Year 536 A.D — The Worst Year To Be Alive
By: Max Ngamla
Tags: Life, Climate Change, History, Pandemic, Lessons Learned

Year 536 A.D — The Worst Year To Be Alive

Image: Public Domain

The worst year in human history was not linked to the Holocaust, nor to nuclear bombs, or the massacres that have occurred, or the flu that killed millions of people all over the planet. No. It was something far worse.



A mysterious mist was gradually covering Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, and it became darker and darker. Much of the northern hemisphere experienced 18 months of darkness. Day and night. The year 536 A.D was the coldest in the last 2,300 years.

This all started during the tenth year of the reign of emperor Byzantine Justinian the Great, and the period from 536 to 560 A.D became known as the Little Ice Age of the Late Antiquity. During 536 A.D, the Sun was as dim as the Moon for the whole year, because its rays were not clear as usual.

During the Little Ice Age: wars erupted, the bubonic plague (known as the plague of Justinian) spread throughout Europe like wildfire, crops were lost and feminine arrived, as a result, a 3rd of all Europeans died. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees Celsius. It was so cold it even snowed in China.

In just two centuries, the world’s population lost between 25 and 50 million people, that is, between 13 and 26 percent of the estimated human in the 6th century. And the worst thing is that, until now, there were many hypotheses but few certainties of why this phenomenon occurred. At least until researchers analyzed an ice core from a Swiss glacier and they identified the culprit.

A catastrophic volcanic eruption in Iceland threw ash across the northern hemisphere well into the beginning of that fateful year, 536. two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. These major eruptions negatively affected the entire planet. Europe sank and its economic stagnation lasted until 640. Another sign in the ice core (a lead spike) marks the resurgence of silver mining, as explained in a study published in the Antiquity magazine.

In the ice formed during the spring of 536 scientists found two particles, which were microscopic volcanic glass that looked like the volcanic rocks of Iceland. The winds and the climatic systems of that year should have guided the eruption cloud to the southeast through Europe and later to Asia, regions that were covered by the volcanic mist experienced a deep freeze that lasted for a decade.

After this dark time, everything changed around the year 640 A.D. The ice core layers of the year 1347 A.D have traces of lead, indicating that humans began to extract and melt silver from lead ore, and they began to mint coins. “The new mining facilitated the production of the latest post-Roman gold coins, debased with increasing amounts of silver, and the new silver coins that replaced them “, write researchers.

”The high-resolution ice core record offers a new and independent timeline for the renewed silver production in the west, early medieval”, they add.

The European economy was in recovery mode in 1347. But the ice data doesn't stop there... The lead contamination in the ice core exactly matches the arrival date of the Black Death (Between 1347 and 1353), the deadliest pandemic in human history.