In 536, impenetrable dark clouds covered the sky for a year.
Terrible disasters hit the Earth: from drought, hunger and general diseases, the Earth's population has sharply decreased. Scientists are confident that they now know the causes of a natural disaster.
The five hundred and thirty-sixth year from the birth of Christ turned out to be difficult and gloomy. From this time only bleak messages have reached us. That year, the sky darkened, black clouds covered the sun for a long time. Blood-red rains fell on the land, even the Mediterranean Sea became very cold. Freezing winds and darkness prevented the farmers from growing and harvesting crops from the fields - the years of hunger came, decline and hopelessness reigned everywhere. The worst cold snap on our planet in the last two thousand years has come.
Mysterious clouds became part of European history: “The sun shone as weakly as the moon for a whole year,” wrote the historian Procopius of Caesarea, a Byzantine writer and historian of the 6th century. People suffered from hunger and diseases cut them down. The inhabitants of Rome described the "bluish sun" in which, even at noon, objects did not cast a shadow. An endless year dragged on for agonizingly long without the sun, without heat and light.
In other parts of the planet, people experienced about the same.
The climatic catastrophe of the early Middle Ages led, according to scientists, to the most important upheavals of the era: at this time, highly developed cultures in Indonesia, Persia and South America disappeared - in all likelihood, a long-term drought played a fatal role in this. Large cities fell into decay, Byzantium in 536 was subjected to constant plunder and destruction.
TRACE LEADS TO AUSTRALIA
The best minds of mankind tried to understand the mystery of the appearance of "black clouds", but they failed. The causes of the natural disaster, which led to grave consequences in different parts of the world, are still unknown.
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Geologists have limited the "circle of suspects" because only a large volcano or meteorite could have done such troubles on Earth. But the exact cause is very difficult to establish in hindsight.
Nevertheless, scientists believe that they are "on the trail." They found evidence of a large meteorite falling to Earth. A whole picture of the incident is formed from the totality of various facts. Droughts, crop failures, famine and pestilence lasted ten years in the early Middle Ages, and at least two major natural events caused these disasters. Scientists reported their findings at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.
To cause long-term global cooling, the dust cloud in the atmosphere must be colossal. If the cloud rose from the impact of a meteorite, this meteorite was at least three hundred meters in diameter. The calculations were made in 2004 by three British scientists. But the crater of the corresponding size could not be found anywhere.
They were looking for the crater, first of all, on land, because the ocean floor is available for research only to a limited extent.
But recently, researchers have discovered on the seabed off the coast of Australia in the Gulf of Carpentaria a huge crater from a six-hundred-meter meteorite. Dallas Abbott and his fellow geologists at Columbia University in New York have dated the meteorite trails at the bottom that have remained since the fall. At the bottom of the sea off the coast of Australia, as well as in the ice of Greenland, the researchers found particles of a meteorite that disintegrated during the explosion. They came to the conclusion that this meteorite, which fell to Earth no later than 539, could serve as the cause of the cooling on the planet.
THE DECLINE OF MAYAN CIVILIZATION
Scientists have known traces of a medieval climatic catastrophe for a long time, if only from a comparison of tree rings in tree trunks.
The width of the annual growth zones of wood allows conclusions to be drawn about the weather during the period of tree growth. Annual rings, formed in 536, are extremely narrow - the trees almost did not grow at that time. And in subsequent years, the annual rings are not much wider. In 1990, based on an analysis of the annual growth of wood, climatologists established a global cooling in the 6th century by three degrees - this is an extremely high indicator. The conclusions of modern scientists completely coincide with eyewitness accounts from historical sources.
Eight years ago, geophysicists discovered another possible cause of global climate change in the early Middle Ages. In the ice shell of Greenland, sulfur deposits were found that appeared there in 527. Snow that fell in Greenland, over time, caked, hardened and turned into ice. Small bubbles in the ice are keeping air from the past. It is usually possible to date the sediments only approximately, and not with an accuracy of a year, since snow inevitably mixes with last year's and older ones. Sulfur could appear on the surface of Greenland in 536. In any case, sulfur fell with snow in Greenland due to a volcanic eruption.
The question arises: what was the volcanic eruption to have such consequences for the entire planet? Volcanic eruptions have occurred in all regions of the Earth, traces of which remain to this day, although not all of them are probably known to scientists. In 2008, Scandinavian researchers discovered sulfur deposits in a drill core from a glacier in Antarctica, dated to about 534. Presumably, at this time, somewhere in the tropics, a powerful volcanic eruption occurred, which dusted the entire planet with gray. Which volcano eclipsed the sun at the time is still completely unclear.
Volcanologists believe that Krakatoa in Indonesia is suitable for the role of "suspect". Between 6600 BC. and 1215 AD. extremely powerful volcanic eruptions took place, which almost completely destroyed Mount Krakatoa. The eruption of the El Chichon volcano in Mexico was somewhat less destructive, but the date of the eruption is quite accurately established - 539. The Mayan Empire was going through a catastrophic drought at this time, because of which people left their habitable places. But was the volcanic eruption of El Chichon strong enough to affect other continents?
ELEMENTAL IMPACT IS EQUAL TO ATOMIC WAR
The information collected is mixed. The discovered traces of meteorites must be folded in such a way as to form a more or less convincing picture from separate scattered parts. Drilling holes helped to get to the layer with the characteristic meteorite remnants. The remains of the meteorite consisted mainly of shattered quartz and other minerals that melted. These minerals were found in samples from the crater in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The dating of the fragments suggests that the meteorite fell to Earth in the fifth or sixth century.
Data from Greenland ice samples are much more accurate. In the layer of ice corresponding to the year 539, in addition to traces of meteorites, there are shells of tropical marine microorganisms, the so-called diatoms (traditionally considered in the class of algae). For diatoms to get to Greenland, the sea wave had to rise high into the atmosphere, and for this, as Dallas Abbott emphasizes, an enormous release of energy is required. The impact from the fall of a large meteorite is just capable of throwing up a huge blast wave.
Perhaps, there was almost simultaneously a volcanic eruption and a collision of the Earth with a small celestial body. Oceanologist Mike Bailey of Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, believes there have been two natural disasters in a short space of time. His hypothesis is consistent with the condition of the tree rings and with reports from historical sources that tell of a prolonged drought until the mid-forties of the sixth century.
In all likelihood, the volcanic eruption was somewhat earlier and the meteorite fell after the volcanic eruption. Two catastrophic natural phenomena that followed each other led to the fact that dust clouds covered the sky for a long time, and our whole world plunged into twilight for decades.
If something like this happens in our time, even one of these two natural disasters, then its consequences will be tantamount to a world atomic war.