Mark Twain once asserted that ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’, and
so historians constantly attempt to draw parallels between events of modernity and those that
have already gone by.
In this vein, we turn to the ancient world and cast our gaze back to one of the many
years that rival 2020 in its dubiously notorious status in the human imagination.
When the year 536AD began just short of one and a half millennia ago, the Eurasian civilisations
that often serve as the subject of our videos were undergoing a seismic change.
As war, politics, and other human regularities continued apace, a number of debated cataclysms
occurred which, according to some scholars, made 536 the worst year in all history.
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Byzantine historian Procopius faithfully accompanied his generalissimo master Belisarius on the
latter’s conquests of both Africa and Italy during the 530s, observing the great general’s
achievements firsthand and then recording them for posterity.
But in the midst of this imperial reclamation attempt, the chronicler described a phenomenon
which is easy to pass off as irrelevant, but which might just be the clue to the most important
episode in Late Antiquity.
Writing almost certainly in 536, the tenth year of Justinian’s reign, the Belisarian
historian stated “It came about during this year that a most dread portent took place.
For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and
it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such
as it is accustomed to shed.
And from the time when this thing happened, men were free neither from war nor pestilence
nor any other thing leading to death.”
Armed with a scientific understanding of the world, even we might peer up to the heavens
with unease if we witnessed our sun blotted out for an entire year, as though the world
had suffered through some devastating nuclear war.
With our own reactions in mind, we can barely comprehend how shocking this apocalyptic sun-haze
was for the religiously minded people of the sixth century.
It might’ve been seen as a herald for the end of the world, and to many it certainly
came to feel like it.
Because the observations of Procopius and several other historians of this period lack
any form of explanation regarding the ‘mysterious clouds, most likely because they had absolutely
no idea what was happening, the cause long remained an elusive mystery puzzling modern
historians who attempted to glean anything from the ancient sources.
However, by utilising precise, modern dating techniques such as ice core analysis and dendrochronology,
the exact cause of what some scholars ominously call ‘The 536 Event’ can be deduced.
When studying the cross section of pine and oak tree rings within the Altai Mountains,
as well as other places within the northern hemisphere, a trend of abnormally little growth
exists beginning at the exact spot which can be cross-referenced and calibrated to represent
around 536.
This indicates a degree of uncharacteristic cooling, but doesn’t suggest a cause by
itself.
To supplement this knowledge, ice cores extracted from Greenland and Antarctica dated to around
536 contain strangely large sulphate deposits, volcanic glass and sulphuric acid content.
Laboriously weaving all of this disparate data; the biblical dimming, widespread cooling,
abnormal chemical content and more into one coherent tapestry, most scientists combing
over the 536 event ascribe responsibility to a catastrophic volcanic eruption which
might’ve even exceeded in severity the explosion of Tambora in 1815.
As an aside, it is worth noting that the latter eruption also caused visual phenomena vaguely
similar to those described by our ancient sources, such as hazy but beautiful yellow
skies represented in nineteenth century art.
Several locations for this impactful volcanic eruption have been put forward everywhere
from Iceland to El Salvador, but that is a detail it would be pointless to get caught
on.
The issues of where and what are still unresolved, while some fringe researchers go as far as
decrying the volcanic perspective altogether, instead pointing to certain residues in the
historical record as evidence for a particularly violent comet strike.
We will assume the dominant eruption theory is correct, keeping in the back of our minds
the possibility of wrongness.
Whatever happened and however it happened, the results were striking in their magnitude.
Unfortunately, convenient trade winds carried the ashy blanket across Europe and then Asia,
blocking the sun’s light and causing temperatures to nosedive by an average of between 1.5 and
2.5oC.
According to some estimations, the consequence was the worst shock to Earth’s ecosystem
in the last 2,000 years, and the advent of the coldest decade in 2,300.
The effect on human society was no less devastating.
Crop failures and dead harvests were endemic across the entire Eurasian landmass, a fatal
thing for chieftaincies, empires and kingdoms who primarily relied on agriculture to feed
their people and raise much-needed taxes.
In the southern part of pre-Viking Norway, for example, the entire settlement structure
and social organisation completely collapsed Farms were left behind, rich burials became
rare, pottery production ended, and iron production decreased.
In some areas, burial finds after this event were 90 - 95% lower than before.
Denmark, Estonia and particularly Ireland display alarming disruptions in the production
of bread and the attending collapse of local societies.
We have little evidence to prove this, but if one reads between the lines of the evidence
we do have, it can be inferred that there were human starvation and suffering on a mass
scale.
The same famine, exacerbated by Justinian’s war in Italy, supposedly caused mothers in
Liguria to eat their babies in order to survive, as recorded by the Bishop of Milan.
As if the cold, near-eternal twilight and famine weren’t enough to knock over a polity,
and sometimes it wasn’t, there was a third factor to possibly emerge from the eruption
of 536.
A half decade after the blast, in 541, the first instance of Bubonic Plague struck the
Byzantine trading nexus of Pelusium in Egypt, probably originating somewhere in the eastern
steppe of Northern China.
Although far from being a universally accepted theory, it is widely and credibly posited
that the first onset of what became ‘Justinian’s Plague’ in the early 540s was an indirect
consequence of the volcanic eruption alluded to by our ancient sources.
This chain of causality requires some level of explanation.
Just how does a volcanic eruption in Iceland or possibly elsewhere across the world cause
civilization-crippling plague in the distant Mediterranean?
At first glance, the two disasters seem unconnected.
However, of seven severe volcanic eruptions taking place over the last 2,000 years -, six;
in 44BC, AD 626, 934, 1258, 1783 and, of course, 536, have resulted in a deadly period of epidemic
disease in Europe, the Middle-east, or both within one to five years.
For this odd trend to be pure chance is, as prominent NASA scientist RB Stothers put it,
‘a very unlikely coincidence.’
So what is going on here?
The key to unpacking this mystery can be found in the calamitous, volcanism-induced harvest
failures which so often rock pre-industrial societies, the direct impacts of which we
already discussed.
It is a simple truism that if we humans do not eat properly, our body’s defences do
not function properly as a consequence.
Crucially for this particular circumstance of 536, entire continents of people were almost
certainly suffering from malnutrition, weakening millions of humans to an unprecedented pandemic
which then spread like wildfire.
In what comes close to a perfect storm, exposure to the plague flea-bearing rats may also have
been drastically increased by the volcanic dust shroud.
Decreasing temperatures actually lessen the development of these insectoid parasites,
but said rats were conversely even more likely to be driven into peoples’ homes by the
cold.
This brought the disease into closer contact with humans and provided a perfect environment
- houses occupied by starving people weakened by lack of food, for the plague to make the
short hop from animals to humans.
Exacerbated by the Byzantine Empire’s cosmopolitan nature, internal supply routes, trade and
the military ventures initiated by Emperor Justinian I, the plague which came to bear
the great ruler’s name infected vast swathes of the Middle-East and Southern Europe.
Tax paying citizens died in their millions, potentially bountiful land was left untilled,
and Rome’s remaining empire subsequently convulsed under the pressure.
Up to half of the population died.
The door of Justinian’s ‘renaissance’ also slammed violently shut.
Sapped to near breaking point, the emperor could not afford to decisively commit his
armies to the conflict in Italy.
This, accompanied by other military factors, led to a prolonged war of attrition.
When that war was eventually concluded in the 550s, the territorial spoils were a desolated,
depopulated wasteland, rather than the rejuvenating pot of gold that had previously served as
the Roman Empire’s beating heart.
Although the devastation inflicted on the Byzantine Empire is by far the most famous
of the plague’s impacts, its Sassanid rival also suffered a less severe blow, in addition
to a number of other states on its periphery.
Further east still, shorter growing seasons and an inability to feed livestock probably
resulted in seismic population movements and political instability within the eastern steppe
area.
Not only did this disruption result in the usurpation of the Rouran’s steppe dominance
by the Göktürks in 551, but it also sent wave upon wave of nomads barrelling towards
the settled civilisations around them, searching for better lands to occupy.
One such confederation, the Avars, arrived north of the Black Sea by 550.
In the far east, tribes were shoved into China and initiated a new round of violent settlement
and imperial defence.
The mysterious but violent eruption of 536 wasn’t allowed to settle before two further
explosions followed in AD 540 and 547.
Ice core evidence has shown that these blasts, together with the mass starvation and plagues
they helped to spread, played a key role in plunging Europe into a century-long state
of economic stagnation.
Only in roughly AD 640 did this grim state of affairs come to an end, shown by a spike
of airborne lead which signaled a resurgence in silver mining.
It was the catalytic 536 Event and its ominous darkness that led medieval historian Michael
McCormick to remark how that cursed year, often so bypassed in the popular historical
narrative as nothing out of the norm “was the beginning of one of the worst periods
to be alive, if not the worst year.”
All we can do is hope and act so that the Coronavirus-ridden 2020 was not our 536; a
terrible year that served as the herald of all the terrible years to come.
Although a great many scientists support the point of view that the 536 eruption was the
cause of the great struggle, others minimise its role.
Summarising their point of view is Antti Arjava’s statement that ‘not only is there nothing
in our evidence to suggest that the year 536 was a watershed moment between antiquity and
the middle-ages … it is also evident that although the cloud occasioned confusion and
crop failure at the time of its appearance, its effects did not last long after it dissipated.’
It does not matter at the end of the day whether AD 536 was indeed just a relatively meaningless
but lethal footnote as Arjava suggests, or whether it was the watershed year in which
the final embers of the ancient world were extinguished, providing the ashes for the
Medieval age to begin.
It goes to show that sudden disasters, whether they take the form of earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions, pandemics, or man-made hardships such as political crises or large-scale military
conflict, can completely alter the world in which we live in a staggeringly short space
of time.
The late 520s and early 530s seemed to be an unstoppable redemption of the Roman Empire
under Justinian, but just a scant decade later, those lofty dreams were almost completely
put out of reach and civilization seemed to be on the ropes.
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