Angela
Elite member
- Messages
- 21,823
- Reaction score
- 12,329
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
See:
Anne Gibbons: Why 536 was the worst year to be alive
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive
It's actually more about why the Roman Empire didn't reconstitute itself, as it had before, under the leadership of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Razib Khan has also opined.
A major consequence of the calamities of the mid-6th century is the reconquest of the West Roman Empire under the push from Justinian and his heirs lost steam. Unlike in China, the Roman system was never recreated in full. Many explanations have to do with the violence of the Gothic Wars, or the inability of East Roman power to expand west while dealing with a more vigorous Persia to the east. We can’t rerun the experiment, but the above volcanic eruptions suggest that the likelihood of total reconquest took a major hit because of an event that was not inevitable.
Remember that the Roman state recovered by near total unwinding in the middle of the 3rd century.
"Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week."
"A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says."
"Still later, the ice is a window into another dark period. Lead vanished from the air during the Black Death from 1349 to 1353, revealing an economy that had again ground to a halt. "We've entered a new era with this ability to integrate ultra–high-resolution environmental records with similarly high resolution historical records," Loveluck says. "It's a real game changer.""
As Khan points out, people weakened by malnutrition more easily fall prey to disease. Also, I think bad weather on the steppe probably leads to the migration of people to Europe and the Near East suffering from it.
"A major consequence of the calamities of the mid-6th century is the reconquest of the West Roman Empire under the push from Justinian and his heirs lost steam. Unlike in China, the Roman system was never recreated in full. Many explanations have to do with the violence of the Gothic Wars, or the inability of East Roman power to expand west while dealing with a more vigorous Persia to the east. We can’t rerun the experiment, but the above volcanic eruptions suggest that the likelihood of total reconquest took a major hit because of an event that was not inevitable.Remember that the Roman state recovered by near total unwinding in the middle of the 3rd century."
The book by Kyle Harper, "The Fate of Rome" mentioned both in the paper and by Khan is quite excellent.
Anne Gibbons: Why 536 was the worst year to be alive
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive
It's actually more about why the Roman Empire didn't reconstitute itself, as it had before, under the leadership of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Razib Khan has also opined.
A major consequence of the calamities of the mid-6th century is the reconquest of the West Roman Empire under the push from Justinian and his heirs lost steam. Unlike in China, the Roman system was never recreated in full. Many explanations have to do with the violence of the Gothic Wars, or the inability of East Roman power to expand west while dealing with a more vigorous Persia to the east. We can’t rerun the experiment, but the above volcanic eruptions suggest that the likelihood of total reconquest took a major hit because of an event that was not inevitable.
Remember that the Roman state recovered by near total unwinding in the middle of the 3rd century.
"Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week."
"A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says."
"Still later, the ice is a window into another dark period. Lead vanished from the air during the Black Death from 1349 to 1353, revealing an economy that had again ground to a halt. "We've entered a new era with this ability to integrate ultra–high-resolution environmental records with similarly high resolution historical records," Loveluck says. "It's a real game changer.""
As Khan points out, people weakened by malnutrition more easily fall prey to disease. Also, I think bad weather on the steppe probably leads to the migration of people to Europe and the Near East suffering from it.
"A major consequence of the calamities of the mid-6th century is the reconquest of the West Roman Empire under the push from Justinian and his heirs lost steam. Unlike in China, the Roman system was never recreated in full. Many explanations have to do with the violence of the Gothic Wars, or the inability of East Roman power to expand west while dealing with a more vigorous Persia to the east. We can’t rerun the experiment, but the above volcanic eruptions suggest that the likelihood of total reconquest took a major hit because of an event that was not inevitable.Remember that the Roman state recovered by near total unwinding in the middle of the 3rd century."
The book by Kyle Harper, "The Fate of Rome" mentioned both in the paper and by Khan is quite excellent.
