Posted on 04/26/2025 1:23:20 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A sixth-century "mini" ice age may have been "the straw that broke the camel's back" that led to the final disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, a new study claims...
By studying rocks carried by icebergs from Greenland all the way to Iceland's west coast, a team of researchers has uncovered what they believe is more evidence for the severity of this mini ice age. Their findings, published April 8 in the journal Geology, point to the prolonged cooling being a key factor in the eventual decline of the Western Roman Empire — although not all historians agree...
Economic crisis, government corruption, pandemic, civil war, invasion — the causes behind the Roman Empire's fall are complex, intertwined and innumerable enough to cause a major headache. In fact, in 1984 the German historian Alexander Demandt compiled a tongue-in-cheek list of 210 reasons behind the empire's decline...
This climate shift was felt around the world, having been linked to historical events that include the collapse of China's Northern Wei dynasty; the decline of Teotihuacan in Mexico; and the Eastern Roman Empire's Plague of Justinian.
The new study's connection to those tumultuous years began tangentially, after the scientists behind it used satellite images to discover that a raised beach terrace on Iceland's west coast was unusually white in color compared to its basalt black neighbors.
The team explored the beach on foot and found a number of unusual granite rocks on a layer of the beach dated between A.D. 500 and 700. After crushing a sample of the rocks and subjecting the zircon crystals found within to chemical analysis, the researchers pinpointed the rocks' origins to Greenland, roughly 177 miles (285 kilometers) away at its shortest distance.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
About a century before the fall of the Byzantine Empire — the eastern portion of the vast Roman Empire — signs of its impending doom were written in garbage.
Archaeologists recently investigated accumulated refuse in trash mounds at a Byzantine settlement called Elusa in Israel's Negev Desert. They found that the age of the trash introduced an intriguing new timeline for the Byzantine decline, scientists reported in a new study...
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...
In the dump sites, the scientists found 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 study authors reported.
The scientists carbon-dated organic material such as seeds and charcoal in layers of trash mounds located near the city. They found that 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, the researchers noted.
Based on the new evidence, researchers concluded that Elusa's decline began at least a century before Islamic rule wrested control of the region from the Romans. In fact, 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, Bar-Oz said.Ancient Garbage Heaps Show Fading Byzantine Empire Was 'Plagued' By Disease and Climate Change | Mindy Weisberger | March 25, 2019 | Live Science
Figures muzz were involved.....
Thanks for the link!
Wait a minute. Mini Ice Age? Is that like Climate Change?
I usually see the estimate for the Roman Warm Period topping out around AD 300. Thus, the beginning of the Dark Age cooling period (which bottomed out around AD 900 to begin the Medieval Warm Period).
Yeah, it was all those Jupiter 8s in everyone’s driveway.
The 536 (AD) keywords, sorted:
“Is that like Climate Change?”
Yes, yes it is.
I have been trying to tell people about this for a long time
Weren’t these global warming fruit cakes complaining about an upcoming ice age, 40 or 50 years ago? How did that work out for them?
Cold kills. Warmth makes life flourish on Earth. When it become colder or warmer the ideal zone shifts from north to south. It is not sudden but slow as is rising sea level or receding sea level. At the end of the last ice age the Dogger banks of the North Sea were above water and inhabited. Today they are far beneath the surface. The vast majority of sea level rise since the end of the ice age has been preindustrial times. Why did it melt? Man had nothing to do with this? Not one damn drop of petroleum was being burned before or after the last ice age until “Drake 1” in Pennsylvania. Why did the rapid rate of melting slow down even before CO2 was a factor?
The Drake Well, also known as “Drake’s Well 1, is the first successful commercial oil well in the United States, located in Cherrytree Township, Pennsylvania. Drilled by Colonel Edwin Drake in 1859, it struck oil at a depth of 69.5 feet, marking the beginning of the American oil industry.
It is really about orbital mechanics of the earth and changing axial inclination. This effects the total energy the earth receives from the sun. It is really that simple.
Malankovitch a brilliant astrophysicist figured this out long ago. From Wiki, “Milutin Milankovitch (1879-1958) was a Serbian mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist who is best known for his theory of Milankovitch cycles, a theory that explains long-term changes in Earth’s orbit and rotation and their relationship to climate change, particularly during ice ages.
In political correct scientific communities they ignore his work as it defies the current scientific fraud about global warming.
Maybe in the middle of the middle of the sixth century, Romans had to adhere to a forced recycling program to save the erf.
Forgot to add this:
Orbital mechanics involve two things of importance. Distance and inclination. The distance part is easy. The further from the sun the square of the distance defines total energy from the sun. 1 squared is 1. 1.05 squared is 1.11 which seems insignificant is 11 percent less energy from the sun. I just used this as an example as I do not know the true distances from the sun for the Malankoviche cycles, The Earth is in the ideal zone for life. Small variations in solar absorption will easily plunge us into an ice age or the current inter glacial period we enjoy.
The inclination is a bit different. The polar caps reflect most of the sunlight back into space. The Arctic Cap is far smaller than the southern Antarctic cap. When the inclination of the earth is mostly to the Arctic cap less light is reflected into space and warming happens as today. When the Antarctic which is far larger gets more direct exposure to sunlight much more energy is reflected into space. Thus the ice age comes again.
It must have been all of those Chariot SUV’s the Roman’s were driving around. /hehe
You mean the factories, cars and masses of people at the time did not contribute to climate change, that it happens naturally???
In a small, mini way, yes.
Didn’t seem to bother the Germanis hordes, the Mongols or the rising muzzies, tho...
Guess they weren’t as dependent on fancy food.
I got it!
I think I might be the only one though.
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