Speaking as a scientist, some years have sucked a fat one worse than others. With a global pandemic, economic downturn, and of course, the fact that birds aren’t real, it feels like the last few years are competing for the title of “worst fucking year ever.”
But over a long enough timeline, our recent troubles are knocked down a few notches on the list of no good very bad years. At the very least, the sun did come out last year. I think.
Today’s Moment of Science… The Late Antique Little Ice Age.
A few historians have dubbed 536 “the worst year to be alive,” which is quite the hard claim to quantify but a great headline. Calling it “the year of an inciting incident that contributed heavily to the next hundred years of global fuckery” is likely more true but it doesn’t have quite the same ring.
The most commonly accepted explanation for how everything started was at least one massive volcanic eruption, though there’s the possibility it was a few successive bangers. Was it Krakatoa? Sure. Ilopango? Maybe. A utility infielder from Iceland along with three prospects from the minors to be named later? Why the fuck not, there’s bits of tree ring and ice core evidence supporting a few different possible kablooies, but none conclusively yet. The scientific community still isn’t quite sure which chunk of Earth threw that particular tantrum, and I’m not going to pretend I have it sorted out.
A theory has been kicked around that it was a comet, but if you’re going to put money on a possible cause, don’t bet on the sky falling.
In any case, Earth in 536 CE was a messy bitch that gave no fucks and spared no one from her drama. After the inciting event in late 535 or early 536, temperatures in Europe dipped massively that summer by 2.5C (4.5F). By comparison, ‘the year without a summer’ was the title given to 1816 when temperatures dipped by a mere degree. A few years later in 540 when the climate hadn’t entirely bounced back, evidence suggests that another volcanic eruption roughed us up with a similarly hugantic drop in temperature.
This was enough to tip the climate into the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA), an era that would last well over a hundred years.
The sun was described as appearing to be in an eclipse, the air was so choked with ash. Seasons were “all jumbled up together,” the “feeble” sun able to cast no shadows in modern-day Italy. China saw snowfall in August. There were droughts in Peru, and “a failure of bread” was recorded for three years in Ireland. Crops failed goddamn everywhere, and famines followed in virtually every corner of the known world.
Centuries of a stable climate for the Roman Empire came to a close, all but taking Rome with it. Conversely, it’s been speculated that increased rain and lower temperatures on the Arabian peninsula contributed to the rise of the Islamic Empire.
In 541, the Justinian Plague swept through the Eastern Roman Empire. The first major bubonic plague epidemic in recorded history, fatalities have been estimated at 30-50 million. Was there any link between the climate tantrum and the plague? That hasn’t been established to any convincing degree, but if there’s a God I’m pretty sure they were accidentally leaning on the “fuck this bit of history and fuck it hard” button.
This has been your Moment of Science, not sure if 536 was the worst year but also not about to take any chances on time travel.
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