat me to it. What is this ce stuff?
People say when old faithful really blows we will experience similar times.
So what is CE referring to? Did something happen then in year one “CE”?
It’s idiotic and one reveals bigotry by using the CE term with BC/AD years.
At least they didn’t have Klaus Schwab and his pal Jubal to deal with.
2020 really sucked.
Take your CE and put it where the sun don’t shine!
Yes
No, it means “Common Era” because atheists and communists and others who reject Christ want to appropriate our Calendar, but choke on using the terms proper to it.
Effem.
I discovered that you can REALLY rile these folks in academia when you read out CE as “Christian Era” instead of “Common Era”
Thank you!
C.E. officially stands for “Common Era” by those who want to deny Our Lord, or are respecters of persons and don’t want to offend non-believers.
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