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Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive'
Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.
A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.
[...] At a workshop at Harvard this week, [a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono] reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.
Alpine ice-core evidence for the transformation of the European monetary system, AD 640–670 (open, DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2018.110) (DX)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Monday December 03 2018, @01:02PM (28 children)
Making a barrel with the technology available at that time would be feasible, but if you loaded the result with anything like a modern charge it would fail. Drilling metal with the required precision was not something they knew how to do, and it was not something a simple step away from their abilities - it was many centuries away. At best you might get a damascus barrel out of them, and for that you'd need to monopolize a relatively large amount of top quality material. Remember that the blast furnace is also centuries away still - we knew how to work with naturally occurring iron in many useful ways but we had no fires hot enough to melt it and purify it.
"Gunpowder, anyone who can remember "75:15:10" and find the sulfur can make that extremely easily. As long as you kept the manufacturing process a secret, you'd be able to rule the world if you chose to."
Yes and no. Yes, it's not hard to make gunpowder, didn't everyone do that as a child? :)
But no, you can't make use of it and keep it secret simultaneously. In part, because it is so easy to do. How do you think this is going to work?
You want to keep it secret? Ok, but you have to involve as few people as possible and be very careful at every stage of the process, you wind up with relatively little powder as a result, and the secret is likely to get out anyway. If you want a lot of the stuff (like to equip an army) then you can't even take those precautions. You'll have people making the stuff, they all have to know what they're doing, and more than that, your suppliers know what you're buying, other people will too - like neighbors that notice that the price of sulfur suddenly skyrockets because they buy some themselves for some other reason. And don't think that a few muskets would make you invincible either - the people back then were very tough and very accustomed to fighting. Even if you had a repeater; if you pissed them off they'd mob you and you'd go down.
Realistically, if you don't get to take any artifacts back with you, you're going to start off at a huge disadvantage. Surrounded by people who are much more accustomed to the environment, who can speak with each other and work together but whose language you lack. Your only hope would be to attach yourself to some local warlord^wruler and those guys probably weren't all that pleasant. Play it right and you might eventually take him out, but you'll need him just to get the materials and labor to start making use of some of the knowledge you have.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 03 2018, @01:57PM (2 children)
You are all forgetting the lack of sunlight and the consequent crop failures. Nothing spurs revolt and war like a famine. A few muskets or other advanced weapons tech is no solution at all to the problems of that age. That'd just bring lots and lots of attention down on you, and you could easily end up in a situation where you would have to conquer the empire and install yourself as emperor, probably have to assert your divinity as well, or die trying. One against the whole world just does not work, not least because you have to sleep sometime. You'd be better off hanging out with the barbarians, the real Goths, not the punk neo-Goths we have today.
We really don't have any means, even today, of accelerating the natural clearing of the atmosphere of pollution from volcanic eruptions. So, maybe artificial lighting could help? Grow plants in greenhouses, with help from LED lighting. So you'd need electricity somehow. For obvious reasons solar power wouldn't work, but there's still water and wind. And, seeing as how it's a period of volcanic winter, perhaps some warm clothing and snow shoes would be a good idea. That's the sort of tech I'd want to pack with me. Look to your food and mobility. I might pack a pistol too, for emergencies, in case any people get any ideas.
But all that is also a risky, high profile approach. No, it would probably be best to blend in. Never do anything blatant to get the locals to wondering about you. Or you're going to be the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday December 03 2018, @02:20PM (1 child)
Better to go back in time with a tubful of technology from 100-500 years from now. Otherwise you will probably just die from some random disease or get stabbed to death.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @10:26PM
No need for the time travel. I can stay where I am and get stabbed or some random disease, thank you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @02:25PM (1 child)
"Yes and no. Yes, it's not hard to make gunpowder, didn't everyone do that as a child? :)"
No.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Monday December 03 2018, @05:09PM
I made it as a kid, but I sure didn't find and refine the ingredients. Impure ingredients can really kill black powder's ability to burn rapidly. ... But it would be an excellent fire-starter to add to tinder. It'll burn even when a bit moist.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday December 03 2018, @02:57PM (9 children)
When it comes to mixing your own gunpowder, there's a world of difference between knowing the formula and getting a good shot off. As in, the Mythbusters tried to create an anti-Gorn cannon like the one Kirk used in "Arena", and couldn't.
But even if you have a working musket, you have a serious rate-of-fire problem. If you're up against, say, cavalry, you might kill one of them, but they're killing you.
And even if you somehow have that, you're up against people with tactical abilities and fortifications. Your gun can't get through most fortified walls, and if anyone surprises you with, say, an archery volley, you're dead.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @03:45PM (4 children)
Why aim small? Cannons are actually easier to manufacture, and are going to knock down any wall going in those days. If you could get 50-100 men and a couple cannons, you'd be a force to be reckoned with before long.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday December 03 2018, @04:59PM
During the Napoleonic Wars 1300 years later, the standard way of dealing with artillery was to charge them with cavalry, ideally while they were busy shooting at something else. There were definitely people who had cavalry in 536 CE. As for a force of 50-100 men, most nobles had at least that at their disposal.
You might manage to become a noble of some kind with your big cannons. However, the idea that with a couple of bits of technology you're suddenly taking down, say, one of the Merovingian kings is just plain wrong.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mhajicek on Monday December 03 2018, @05:28PM (2 children)
Aim small miss small.
In seriousness, the technology to make a continuous piece of iron that big didn't exist. That's why armor of the period was made from wire and small plates.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:18AM
The earliest cannons were hollowed logs with bands of metal reinforcing them.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:25AM
Eh, that's basically correct but not technically correct.
There were some fairly large plates made, and large pieces, but the larger they got the more likely to have a serious flaw rendering the whole thing unusable for practical matters, so they're mostly ceremonial.
Armor made of fairly large plates was not unknown to the ancients - and soldiers of the Roman Republic had often wore *segmentata* made of fairly large plates.
But *most* armor was made from wire and/or small plates, not just at that time period but for the vast majority of the history of armor, not because it was completely impossible to make larger plates, but because of a combination of things. The difficulty of making large plates is one, the larger amount of waste created by flaws is another, but things like the ease of provisioning and tailoring armor was probably at least as important a factor. To make a suit of segmentata you needed a master armorer, several assistants, and the best iron available to work with. It's expensive and time consuming, it's tailored to your body and cannot be easily modified for another person. Or for that belly you developed while we were on garrison duty for that matter. And even properly tailored this stuff is kind of cumbersome, if the fit isn't perfect it can be a real problem. Armor you can't move quickly in doesn't do a soldier much good.
Chain solved a bunch of problems. Wire is relatively easy to make. Flawed sections can be isolated and thrown away with relatively little waste. No master armorer needed, slaves can be taught to bend it into rings and weave them together. There's certainly some skill to tailoring it, but it's not too complicated, and once you get it down you can take a few pre-assembled sheets a stack of loose rings and rivets as input and put out properly tailored shirts as output very quickly. Shirts that are lightweight, self-cleaning, and store in a small space. They're easy to repair using the same simple skills, or to alter to fit another soldier. This simplifies the supply chain incredibly. You don't need to provide each soldier in the empire with a properly fitted suit - just the required number of rings and rivets, hopefully some pre-assembled to save time, and in a pinch the soldier himself could probably put it together though normally a slave would. The resulting armor probably isn't as effective protection as segmentata - certainly not against a strong spear thrust - but it's so much lighter and less expensive and easier to procure and maintain and generally manage, that it quickly became preferred and segmentata went away. You don't see that kind of armor become very popular again for centuries - not until, indeed, metallurgy advanced to the point it became practical to make large plates cheaply, and with few rejects.
So you're not very wrong, but in fact the technology *did* exist. It just wasn't all that practical.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @07:36PM (2 children)
Infantry squares [wikipedia.org] solve that problem. You get your unit into a square formation with the first, outer row (on all four sides) holding bayonets out and the second row shooting at the incoming cavalry. It's not perfect, but it'll take a lot of disciplined cavalry to break open such a formation the hard way.
And your cavalry will be better than theirs. Shotguns or carbines will do wonders for increasing the firepower of a cavalry unit. And spy scopes or binoculars convey a tremendous reconnaissance advantage.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:45AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:21PM
So now its changed to you teleporting back to the dark ages along with a loyal infantry battalion?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday December 03 2018, @10:57PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @06:59PM (3 children)
I'll back him up on producing penicillin. I don't even know much about it but it's easy to make a reasonable visual guess on any given moldy piece of bread. Next you take some inoculate a clean culture and then you inoculate a sweet boiled liquid with lactobacillius until it produces a faint oder (I don't even know how to spell it). Add your possible penicillin and see if it kills off the lactos. You'll know if it fails to develop a rich bubble of smelly h2s in the top of the bottle.
Since I admittedly know jack shit on the subject but am apparently a little more creative than the average bear. I'd probably feed some to the local whore and see if she clears up.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)
Really?
Oh, you mean you admittedly don't know much about the topic and have never tried it before but you still believe that it would be trivially easy to accomplish within the first week of being teleported to 536CE.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @10:07PM
Why does anyone even pay hospitals for penicillin? I just leave my toast out overnight then by breakfast I'm protected for the day!
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday December 03 2018, @10:54PM
Assuming this description is correct, you'd still need to accumulate sufficient capital - and work for sufficient time. This would not be quick, or easy, but it might be doable.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:37PM (8 children)
You assume the necessary tech already has to exist. It doesn't if you know what you want and have a general idea of how to get to it. Fairly good steel isn't at all difficult to produce if you know how. You wouldn't be getting specialty steels like we have today but you could definitely get something viable for a rifle barrel.
As for keeping it a secret? Sure it'll get out eventually but it's perfectly viable to equip an army with less than half a dozen people knowing the ingredients and ratio if you're smart about it. For starters, you obtain things that most definitely should not be mixed in gunpowder as well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:17PM (1 child)
You first need a way to keep people from killing you, then a means to eat, then to generate enough wealth to support your technological endeavors.
Read "The Crosstime Engineer" for one author's optimistic take.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:34PM
Keeping them from killing you could be difficult, depending. Too situational to do much about though. Eating would be fairly easy though around other people. If you haven't picked up a million valuable little ways to make someone back then's life easier throughout your life, we're just too different to be having this conversation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:09AM (5 children)
I'm afraid I must disagree. To reliably make good steel you need a furnace hot enough to melt steel. Such a thing not only did not exist at the time, the pieces out of which you could assemble it did not exist, and the tools to shape those pieces did not exist. You'd have a very long job needing a lot of raw material for input to get there, even if you're a professional engineer who has every formula memorized by heart since you were a child for just this occasion. And you have to feed, clothe, and shelter yourself from the beginning - those daily challenges don't wait until you get your blast furnace built and would almost certainly prevent you from ever finishing one.
And no matter how clever you are, that formula is going to get out, sooner or later.
If you're talking about things like bog iron 1) that's not steel, it simply isn't and 2) the people at the time were already quite adept at extracting and making use of it, so you'll be competing with them head to head for it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 06 2018, @12:23AM (4 children)
Arik, mild steel completely melts well before clay gets hot enough to make ceramics. The technology not only existed, it had been around longer than iron had been anything but an interesting rock.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday December 06 2018, @12:44AM (3 children)
The melting point of *iron is about 2700 degrees, realistically to get good consistent results without taking a very long time you're looking at roughly 3k degrees. You need what's called a blast furnace, they were developed in the lowlands in the late 15th century.
The temperature at which clay is fired to produce fine ceramics is about 1k degrees.
That's nowhere near enough to melt iron, which is what you have to do if you want to produce a pure material.
It IS high enough to make iron 'blooms' however - and that's exactly how people before the 15th century produced raw materials for ironworking. In a bloomery, the ore is brought to just over 1k degrees. Not enough to melt the iron itself, at most it becomes a little spongy at that temperature - but it's hot enough to melt (or even sublimate) many of the contaminants, and it can be purified further by hammering it while at temperature, forcing slag out of the mix, although this is an extremely expensive process in terms of man hours, fuel etc. The result is not pure iron, it's not steel either, but with some luck it can be close enough to make a good sword out of.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 06 2018, @04:18AM (2 children)
Blah, you are correct. Mental units conversion error, or rather lack of conversion. Either way, a blast furnace isn't remotely high tech. Rather labor intensive to make back then (constant airflow of the necessary amount would have to be water or manually powered, for instance) but not exactly something that's going to stump anyone.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday December 06 2018, @07:12AM (1 child)
Yes.
"Rather labor intensive to make back then (constant airflow of the necessary amount would have to be water or manually powered, for instance) but not exactly something that's going to stump anyone."
The simple fact that people worked iron for thousands of years, and made bloomery iron since at least ca 3500 years ago, but the blast furnace didn't show up until the 15th century, suggests that you are underestimating the difficulty.
In historical fact, it was done with waterwheels. "Manual" ventilation was used from the very beginning - it is not sufficient.
*oh yeah, there are a few minor exceptions - the Chinese apparently managed to melt a little iron much earlier, but not much, and we don't know exactly how they did it. We just have a few bits of cast iron to prove they somehow pulled it off. The Indians produced 'crucible steel' for several centuries as well, it wasn't true steel, it wasn't homogeneous, and they weren't melting iron, but it was extra close on all counts and traded widely. It also seems to have relied on ore as much as technique, and gone away when the ore deposit was exhausted (after being worked for ~2k years continuously.)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 06 2018, @02:01PM
Nah. It's just that genius isn't common or predictable. By that I mean thinking outside what is necessary for your survival/comfort has never been humanity's strong suit. Already knowing most everything they would have to have a lightblub moment and figure out would mean you'd likely see the industrial revolution happening in the 600s instead of over a thousand years later.
I wasn't talking ventilation though, I was talking compression. Pretty damned ghetto and hacky compression by today's standards but enough to make a system that would last long enough to make a better system. That's the key here. It's not like you have to build a modern furnace with only the tools at hand; you only have to build the tools you need to make better tools and keep doing so until you're satisfied.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.