The Mystery Of The Dark Age's Global Climate Disaster | Catastrophe | Timeline

Researching a climatic catastrophe that rocked the Earth in A.D. 535, causing two years of darkness, famine, drought and disease.

Written records from China, Italy, Palestine and many other countries suggest a huge catastrophe blighted the world in 535AD. But the cause of it has been uncertain.

Was it a comet? An asteroid? A volcano? Archaeologist David Keys reveals the latter is to blame for the Dark Ages of famine and plague that shaped the world order of today.

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[sheilagraham]

I’m 83 years old and find these programmes informative and fascinating.

[kaloarepo]

I'm reminded of the quote by the great historian Will Durant -"Civilisation exists by geological consent -subject to change without notice."

[mikloskallo]

Some added details from Wikipedia:

The storms and unseasonably cold weather resulted in 1816 being referred to as the Year Without a Summer. It is now known that the exceptional global weather conditions that year were caused by the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia.

The Villa Diodati is a mansion in the village of Cologny near Lake Geneva in Switzerland, notable because Lord Byron rented it and stayed there with Dr. John Polidori in the summer of 1816. Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, who had rented a house nearby, were frequent visitors. Because of poor weather, in June 1816 the group famously spent three days together inside the house creating stories to tell each other, two of which were developed into landmark works of the Gothic horror genre: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Vampyre, the first modern vampire story, by Polidori.

[Chaos]

Crazy how it takes all these various disciplines to come together to solve a simple question …what happened to make the trees not grow so well in mid 500 AD. I love science cause none of this would have been possible without other scientist researching their own curiosities. Who knows how or when this slice of knowledge will be useful to some other scientist some where.

[r.blakehole]

The Plague of Justinian which hit the European world has been dated 541-549 AD. That would correspond almost exactly with this volcanic eruption. Obviously, if food and nutrition is globally interrupted by a massive volcanic eruption then weakened immune systems would result and make plagues a lot easier to happen. Just a thought.

[recklesskelly]

Humans: "We have to stop climate change!!"
Mega-volcanos: "Let's see you pathetic apes stop this."

[Dharmanarchist]

If you’re reading this thank your ancestors who survived this- absolute ballers.

[elessartelcontar]

Turns out that The Dark Ages were LITERALLY dark! 3 years without a summer! Worldwide famine.

[retirosierra]

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun".

[maxinefreeman]

I'm always amazed what our ancestors came through. Wars, famines, diseases like the Bubonic Plague and others plagues.

[mary-louellenaroberts]

These types of scientists like this guy who painstakingly studied and entered all that tree ring info into a computer program over decades is invaluable information. It amazes me.

[andrewoh]

When the Tonga eruption happened a couple of years ago, we heard the boom in Auckland NZ over 2000 kms away.

[joe_hoeller_chicago]

I love all these science based documentaries by Timeline. Some of the last quality left on YouTube for this genre.

[matthewlawlis]

Its amazing what a Volcano has the capability of doing. Remember the one in Iceland back in 2010? That thing wasn't that huge, yet it screwed up the air so bad that European travel was on lock down for weeks. Plus the area was under black clouds for such a long time that crops died. Imagine what a volcano eruption the size of the one they are talking about would look like.

[david]

This synchronizes with the disappearance of civilizations and cities of South-central America continents.

[chickensandwich]

I have a lot of nostalgia watching this. I was in high school when this was released--25 years ago! I wonder how the people featured in the documentary look like today. Likely, some have already passed. It's still really watchable. Life was simpler then before our cell phones.

[robinroberts]

Now the rest of the world knows what it is like to live in scotland

[maxqubit]

I notice an eruption of stupid comments

[tenkloosterherman]

The Eruption of the Tambora in 1815 was pretty impressive too. It is reckoned to be the largest explosion in recorded history and ejected around 200 cubic kilometres of volcanic dust into the atmosphere. It caused worldwide climate change for years and resulted in the worst famine of the century.

[gousmc]

Sooo... The modern selfishness that we (humans) are the end all be all of global warming catastrophe is actually paled in comparison to mother nature just doing her thing