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 ...
Haha ;)
There’s no gradualist mechanism that can cause glaciation, so, no, Milankovitch’s model is wrong.
I wonder what connection, if any, there is between the 6th century cold period and the 7th century rise of Islam.
As the Roman Empire failed due to weather and political corruption it was no longer a force of power in the Eastern Mediterranean and Islam ran wild after the collapse. But the Roman Empire was already in decline before Islam existed.
Please elaborate on your post.
The cycle is of three components The Malkovich cycle, also known as Milakovich cycles, refers to the three variations in Earth's orbit that influence its climate over long periods. These cycles have different periods: about 100,000 years for orbital eccentricity, 41,000 years for axial tilt (obliquity), and 26,000 years for precession.
Dependent on how the three componets line up is what gives of ice ages and the weather we enjoy now.
Doesn’t matter. That kind of ice generation requires an active hydrologic cycle, which is exactly what stops dead in conditions cold enough to prevent melt of ice and snow during summer months.
It used to be thought that Antarctica must have x amount of precipitation, and the first big year-round structure was something like a geodesic dome, which would stand up for many years against the snow load. Turns out, no snow load developed because the continent has the least precipitation on Earth.
And that’s with a world with a working hydrologic cycle.
Islam is entirely a political cult, sprung from either a single person, or from some small group which led to a later group of ad hoc theologists who invented a single founder.
This reminds me a bit of Lycurgus, the supposed lawgiver of ancient Sparta — he was said to set up his legal code, then said to obey it without changes until he got back from Delphi, then went off and starved himself to death.
There’s not much Spartan literature (they don’t seem to have been readers, authors, or artists), but the oldest surviving work contains zero about him. He was probably invented as a supporting myth for their pretty hideous political system.
If the cold period began in 500 A.D., it was too late to bring down the Western Roman Empire. Romulus Augustulus, the last official Western Roman Emperor, was deposed in 476. By the 500s, the last people claiming to be Western emperors were gone, except for the local king of a mini-state in western Algeria. It looks like the Eastern Roman Empire WAS badly affected by the colder weather and Justinian’s plague, but I figured we all believed in that by now.
Yup. Plus, the Roman/Byzantine Empire didn’t fall until 1453. :^)
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