War and flu pandemics, famine and the bubonic plague have all contributed to make A.D. 536 the worst year to be alive in.
It’s easy to look back on the past through rose-tinted glasses, as the saying goes, but new research suggests that the mid-sixth century was definitely a time to forget.
A team of historians and scientists has identified A.D. 536 as the beginning of a terrible sequence of events for humankind.
“It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year,” Harvard University archaeologist and medieval historian Michael McCormick told Science Magazine. His team’s new paper doesn’t see signs of economic recovery until A.D. 640.
A massive volcanic eruption spewed a huge cloud of ash that shrouded the Northern Hemisphere in darkness and caused a drop in temperatures that led to crop failure and starvation, said co-lead study author Professor Christopher Loveluck of the University of Nottingham in the UK.
Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell to between 1.5°C and 2.5°C, making it the coldest decade in the past 2,300 years.
Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a particularly dark period in what used to be called the Dark Ages.
But the source of the mysterious clouds referenced during this period has long been a puzzle.
Now a new, highly detailed ice core analysis of the Colle Gnifetti glacier on the border between Switzerland and Italy has yielded up new information about the cloud of ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland that same year.
By analysing ice samples from the Colle Gnifetti Glacier in the Swiss Alps, the researchers were able to identify atmospheric pollutants deposited over the past 2,000 years, according to the study, published last week in the journal Antiquity.
Substances found in the ice provide evidence that the eruption took place in Iceland, not California, as suggested by previous research.
We might think that we have a lot to complain about in 2018, but at least we’re not fighting off the plague as we shiver under a cloud of volcanic ash that blocks out the sun.
