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posted by martyb on Monday December 03 2018, @10:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the answer-"cloudy"-try-again-later dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday December 03 2018, @02:57PM (9 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday December 03 2018, @02:57PM (#769154)

    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.

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  • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @03:45PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @03:45PM (#769167)

    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

      by Thexalon (636) on Monday December 03 2018, @04:59PM (#769187)

      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)

      by mhajicek (51) on Monday December 03 2018, @05:28PM (#769202)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:18AM (#769348)

        The earliest cannons were hollowed logs with bands of metal reinforcing them.

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:25AM

        by Arik (4543) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:25AM (#769871) Journal
        "In seriousness, the technology to make a continuous piece of iron that big didn't exist."

        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)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 03 2018, @07:36PM (#769261) Journal

    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.

    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

      by Arik (4543) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:45AM (#769440) Journal
      That can be effective, and of course you can mount bayonets on the muskets to allow them to be used as makeshift spears in a pinch as well - but this means equipping *many* men with weapons, not just one.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:21PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:21PM (#769583)

      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

    by Arik (4543) on Monday December 03 2018, @10:57PM (#769328) Journal
    This is very true. I remember watching that episode and laughing at it as a kid. A kid who had made his own gunpowder already, probably. But the raw materials were in obvious need of refinement, the result would have no power if it fired at all, and that was actually a good thing because that 'barrel' would have went off more like a pipe bomb with real powder.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?