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.
There are people who like to change long established working things for no apparent good reason. I only imagine it is out of self-appointed self-importance. It disgusts and irritates me.
70 CE was a pretty bad year for Jews.
A.D.
They also don't like saying BC....BEFORE CHRIST, so it's BEFORE COMMON ERA!!
This info from my Jewish in laws.
Ditto.
Godless commies started that shit.
NO...it;s for COMMON ERA!
Where was this volcano?
Central America?
Maybe this is what caused the Mayans to abandon their cities.............
they are equally miffed when you define ‘common era’ as the time Jesus became ‘commonly known’ to the world
The year Biden first started fondling minors.
There is no common era.
There is nothing "official" about that locution.
It’s a moving date that has to be recalculated every time you use it. Think Coriolis force and climate change and DEI working together in chaos.
Wikipedia is a communist propaganda organ.
NO KIDDING!
RE: Jewish People ...didn’t like saying AD....YEAR OF OUR LORD. They also don’t like saying BC....BEFORE CHRIST, so it’s BEFORE COMMON ERA!!
So, what do they use instead?
The universal acceptance of the AD numbering of the years proves how momentous the birth of Jesus Christ is to the world. And it doesn't matter how they try to hide it.
BTTT
WHEN WAS KRAKATOA?
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