If in recent years it is often heard that “This was the worst year ever“, The 536 After Christ It is here to remind you that The worst year of human history in which to live has already existedso (maybe!) We can be a little more peaceful.
The historians of the Middle Ages, in fact, elected that year as the most terrible ever. But why?
Well, to begin with in 536 A huge volcano eruttòfilling the atmosphere of a disturbing fog of ashes and aerosols that caused a global cooling. Historians do not know with certainty what the volcano was, but they hypothesize that the fault was of an Icelandic volcano in the Eldgjá area (or another Icelandic volcanic system), or of the Vulcano Ilopango (El Salvador, in Central America), or one of the two Indonesian volcanoes Krakatoa or Rinjani.
The fog has created a dark and twilight world that obscured the sun in the northern hemisphere (Europe, the Middle East and some parts of Asia) for 18 months and which originated bankruptcy collections and consequent famines. In Gaelic Annals of Ulsterthat is, the Irish medieval chronicles, in fact reads: “Lack of bread in the year 536. “The Annals of Inismfallen They mention a serious famine that took place between 536 and 539 AD in which the crops were truly miserable.
According to the testimony of the Byzantine historian Procopio di Caesareain 536 AD there was a “dark sun“He lasted for more than a year:
The sun emitted its light without brightness, like the moon, throughout the year.
The well -known Roman statesman and writer Cassiodoroon the other hand, in epistle 25 of Varied (dating back to a period between 533 and 538 AD) described with these words the anomalous climate of that period:
The sun seems to have lost its usual light and appears bluish; The bodies do not project shadows and the sunlight, a powerful time, now warms weating weakly. Everything seems An endless eclipse.
But these are not only these and other testimonies that give a tremendously dark and cold year: recent analyzes of the ice carrots Of the time they confirm the fact that the 536 AD has been one of the coldest of the last millennia, with summer temperatures dropped between 1.5 ° C and 2.5 ° C (making it the coldest year of the last 2,000 years). If you have never heard of these “carrots”, these are large ice cylinders extracted from the glaciers and polar caps that contain strata of compressed snow accumulated over thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of years. These ice carrots can provide precious information on the climate of the past because they trap the air bubbles of the time, allowing to analyze their atmospheric composition. In addition, these large cylinders contain traces of volcanic ash, which allow to identify large eruptions in the past. In particular, scientists analyze the concentration of sulphates inside to understand if there has been a volcanic event that influenced the climate, and the carrots of 536 confirm a massive volcanic eruption that immense reflective particles in the atmosphere, obscuring the sun and cooling the planet.
Last but not least, also by the observation of the Trees of trees (also fossils) It can be observed that the 536 was one of the coldest years of the last millennia: in that year in fact the rings were very close and thin, a detail that implies poor rainfall and a cold vintage (a sudden drop in temperature compared to previous years), given the lack of sunlight due to volcanic ash in the atmosphere.
The decade from 536 to 546 AD was only the beginning: in fact, there were Other volcanic eruptions In 540 and 547 that a very serious situation already went to worsen, which in addition to the drastic drop in temperatures and the consequent ruin of the crops and the famine saw more and more wars for the globe multiply.
For the Byzantine Empire that period was really terrible, because in 541 another terrible misfortune arrived: the Justinian plague (caused by the same bacterium of the black plague, theYersinia Pestis). According to the estimates of historians, the plague killed up to 50 million people, halving the population of the Roman Empire of the Eastern in less than eight years. The Byzantine Empire therefore met an unprecedented economic and social collapse, which however all in all also had a positive side, because this series of unfortunate events accepted the end of antiquity and began at the time of the Middle Ages.
From this historical fact it can be seen how a single great event can bring with it a series of unfortunate events that also impact on the long -range future: Michael McCormickmedieval archaeologist and historian of the University of Harvard, in 2018 he declared to the magazine Science that the world did not show real signs of recovery up to 640 AD
