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.
bttt
Toba was the big one. Like Yellowstone. Almost wiped out humanity 74000 years ago
I looked up largest eruptions ... go back into distant prehistory, and there were some real monsters. IIRC, Yellowstone dumped a large ash layer in what is now Kansas ... something of that scale going off today would kill billions.
Yes, indeed. The explosion of Krakatoa was the loudest sound ever heard by mankind, ten miles around everybody would have been deafened, had the volcano not been at sea. Still, the boom was audible as far away as Perth, on the west coast of Australia.
And the Tambora explosion emitted about ten cubic miles of matter into the athmosphere, which caused the weather anomaly which is known as the „year without summer“. Crops failed all over the world, and a staggering number of human beings starved to death.
This set the stage for several plagues the most famous is the “The Plague of Justinian” (Note believed to be maybe Europe’s first encounter with Bubonic\Pneumonic Plague”). Likely so weakened the Roman (Eastern) Empire and Sassanid (Persian) Empires that when the Arabs came out of the desert with their new ideology - Pre-Islam now called Islam they punched two empty bags! Yes, does do things because climate comes from the sun\earth interaction. Humans what are their contributions? Effectively climate-wise who or what are humans?
I wish you were right, but it really means "Common Era." It is an attempt to remove even a hint of Christianity from our language. But If someone challenges you, just say, "Well, what happened in 1 AD?"
The earth it does things!
Approximately 1900 statute miles, essentially all over open ocean. Gargle Earth shows no land elevation above 300ft between, and very little of that. 1900 miles in the other direction covers most of modern Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, also Borneo and the Philippines. More land in the way, though. That's a lot of people who could have heard it.
Liberals trying to distance themselves/us from the Bible.
Perfect timing for the onslaught of Islam.Actually, for Arab military aggression, as the events led to decline in Byzantine and Sassanid power that Arabs, like Mohammad (if he even existed), among many, filled. Archeological evidence from Arabia dating in the late 6th century shows a distinct turn in site construction towards defensive design.
Nope...it stands for “Current Era”. It’s used by atheists,Maoists,etc.
“Must not have been alive yet in 1968.”
I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree. For the USA it was 1965. The Viet Nam War got big; the Democrats got supermajorities in Congress. The effects weren’t immediate, but those two disasters caused a huge amount of damage to the country, so bad that we never really recovered.
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