Why Was 536 A.D The Worst Year In History? | Catastrophe | Timeline

[Music] in 535 ad scientific evidence suggests that a massive volcano erupted in the tropics it threw up so much ash that it turns summer to winter crops failed for years drought and famine gripped the land millions died for the last five years David Keyes a writer on history and archaeology has immersed himself in this worldwide climatic catastrophe by consulting historian scientists and in particular volcanologists Keyes has concluded that the most likely culprit was the notorious volcano Krakatoa an expedition to Krakatoa which lies off the coast of Indonesia further supported his theory but Keyes believes that the eruption the biggest in the last 1,500 years was only the beginning what followed was over a hundred years of upheaval that would change the course of human history forever [Music] [Music] so what would the volcanic eruption of one and a half thousand years ago have been like the amount of power generated by this eruption would have been equivalent to around 2,000 million Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs the eruption of this ancient Krakatoa is something mankind has never witnessed perhaps tens hundreds of times larger than any volcano that's ever been witnessed David Keyes asked volcanologist dr. ken Wilentz an expert on Krakatoa to feed all the available data about sixth century climate change into a supercomputer to simulate how the explosion began to unfold I will start the simulation it will show several phases of the eruption Willits has located the eruption in the Sunda straits between Java and Sumatra by combining tree-ring and ice core data with eyewitness accounts of the dimming of the Sun it's possible to estimate how much material might have been thrown up into the Earth's atmosphere with that figure it's possible to calculate the scale and power of the explosion and associated after effects using maletas model we have reconstructed the Krakatoa 535 ad Big Bang a giant red hot fountain of molten Ross and a vast cloud of ash towered over the countryside then a second crack would have led seawater this caused an absolutely vast explosion creating a 30-mile high fountain magma dust and ash up to a thousand miles away ash rain down on forests and fields the towering clouds of steam and gas and ash pierced them and shot upwards and at times when it seems like no go no higher it would continue to go high eventually to the point where it started to block out the Sun in all directions and that gray white cloud within seed has sort of moved laterally across the sky like a mushroom cloud the fallout from the eruption would have been the natural equivalent of nuclear winter [Music] so how did Krakatoa affect the world Ken will let's a studied Krakatoa in detail and he can see similarities between it and a huge dormant volcano near his laboratory high in the hills of New Mexico the 15 mile wide volcanic crater or caldera at valle grande New Mexico last exploded a million years ago ash from here landed as far away as Louisiana using the remains of valle grande ken shows how high-flying volcanic ash blocks out the Sun this is ultrafine volcanic ash formed by free at aplenty and eruption similar to what we think happened in the 6th century the Krakatoa it's so fine that even just a baby's breath of air will keep it suspended by my new turbulence it will never fall to the earth as long as the air is moving which of course it always does high up in the atmosphere in 535 ad similar microscopic particles of action sulfur dioxide from Krakatoa would have shrouded the whole sky turning it endlessly gray temperatures dropped without the full strength of the Sun to heat the oceans less water would have evaporated and the atmosphere became drier and drier as a result believing progressively less rainfall as a result the word droughts and famines very often at the end of major droughts you get massive floods and that seems to have been what occurred but what fascinated David Keyes most was not the climatic catastrophe itself but the possible effects on human civilization [Music] I began to think to myself well disruption as severe as this has got to have political consequences this is really the long-term consequences that I was interested in in ISIL to see whether one big event can actually have a knock-on effect throughout history worldwide he's decided to examine a series of historical puzzles of the 6th century AD he looked at events which from contemporary writings and archaeological evidence were known to have taken place but whose cause has never been properly explained the first puzzle was the spread of a terrible disease which brought the greatest superpower of the time the Roman Empire to its knees in 535 ad under the Emperor Justinian the late Roman Empire based in Constantinople was flourishing but in 542 ad something Awful's struck at the heart of Justinian's glittering empire the horrors were described by a contemporary writer a monk called Evagrius with some people it began in the head maybe are his blood and the face squad descended to the sprout and then remove them from mankind with others there was a flow angled about [Music] Evagrius was describing a massive outbreak of bubonic plague the first time it was recorded in history but how could the plague have anything to do with the climatic catastrophe unleashed seven years before plague is a bacteria a bacillus transmitted from infected rats to humans the carrier is the humble flea which feeds on rats blood this is a flea which had a blood meal and there's no plague organisms and it's gout and you can see that it's quite stomachs quite full and everything's fine if we look at if we contrast this with a flea which has taken up some of the Pasillas we see that the there's a blockage here and this is brought about by a reaction between the bacillus and the fleas gap now result of this is cause of the flea count feed properly and they become so ravenously hungry because they they begin to starve in effect they the more they eat well they can eat and eat and eat and they don't satisfy their hunger because their gut is blocked and so they will jump on to absolutely anything in the chance of getting a free meal as the rats themselves died from the plague the flea has an obvious new target to bite for blood humans and then as Evagrius describes the agony begins some came out in force which gave rise to great fevers and they would die two or three days later with their minds in the same state as those who had suffered nothing and with their bodies still robust others lost their senses before dying what keys found out is that scientists now know that outbreaks of plague are strongly related to changes in climate the sort of changes that followed 5:35 in particular cooling could have had a huge impact on the spread of the disease temperature directly affects how the plague bacteria form in the fleas gut or plague young epidemics our temperature related what happens is that in the in the gutter the flea the the fibrin clots only forms at temperatures below 25 degrees centigrade above 25 degrees centigrade the cloth doesn't form and any facility simply passed out of the flea with the thesis if cooler conditions bring about the onset of the disease did that happen in 535 ad and if so where when according to one of our contemporary sources the church historian Evagrius the plague Ridge nated in Ethiopia what we know both scientifically and historically is that the Great Lakes area Central Africa is one of the oldest fuki of plague activities in the world and that it would appear that the assertion of your pancreas is correct because Africa is normally hot the disease is kept at bay but if Africa was affected by the global cooling of 535 and 536 it would have been a lethal breeding ground for plague from Africa via the trade routes ships rats and sailors could easily bring the plague up the coast first hitting the major port of Alexandria in Egypt and on into the heart of the Roman Empire and Roman greed for one precious commodity from African elephants would only accelerate that process in the 6th century there was an enormous trade in African ivory hundreds of tons of ivory are being brought into the Empire every year and being processed for luxury furniture for luxury objects which important magistrate's would give out as gifts process for diplomatic gift that the Empire could then used to impress his neighbors further to the north and further to the west people who have never had seen an elephant in their lives and it was essentially European and Mediterranean greed for ivory that brought the roofing only seven years after the climatic catastrophe in 542 ad on the back of the ivory trade the plague surged into Constantinople its impact was devastating we had so disposed of over 10,000 bodies a day week after week after week throwing them into the sea of special boats kicking them in the towers of the city wall filling up systems digging out of orchards soldiers were forced to dig mass graves in which to cast the bodies of those who had died the impression is one of chaos and pandemonium Constantinople Europe's biggest cities tanked the month after month after month one contemporary writer recorded but when the number of dead reached a quarter of a million City officials simply stopped counting as people left the stricken city they took the play to towns villages and farms throughout the empire untold millions died and unknown to the Empire a second mortal threat was brewing 3,000 miles to the east the climatic catastrophe was also having an extraordinary effect on an extraordinary people they too would play their part in the decline of the Roman Empire and the simple reason to this new threat was the difference between the digestive systems of horses and cows in the isolated plains of Mongolia hundreds of miles north of China something strange was about to happen before 535 ad the overlords of the region were a tribe of violent barbarian horsemen the others Chinese writers recorded their uncivilized way of life these are foul-smelling barbarians from their point of view without rageous habits the armoires never bathed never wash their clothing they cleaned their dishes by having the women licked them dry all of which was simply horrifying to the Chinese but in one respect as both Chinese chronicles and archaeological finds show the others were years ahead of the competition fines from archaeological digs all over of our territories suggest that they were the most advanced horsemen in the world their style of riding saddles and mount bits are still in use by Hungarian things Minh today and many believe that the others almost certainly invented the stirrup it was this large concentration of horses that gave them a military edge the latest in the military technology of that era the horses also provided food and sustenance the Avars drank fermented mares milk an alcoholic beverage so horses were central to their [Applause] but then in 535 and 536 the years of the catastrophe Chinese records and tree ring evidence from Siberia suggest that the Mongolian steppe was crippled by cold and dry conditions the knock-on effect would have been long-term lasting decades by 552 ad the others were attacked by people who lived in the surrounding highlands the Turks they had previously been ruled by leav ours mysteriously the one's invincible of our horsemen were crushed up until now the cause of this sudden reversal of power has never been explained but then David keys have an idea [Music] so I was repelled by this and decided to try to try and find out what the mechanism was by the world maybe it's something to do with their economy well the a bar economy was a horse based one the Turk economy was a much more mixed one involving considerable numbers of cattle the question came to my mind well was there something about the way that cattle economy works and a horse economy works the difference between those that might shed some light on the political events on the demise of the avars Keyes contacted John Milne at McCauley land-use center in Aberdeen mill has made a detailed study of how different animals feed and survive yes these horses here are actually highland ponies but in terms of the sort of size they're very similar to what I believe the other horses would have been like they're quite similar to some of the lists in terms of size in terms of a Mongolian and Kazakh horses that you that you see now mooom had done intriguing research into the difference between horse dung and cow dung here you can see some horse dung and you can see that the it's very fibrous which demonstrates and it's made up of a fairly large pieces of fiber which demonstrates that this has not been well digested by the horse now if you compared some cattle faeces you would see that it was much more finely ground up and in fact much better digested that little horse manure could the contrast in horses and cows digestive systems have made a vital strategic difference on the Mongolian steppes when after the catastrophe grass and vegetation where a terrible state choice of a greater efficiency to digest food they also the ability to eat a wider range of different average types so they can eat for example very rank vegetation in contrast the horses are less capable of eating ranked really poor quality vegetation than cattle and in a drought situation you get you would get eventually to the state where the horse was not able to eat enough food and because it was not be able to digest it successfully then it would not be able to survive and so in those consequence circumstances then the average would be very vulnerable [Applause] I was absolutely amazed when I found that in fact it was merely the differences between cows and a horse's stomach design that had probably had such a major effect on subsequent history Chinese chronicles record how in the defeat by the once subject Turks thousands of Avars were slaughtered or enslaved their leader committed suicide most of the surviving others began a 4,000 mile trek westwards their journey triggered according to David Keyes by the catastrophe was about to have a huge effect on history the of our refugee caravan cut across what is now northern Kazakhstan skirting the northern shores of the Caspian Sea and on into the fertile grassland to the south of the Carpathian Mountains an area which is now the Balkans and as they traveled the avars recovered their horse technology was still superior to anything they found on their route once again the avars became a conquering people driving all others before them until finally Roman writers recall how they reached the fringes of the Roman Empire arrived from the lake five fifties refugees within a decade they're ruthless horsemanship ruthless military ability has come to dominate all the tribes all the groups of Slavs hums Germans living north of the Danube on the Empire's frontiers and having imposed their control over these groups Davos can then turn their attention against the Empire the Roman Empire already weakened by the play was constantly harassed by other incursions at one point Constantinople was besieged by the barbarians rather than take over the others opted for blackmail and extracted vast amounts of gold from the empire in return for not fighting some of it can be seen today in museums much of it is still believed to lie buried in the plains of Hungary it's reckoned that over fifty years the Avars netted in today's terms seven billion pounds worth of gold from the Roman Empire [Music] the a bar impact combined with the plague and the economic problems has ensued destabilize the Empire and at the end of the day it can all be traced back to this climatic destabilization of the 6th century which was triggered by the volcanic eruption David Keys believed a patent was emerging which showed huge political consequences stemming from the catastrophe it already found evidence of the catastrophes effects throughout Europe and the East now he turned to the Americas where he found another extraordinary coincidence of timing and another historical puzzle where a great city had been destroyed but no one had ever known why in the early 6th century 125,000 people lived in tear 2 akan in the central Mexican plain in 500 AD when the city reached its peak it really was what is called a primate city by that I mean the second next largest city is so far below it in size that really you could almost say there are no other cities I mean that's an overstatement obviously but there were cities of 10,000 people 20,000 but compared to the hundred twenty-five thousand here it was nothing so it was the only huge large city in the entire central Mexican plateau then midway through the sixth century shortly after the 535 ad catastrophe things began to go wrong in tear tear car for the past 20 years Rebecca's story has been painstakingly studying skeletons of people who lived in one of the city's suburbs called kahega the bones provide a remarkable history of the populations health well the Tlingit population has adults it also has quite a few children in an awful lot of babies Rebecca story began to notice that in teotihuacán later period the population in particular the babies suffered a severe decline in health these kinds of infections that show up on the bone are long-lasting bacterial infections and they're very common on the children now babies shouldn't have infections like this normally they should be born with relatively good immunological protection from their parents their mother but in the case of bling we find lots of babies with already infectious reactions indicating that the health of the mothers was so poor that the children are getting sick as well the problem with the very late population and around the country is that overwhelmingly it is babies children and individuals under the age of 25 they should not be dying at that proportion so they start to become 70 percent of my sample rather than a much lower 40 or 45 percent that they were in the earlier period it is a population that is in great trouble is probably collapsing new scientific evidence suggests that the city's declined occurred around the middle to late sixth century a hundred and fifty years earlier than previously thought for David Keyes this read ating was a breakthrough now in fact one can see that tear to archons fall really comes straight on the heels of the climatic disaster and I think that there's a very very high chance that you are are connected there are no existing tree rings or other evidence from Mexico itself to show whether there was a significant climate change however Lake deposits in the nearby Yucatan Peninsula show a 30-year long drought starting in the mid 60s tree ring evidence from Chile and California shows a dramatic reduction in tree growth from the late 5:00 30s onwards and a study of river levels in Colombia shows that the mid to late sixth century was the driest period in the last 3,000 years the evidence throughout the Americas combined with Rebecca story's findings of malnutrition suggest that Teotihuacan was gripped by a long-lasting drought a drought which according to David Keyes's theory was directly linked to the climatic catastrophe and had a devastating effect on the city's supply of food and something happened to the food supply will that make people more subject to getting ill because they're not getting enough food then this is a very dry environment water had to always have to be a very important thing and without water you have great sanitation problems Fantasia would then lead to lots of diseases circulating through the people and causing mortality and they'll help and that affects the productivity of city cities not productive witness people are sick and that becomes one of the things that then say well no we don't want to go to Teotihuacan anymore because it's not a good place to be according to the latest research tell to your conne was finally destroyed when the people rose up against their leader smashing their palaces and setting light to the city's biggest temple somebody went in there and said fired all the roof beams and cause the ceiling and roof to collapse bring down the upper walls and form a big mound of debris well then and that's what happened all up and down the Main Street of the city maybe they decided that elite class that was making demands on them was asking too much that the priests were supposedly bringing the rain and making the springs flow were no longer successful because the because the spring flow was dropping and the rains were diminishing and they lost confidence maybe in the priestly class as well what appears to happen is that you've got a destabilization perhaps some religious and political changes followed by revolution of some sort and the collapse of the city in a way similar to events in in Europe indeed in the way that Constantinople remanent power is affected 5:35 disturbs the status quo and allows history to reform itself all over the world it really is the interface between the ancient world and the world we live in today in central Mexico it took 300 years for a new civilization to establish itself throughout the 6th century a similar story was unfolding all over the planet ancient civilizations crumbling others just beginning and according to David Keys one example of an emerging Natan was England itself Britain in the mid 610 Cheree the Dark Ages the Romans had left a hundred years earlier in the west of the island native British tribes the coats fought to stem the tide of anglo-saxon invasion from Northern Europe according to legend it was the time of the death of King Arthur his country turned into a wasteland as he rode off through the land he found trees down grain destroyed and all things laid waste as if lightning had struck in each place you had half the people in the villages dead [Music] the Earth's no longer produced when cultivated from that time on no heat or the grain through their new tree bore fruit and very few fish were found in the sea for this reason the two kingdoms are called the wasteland but could the wasteland of legend be a distant memory of a climatic catastrophe that really did hit the native British as a result of 535 what is certain British and Irish Allen's is that the bubonic plague which had devastated Roman Empire finally reached Britain by around 547 ad it entered mainly through ports on the Cornish coast from which the British still traded with the Roman Empire this was a significant event in the history of Western Britain and Ireland certainly as one goes through the annals one can find many references to plagues one of them is referred to as the motile itis Magna the great mortality other one is the mortality us prema the first plague like this this does suggest something special they never experienced the plague before it was completely a new horror that they knew nothing about they wouldn't have understood what was happening suddenly people began to develop these terrible pustules underneath their armpits in their groins and they would have died in the most terrible agony according to Keyes the plague changed the political shape of Britain at this time Britain was divided in two in the West lived the native Celtic Britons the East was occupied by invaders from Europe the Angles and Saxons East and West had very little contact with each other the Celtic Britons traded with the Roman world the anglo-saxon peoples traded mainly with their former homelands of Germany and Scandinavia it meant that the Celts the native Britons were far more exposed to the plague arriving from the Roman Empire so by the time you come into the latter part of the century the Celtic West and center beam have experienced a huge population reduction there's a population vacuum and so Anglo Saxon peoples are able to move from the east they move west into harshali empty lands and England was was born Jesus theory is that England came about because the Anglo Saxons were able to defeat the plague stricken Britons a sixth century poem tells of the defeat of one group of Celts the man of God often and their leader murder nice whoo yo c'mon he did not retreat from battle until blood flowed like rushes he cut down men who did not flee the men of God Auden relates on the floor of the hall but before Murdock's tent when he returned they would come but one from a hundred easily one can see five three files of watershed where you see the forces coming into play which create such countries as England Spain France Japan the United China now came the final and boldest turn in his theory could it be that the catastrophe was linked not just to the emergence of new nations but also to the birth of a new world religion Islam [Music] this is all that is left today of the married Dan in Yemen at the southern tip of Arabia but at the beginning of the sixth century Yemen was the region's greatest power it depended on the merab - its greatest piece of engineering the married was huge 2,000 feet long feeding into hundreds of miles of canals but within a few years of the 535 catastrophe climatic chaos hit Yemen first drought and then a succession of storms and flash floods which weakened the dam the constant attempts to repair the dam are recorded on contemporary inscriptions what we're looking at is one of the great inscriptions that was put up on the facade of the dam really commemorating the rebuilding in this earth of the dam repair them in this case in the year 542 and it's a long inscription describing all the various people who came and contributed to this and we can pick out right in the center here the cartouche the symbol of the ruler of the kingdom at that stage one Abraha and there a whole series of these inscriptions for about two or three hundred years and then they stopped which is very indicative of exactly what the arabic sources are telling us that there was a period when this dam was broken and was not repaired again the Mareb Dan was abandoned its ruin was also the ruin of Yemen its population migrated to a new regional power base which emerged in its place around Medina and Mecca in 570 ad the Prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca in precisely that Mecca Medina area that Muhammad was based and so it's really the growth of Medina as a important political center that is so crucial in the early development in Islam the climatic chaos had not only smashed the Mareb Dam and shifted power to Medina it also brought Muhammad's own family to prominence the prophet's family or prophet's ancestors had taken it upon themselves really to provide food to import food into this area and provide food for the population and this was one of their claims to to fame and to status Muhammad's family's reputation for social concern helped his ministry take root in a time of drought famine and the plague which had spread from the Roman Empire oh boy I think Muhammad's message was attractive because this was a period of upheaval and disturbance I've got this whole apocalyptic atmosphere in the ancient world at that time there's been war and there's been revolution the Roman Empire which really dominated the political scene for what eight hundred years appeared to be tottering there is a lot of apocalyptic literature from this period there are a lot of people saying this is terrible the world's coming to an end how do we interpret these disasters what are they sign of and so on the political certainties of the world were collapsing around everybody's ears nobody seemed sure of the future it was a very very unsettled time to live all these things can be traced back to an extent to the climatic chaos caused by the eruption of 535 and they all feed into the early evolution of Islam [Music] [Music] now if a volcanic eruption 535 could wreak all this havoc and draw the ancient world to a final close and really help lay the foundations of the world we live in today what would happen if there was another massive eruption this is not fantasy or wild speculation while nothing may happen in the next hundred years there are a handful of underground volcanic monsters whose arrival date is long overdue the granddaddy of them all is believed to be Yellowstone Caldera Wyoming this calderas may be twice the size of any known modern caldera and its eruptions which have occurred not once not twice but three times over the last two million years indicate that it can has devastated northern america several times besides Long Valley caldera there's a caldera in California which is also heating up the ground is shaking there there's been a die-off of the forest by noxious gases carbon dioxide coming out of the earth public is very concerned about that volcano closer to home for some people would be the area around Naples Italy sure it's famous for Vesuvius which is erupted many times in the past and potentially will again in the future there is also a caldera just on the north side of Naples underlying a metropolitan area of Cappy Flegrei and Pat's wooly where thousands of people live and have lived for a long time the last eruption in the campi Flegrei complex was in 1538 at that time 3,000 people were killed by the immediate explosion now 400,000 people live within the same area the whole complex is still active and capable of major eruptions that would be a total desert disaster for Italy and major disaster for Europe and would no doubt have worldwide climatic repercussions that which would have huge implications for agriculture huge implications from a disease pointing in worldwide and would no doubt have the effect of destabilizing all sorts of potentially unstable countries all over the world it would change our climate it would produce change in the pattern of wet and dry cycles for glass portions of the earth we're familiar with the El Nino and La Nina effects this would be even a much greater perturbation perhaps lowering the temperature the global average temperature several degrees or more the biggest effect for people anywhere is that it's going to disrupt their the food and it's going to take years - for the climate to either go back to normal for people to change the the crops that they use and the way that they plant them there may not be food to import from other countries because they'll need it every bit as much or more than than we will and if our agriculture has failed in some way then there just wouldn't be enough to eat I mean not up to me seems to be the logic of the situation now in times past you're right subsistence economies if they had low population densities they could go to the seashore and live on shellfish and the people sometimes did that under real stressful conditions but you can't do that nowadays there aren't enough shellfish to go around if we are confronted with a global event at any time in the future it's not quite clear how we would cope the whole infrastructure of civilization would collapse around us due to the huge environmental catastrophe that would happen because of the failing of a production the darkening of the skies communications would be taken out satellite communication aircraft transport would be interrupted very severely for a long period but that type of event will occur in the future well people start to struggle for resources and basically that means warfare and the modern world it's not quite clear exactly what would happen the other sit and starve or you get out there and try and acquire food there's not much alternative and a really stressful fatigue one of the big lessons from 535 I think is that we're not talking about a big bang and then the world changes we're talking about a big bang and then it takes a hundred to 150 years for the new reality to actually emerge what will happen in the future of course one doesn't know that I think that historians economists politicians should really pay rather more attention perhaps to the ability of natural forces to change history [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 2,424,870

Rating: 4.8087525 out of 5

Keywords: Documentaries, Archaeology, History, history documentary, real, Full length Documentaries, TV Shows - Topic, Channel 4 documentary, Full Documentary, 2017 documentary, Documentary Movies - Topic, Documentary, documentary history, stories, BBC documentary, worst year in history, worst year to live, bubonic plague, 536 ad volcanic eruption, 536 ad worst year in history, dark ages, the day the sun went out, history of the world, krakatoa documentary, 2020 coronavirus

Id: 0JBdedLx-GI

Length: 49min 38sec (2978 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/inishmannin]

Krakatoa...Outbreaks of plagues are related to climate change. Trade and exploration of nature aggravates plagues. Climate refugees coming from the East reaching Europe. Fall of big cities linked to declining health caused by malnutrition and revolts. The first plague in Britain and Ireland. The birth of Islam among apocalyptic angsts. Oh oh Next Yellowstone ? Vesuvio ? Excellent doc. Thanks