Think you’re having a bad year? At least you weren’t around in 536
The worst year in history has been revealed, triggered by a volcanic eruption that led to famine and death
If your 2018 hasn’t quite been up to scratch, then count yourself lucky you weren’t alive in the year 536.
Any gripes about modern life pale into comparison when set against an onslaught of volcanic eruptions, mass starvation and an outbreak of bubonic plague thrown in for good measure.
It was the worst year in history, according to scientists who analysed the 12 months of utter turmoil. Now, the culprit for a bad year that turned into an even worse century can be revealed – a volcano in Iceland. According to a new study in the journal
Antiquity, it ushered in an era of unprecedented misery.
In the spring of that year, the planet entered a period of global calamities that must have convinced many The End was near – not least because it was.
One witness in the city of Byzantium described it thus: “The sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year.”
It started with a volcanic eruption in Iceland that threw billions of tonnes of dust and debris into the atmosphere, bouncing the sun’s light and heat back into space.
The resulting global cooling had devastating effects – historical accounts report crop failures from Britain and Scandinavia to Mesopotamia and China. Starvation was rife. Those who survived faced another calamity: a pandemic of bubonic plague that spread across the Mediterranean and claimed between 25 million and 50 million lives – about 20 per cent of the world’s population. Incredibly, even this was not the end.
By analysing dust trapped in ice-cores around the world, scientists believe several other volcanic eruptions took place, including one in modern-day El Salvador estimated to have hurled 100 billion tonnes of dust into the atmosphere.
Only now is it becoming clear just how resilient our forebears were in the face of these repeated calamities.
The evidence comes from an ice core extracted from a glacier in the Swiss Alps. Over 70 metres long, it gave scientists unprecedented insight into how humanity coped with what nature has thrown at us over the past 2,000 years.
Using a laser to create ice slices barely a hair’s breadth wide, a team led by Prof Christopher Loveluck of the University of Nottingham, UK, developed a way to release air trapped in the core when it blew over the glacier.
They found specks of volcanic debris from the eruptions of 1,500 years ago, confirming the view that they triggered the original calamity of 536.
They also found something else: levels of lead consistent with metal-smelting from ancient coin-making factories.
As such, the ice-core has given them the archaeological equivalent of a stock-market index able to chart the ebb and flow of ancient economies.
Prof Loveluck and his colleagues found a sharp peak in the amount of lead trapped in the ice core around the year 640, and another about 20 years later. Economic demand had reached the point where more coins were needed – suggesting Europe at least was finally emerging from its near-death experience that had lasted an entire century.
This new technique provides a new window on the past.
But the disturbing truth is that we have no more ability to prevent catastrophic volcanic eruptions than did the denizens of the Dark Ages.
If several strike at the same time, the effects would still be catastrophic. And the laws of probability mean that such a calamity is all but guaranteed to happen – one day.
Global cooling caused by the eruption had devastating effects, causing crop failures from Britain to Mesopotamia and China