Why You Would Never Survive The Year 536

It's all too easy to believe that the time you live in is the worst time. Yet, while no one's here to make light of very real issues faced by modern people, many of us have it pretty good. Ask yourself: would you rather be alive now or in the turbulent period that gave rise to the Dark Ages?

Now, the use of the term "Dark Ages" is bound to get a medievalist or two pretty steamed. More properly called the Early Middle Ages, this time wasn't necessarily "dark" and spans from A.D. 476 (the fall of western Rome) to about the 11th century. Historians generally accept there was a period of Classical Antiquity right before that. However, there's a lot of wiggle room there, and you may rightfully mark out the generation or so poised on the edge of this transition as being at a particularly awkward point. That's because this era was beset by global instability and, ultimately, if there was one year in particular that time travelers may want to avoid, it's got to be 536 A.D.

What's so wrong with 536? Well, where to start? During this year, there was a major volcanic eruption in the Northern Hemisphere that shot so much matter into the atmosphere that it blocked the sun, causing unseasonably low temperatures, crop failures, famine, disease, and social upheaval. If you found yourself in this year and its immediate aftermath, the harsh truth is that you would have a seriously difficult time making it out alive.

One volcanic eruption may have kicked the woes of 536 off, though we're not sure exactly where it happened. Some suggest Iceland, as ice cores from the Swiss Alps contain bits of volcanic glass from spring 536 that may be part of Icelandic volcanic material (via Antiquity). However, some argue that these shards are a bit too different and think the guilty eruption could have happened elsewhere in Europe or North America.

Eyewitness accounts from this time record an eerily dim sun which, combined with the evidence of ash-flecked ice cores and stunted tree ring sections sure make it sound like a lot of sun-blocking volcanic ash was floating high in the atmosphere. Even Chinese sources note that the city of Nanjing was blanketed by weird dust in late 535. That was perhaps fine sand blown in from drought-stricken areas to the north, but by late 536 and early 537, even more dust descended, just maybe due to climate disruptions courtesy of this ash.

Then, the Ilopango volcano in what's now El Salvador may have erupted around 540, per evidence published in Quaternary Science Reviews. If it erupted at the right time — and there's some doubt that it times up correctly — the cooling effect that was already in place over the Northern Hemisphere may have intensified. Evidence hinting at a couple more ash-spewing eruptions after 536 shows other volcanoes weren't helping, even if they weren't producing the devastating effects of supervolcanoes.

For European people living in 536, the sun rather abruptly went dim beneath a cloud of dust and stayed that way for a full 18 months, leaving much of Europe, the Middle East, and some portions of Asia in only partial light. It probably didn't help that the sun was at a solar minimum, meaning its activity would have been at the lowest point in what's typically an 11-year cycle. It may well have had an effect on the Earth's climate at that and other points throughout our planet's history, per a 2009 paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.

People very definitely took notice. The Byzantine historian Procopius wrote that during 536 "a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year" (via "History of the Wars, Book IV"). Meanwhile, Roman politician and historian Cassiodorus wrote of "extraordinary signs in the heavens [...] The Sun, first of stars, seems to have lost his wonted light, and appears of a bluish color. We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the might vigour of his heat wasted into feebleness." In what's now Turkey, church patriarch and writer Michael the Syrian also wrote in his chronicle of the year that "The sun was eclipsed for 18 months. For three hours in the morning it would give light, but a light that resembled neither day nor night."

If you insist on traveling back to 536 and trying your luck with surviving this time, there's one key bit of travel advice to follow: bring a good coat. With what was likely volcanic debris clogging up the atmosphere and keeping the sun's rays from fully reaching the Earth's surface, it is no wonder that things got cold. And we don't mean just a light breeze that would have had Procopius and his friends reaching for a cozy sweater and a warm beverage. Instead, modern research indicates that global temperatures dropped by as much as 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the wake of this disastrous year. That may not seem like much upon first glance, but consider how the prospect of just a couple degrees of global warming today has many rightfully anxious about the planet heating up far too much.

A cooling trend in the other direction proved to be unnerving and downright disastrous in some regions. As far afield as China, people were reporting unseasonable snow, with frost hitting crops in previously warm regions as late as August. Even Mesopotamia, an especially arid region of the world (though it wasn't always as dry as it is today), was likewise experiencing strange, unseasonable snowfall that summer. Meanwhile, tree ring data collected from the American Southwest shows that, yes, even the people living in this far-flung part of the globe so distant from the European chroniclers were also experiencing serious cold in the aftermath of 536 (via Antiquity).

Cold temperatures and lack of consistent sunlight are hardly good for people, but they can be downright disastrous for plants. And when those people depend on those plants for something as important as not starving, changes in the environment can get dire, fast. With reduced sunlight and frosty temps, crops from Northern Europe to China began to fail, with famines as the all-too-predictable result. In 536, the Irish "Annals of Ulster" noted a "failure of bread," a short, nondescriptive phrase that surely belied much suffering. The "Annals of Inisfallen," noted the very same thing in this era, while archaeological research from the American Southwest indicates that indigenous people there were experiencing food insecurity after cold temperatures, too (though it may have also pushed them to set up more complex Pueblo social systems). Around this time, Northern China was hit by drought, hail, then floods that ruined crops and produced terrible famines.

The Moche people of Peru were also forced to weather severe crop failures. It got so bad that, between A.D. 500 and 700, they appear to have engaged in mass human sacrifice in response to El Niño-influenced deluges and devastating droughts. Crops naturally faltered and society in this region was put under major pressure. Human sacrifice may have been an attempt to get the weather to settle down. Two major events from this time appear to have included the sacrifices of around 40 people each. Those people may have been expected to put a word in for their climate-beleaguered people back on Earth.

While a dimmed sun and unseasonable snow are downright apocalyptic, a smaller foe could have been lingering on crops that made it through. A 2014 paper published in the Danish Journal of Archaeology suggests that the sun-blocking dust veil could be linked to not just wild swings in weather conditions, but the appearance of widespread ergotism. Ergot is a parasitic fungus that can install itself on vital cereal crops like wheat, rye, rice, corn, and oats. It also produces alkaloids that, when ingested by humans, can cause all manner of symptoms depending on the exact strain involved. These effects include convulsions, hallucinations, gangrene, and death. It's since been linked to medieval episodes of convulsions and mass panic like witch trials.

When ergot is sufficiently established, farmers might be able to see evidence of it growing on their crops. They certainly knew about the issue, as ancient Mesopotamians were complaining in writing about ergot-infected grains as far back as 600 B.C. But if you were starving, would you take a risk on oddly-colored wheat if that's all you had to eat? As for the 536 connection, the Danish Journal of Archaeology notes that climate data from Scandinavia at this time shows that some settlements were oddly damp and cold and could have been hit by ergotism flourishing in those conditions. What's more, rye proved to be most resistant to cold temperatures ... but is also an especially friendly host for ergot. 

But what was happening with the economy? Sure, in 536 no one was checking the stock market and Dow Jones was probably just some guy in a village somewhere, but that didn't mean the economy wasn't going to hit you anyway. In Europe, anything that could hit the growing international trade market — like the movement of people escaping famine or the financial hit of many failed crops — could have significant ripple effects.

Here, too, we can learn a lot from ice cores. Research published in Antiquity outlines how scientists sampled ice cores in the Colle Gnifetti glacier of the Swiss-Italian Alps. They found a delayed drop in lead pollution, which itself was caused by smelting mined silver ore. It was already on the decline after the ancient Romans pulled out of the region, but by the mid-6th century, it took another dive. Researchers suggested that the cause was economic pressure courtesy of climate change and epidemics. If people are simply trying to survive both famine and plague, they are less likely to spend money or refine silver.

In far Northern Europe, many villages in Sweden appear to have been abandoned, with those in the east and center of the region hardest hit. Archaeologists have also detected an increase in gold used for sacrifices around this time, hinting that people were more willing to offer precious goods to get divine relief than put it back into their local and regional economy.

If you lived through 536, literature and storytelling may not have offered much pleasant distraction. Norse tales turned apocalyptic, with many focusing on the concept of Fimbulvetr (Great Winter), the bone-chillingly cold season that heralds the end of the world. Fimbulvetr typically includes a weakened sun, floods, and earthquakes and may have been a cultural attempt to grapple with the effects of the devastating weather of 536 and afterward. Circumstantial evidence linking 536 and the rise of apocalyptic literary visions in Scandinavia is hard to ignore.

It wasn't just the Norse who were bumming themselves out, either. Though British history from this era is sometimes hard to tease out, what with inconsistent records and ulterior motives of propaganda-minded writers, the longstanding legend of King Arthur may just have a connection to this time. You may associate Arthur with later medieval fabulists, but the 6th-century Welsh poem "Y Gododdin" appears to briefly mention him, and the 9th-century "Historia Brittonum" gives a somewhat longer mention.

What does all this have to do with 536? King Arthur's legend could be linked to real battles that happened around this time. Social and economic pressures produced by crop failures and the movement of hungry people in the region naturally led to conflict, and the timeline and geographic locations of Arthur's battles mentioned in later sources like Historia Brittonum seem to line up with real clashes (via Northern History). 

Where there's famine, there are hungry people with depressed immune systems — in other words, prime targets for an epidemic. Procopius mentioned that in the 10th year of Emperor Justinian's reign (right around 536), the dust veil made its eerie appearance, "And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death."

Michael the Syrian offered up an even more vivid account of life during the Plague of Justinian, noting in his chronicle that around 537 a plague hit Constantinople that claimed thousands of people (he says that officials stopped counting around 300,000 dead). "The trouble began with a wound that formed in the palm of the hand, and progressed until the afflicted one could not take a step," he wrote. "The city began to stink and so the bodies were thrown into the sea, but the bodies kept resurfacing." He went on to say that this disease — which sounds an awful lot like the bubonic plague — spread to Egypt, Palestine, Armenia, and Persia.

Modern researchers have pinned the Plague of Justinian to A.D. 541, just five years after the dust veil event. While some questioned if the pathogen really was bubonic plague, research published in PLoS Pathogens showed that some people buried in 6th-century German graves really were infected by Yersinia pestis, the plague-causing bacteria. What's more, there seemed to be a rush of graves dug following 536, indicating that a whole lot of people were dying and had to be buried quickly.

Summer snows, withered crops, sluggish economies, ravenous plagues ... what empire could stand against such an onslaught? Rome sure had a hard time. By the sixth century, it was already wobbly, having split into Eastern and Western halves in A.D. 395. That decision came about in part because managing one massive empire was difficult, while the rise of the Persian Empire to the east meant that having a second emperor to keep watch was useful. Yet, the Eastern and Western halves often bickered. The East did alright for itself, transforming into the powerful Byzantine empire, but the West eventually folded to outsiders. The effects of 536 surely didn't help, with climate-based havoc contributing further to societal and administrative instability. Even Constantinople wasn't totally safe, having already faced the bloody Nika riots just four years earlier.

This state of affairs slid into the Migration Age or, more dramatically, the Barbarian Invasions. As that second epithet suggests, this was a period in which non-Roman peoples began moving in on Rome's territory. In the first wave, Germanic tribes like the Visigoths shifted away from encroaching Huns and eventually took over the city of Rome in A.D. 410. This was followed by a second wave of new empire-grabbers beginning around A.D. 500 and continuing for a couple more centuries, placing yet more social upheaval right around 536. Meanwhile, other wars kept the strife going, from Justinian's ongoing attempt to retake parts of the old Roman empire (ending by 555) and long-running Gothic Wars that only ended in 554, among many others.

In 6th-century Byzantium, classical medical texts from antiquity were the big thing, though figures like the 2nd-century Greek writer and doctor Galen didn't always get things right, like when he championed the idea that human bodies required a balance of four humors. Though it's now proven to be a wrong scientific idea, humoral theory persisted past the Middle Ages and argued that getting things back in order required the addition or subtraction of humors (hence radical practices like bloodletting and purging). When faced with the Plague of Justinian, considering humors didn't seem to help much. Physicians who wrote down their experiences at least showed keen observational skills and a willingness to try new ideas, but an estimated 25 to 100 million people died anyway (other sources moderate that to 50 million deaths).

Even regular life was potentially dangerous, though scanty records make things tricky. Given that infant mortality is often estimated at 30% or more for the European Middle Ages, it's safe to guess that it wasn't much better centuries earlier. Likewise, common folk from this era probably dealt with many of the same potentially life-shortening issues that plagued medieval people, but which we might promptly address today, from malfunctioning hearts to dental cavities. Maternal mortality could be especially daunting. A 2013 paper in World Archaeology looked at Anglo-Saxon graves in an English burial ground dating from A.D. 450 to 700, as well as others from that era. Researchers found evidence that women buried with infants may have died in childbirth at rates far higher than many communities face today.