Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - 536: The Worst Year in History

Episode Date: February 4, 2023

There have been many really bad years in world history. There have been World Wars, the Black Death, and horrific natural disasters, all of which have made for very bad years.  However, many historians have come to the conclusion that the worst year in the history of humanity was a year that in and of itself was pretty bad but also ushered in a decade of bad years.  Moreover, it wasn’t bad for a single region or even continent, it was bad for everyone on the planet. Learn more about the year 536 and why it very well might have been the worst year in history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There have been many really bad years in world history. There have been world wars, pandemics, and horrible natural disasters, all of which have made for very bad years. However, many historians have come to the conclusion that the worst year in the history of humanity was a year that in and of itself was pretty bad, but also ushered in a decade of bad years. Moreover, it wasn't bad for a single region or even continent. It was bad for everyone on the planet.

Learn more about the year 536 and why it very varied. well might have been the worst year in history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Trying to pick a single year in world history, which is the worst, is a very difficult and subjective

task. There have been massive wars throughout world history, pandemics that have killed tens of millions, and earthquakes which have killed hundreds of thousands in a matter of minutes. Nazi Germany systematically took the lives of over 11 million people. The Ukrainian Holo D'Amour took the lives of 5 million people in a famine. The great Chinese famine from 1959 to 1961 might have killed as many as 50 million people. The 1556 Shang Sea earthquake in China killed an estimated 800,000 people in a single day. On the evening of March 9th and 10th in 1945, the firebombing of Tokyo might have killed over 100,000 people in a matter of hours.

The Spanish flu of 1918 could have killed as many as 50 million people. In 1221, legend says that Gingas Khan may have killed over a million people in the span of an hour when he sacked the Persian city of Nishapur. I can keep listing all the horrible things which has happened in world history, and it would be a really long list. However, as bad as all those things were, they were usually localized events or took place over an extended period of time. Most of the world didn't see fighting in either of the two world wars. The worst years of the black death were concentrated in Europe. Earthquakes and other natural disasters usually only affect the limited area, as do famines.

So trying to establish a worst year is a pretty tall order. In light of all the terrible things, which has ever happened to our species, what makes the year 536 stand out? There were ancient writers who spoke about the events of 536, but for centuries, most historians thought that they were either exaggerating or telling outright fables. However, recent research has begun to corroborate exactly what happened, confirming the reports of ancient writers. One of the surviving accounts of what happened in 536 comes from a Roman senator by the name of Cassiodorus. Here is an exceptional. extended passage from one of his letters from the period. Since the world is not governed by chance,

but by a divine ruler who does not change his purposes at random, men are alarmed and naturally alarmed at the extraordinary signs in the heavens and ask with anxious hearts what events these may portend. The sun, the first of the stars, seems to have lost its wanted light and appears of a bluish color. We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigor of its heat wasted into feebleness, and the phenomenon which accompanies a transitory eclipse prolong through an entire year. The moon, too, even when her orb is full, is empty of her natural splendor. Strange has been the course of the year thus far. We have had a winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer without heat. Once can we look for harvest since the months

which should have been maturing the corn have been chilled by the boreas? How can the blade open, if rain, the mother of all fertility, is denied to it? These two influences, prolonged frost and unseasonable drought must be adverse to all things that grow. The seasons seem to be jumbled up altogether, and the fruits, which were not want to be formed by gentle showers, cannot be looked for from the parched earth. This often happens in cloudy weather for a time. It is only extraordinary prolongation that has produced these disastrous results, causing the Reaper to fear a new frost in harvest, making the apples to harden when they should

grow ripe, souring the old age of the grape cluster. end quote. Cassiodorus was describing the world where the sun had been blocked. Both light and heat were diminished. Without light and heat, crops cannot grow, and without crops, people starve. There isn't a whole lot of written material from this period, but what does exist tends to corroborate Cassiodorus. What happened in 536 appears to have been a truly global catastrophe. Several Irish annals, which were chronicles of events on the island written by monks, report of famines that occurred in 536. Reports from China told of frost and snow appearing in the middle of August.

Michael the Syrian wrote a history of the region which spoke of the sunlight barely shining for a year and a half. Drought and famine affected the Moche civilization in Peru. In Scandinavia, things got so bad that the nobility threw their gold into lakes in an attempt to appease the gods. All of the evidence points to a dramatic global event known as a volcanic winter. In previous episodes, I discussed an event known as the Little Ice Age and the summer of 1816, which was known as the Year Without a Summer. The volcanic winter of 536 was something else entirely. The Little Ice Age was mostly confined to the Northern Hemisphere.

The event of 536 was a truly global event. Moreover, it was a much more severe drop in temperatures as well as a reduction in sunlight than either the Little Ice Age or the summer of 1816. The Earth was basically blanketed in a cloud of air. which may have lasted for a year and a half. The reduction of temperature would have been approximately 2.5 degrees Celsius on average, making it the coldest year in at least the last 2,500 years, and possibly since the end of the last ice age.

It's only been in the last few decades that researchers have found hard evidence to support what happened. Dendrocanologists have found the rings of oak trees in Ireland during the period, showing almost no signs of growth. Ice core samples in Antarctica showed evidence of elevated levels of sulfates, which are an indication of an acidic dust in the atmosphere. Ice core samples from glaciers in Switzerland found microscopic volcanic glass beads, which were deposited in the year 536. The same ice cores show a dramatic reduction in atmospheric lead levels, indicating that mining activities suddenly ground to a halt. So if this was the result of a volcanic eruption,

where did the eruption occur? There have been several theories put forward as to which volcano erupted, but as of today there isn't any conclusive evidence. Proposed volcanoes include the Rabul Volcano in Papua New Guinea, Krakatoa in Indonesia, Ila Pongo in El Salvador, something in North America, and also possibly something in Iceland. And it's also entirely possible

that the cause of the severe blockage of the sun was the result of more than one volcanic eruption, the effects of which compounded each other. The impact of the volcanic winter of 536 is hard to calculate, again, because there are so few, surviving first-hand accounts available, but it had to have been a catastrophic famine of global proportions. As bad as the year 536 was, it was actually just the beginning of a horrible decade. There was likely another major eruption in 540 and another one in 547. This period became known

as the late antique Little Ice Age. This period, which may have lasted as long as a full century, saw several major changes take place around the world. In 540s, 41, the world's first true pandemic, the plague of Justinian, hit the world around the Mediterranean. I've covered this in a previous episode, but many think that the famine which took place just before this may have contributed to the spread of the disease, as food had to be shipped in from more distant lands. The Norse apocalyptic tale of Rangarok may have been written in response to this period. A group known as the Avars went into decline in Eastern Europe, as did many other groups known to the Romans as barbaric peoples.

This marked the end of the great migration period in Europe after the end of the Western Roman Empire. In India, the Gupta Empire collapsed. The Sasanian Empire, centered in modern-day Iran, ended. The Mongols and other Turkic peoples from the Asian steppes began mass migrations to the west. The great city of Teotihuacan and Mexico fell. The Byzantine Empire began its slow decline, which would take a millennium to complete. Western Europe entered a period that became known as the Dark Ages.

and in the ashes of this era, Islam rose to become a potent force over much of the world. All of the events which I've listed were associated with major wars, famine, and diseases of their own. This was the biggest change in the global political order in over 1,700 years since the Bronze Age collapse. The reason why 536 was so bad was due to the global nature of the event. The sun was blocked out, which affected everyone and everything on the planet. while other climatic events have happened in human history, there hasn't been anything quite like the events of 536, an event that makes it perhaps the worst year in human history.

The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Domino Table Art over at Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, best podcast you'll find of Everything Everywhere. I enjoy numerous podcasts of many themes, but always reach a saturation point where I have to move on. That's where Gary's Everything Everywhere is unique and in a league by itself. The concise discussions on intriguing subjects never ceases to hold my interest.

I just finished listening to the entire library of episodes and had to start over. This podcast is like a certain potato chip. No one can have just one, and even the encore episodes are captivating. Thanks, Domino Table. First, let me congratulate you on your membership in the Completionist Club. You can leave your name on the role of honor in the Facebook group if you, haven't already done that. I also agree that the show is a bit like a potato chip and that you can't just stop with one. However, it's also sort of like a Dorito. You can listen to all you want,

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