536 AD, The Worst Year In Human History

We have experienced a lot of disasters in 2020, but all of them are not comparable to the year which historians call the worst year in human history, namely 536 AD There were indeed deadly disaster years in human history. Just look at the year 1349 when the plague "Black Death" wiped out half the population of Europe, or 1918 where the "Spanish Flu" epidemic killed about 100 million people in the world.

But the situation in 536 was very different. From famine, war, to plague, they all emerged together, tormenting the people living at that time with unbearable suffering. Surprisingly, all of this was thought to have been caused by a natural disaster, most likely a volcanic eruption.

In 536 AD, the world experienced what is called extreme weather. Maybe in today's terms, when we hear extreme weather, we will imagine very heavy rain or even a storm. But what the world's population was experiencing at that time was far more deadly than that. In 536 AD, people in various parts of the world, from Europe, Asia, to America experienced various strange phenomena.

Mysterious fog appears in various parts of the world. Historical records state that fog is not like the fog that appears in the morning when the weather is cold, because the fog is due to water vapor that should feel wet. But the strange fog that enveloped their city at that time was dry fog. No one knows where the fog comes from, but what is clear is the fog doesn't just block our vision. But the fog also blocks out the sun. Surprisingly, that event lasted 18 months.

The existence of this fog has a very devastating impact on the world of agriculture. Without sufficient sunlight, plants will not be able to photosynthesize and as a result, many food plants die and crop failures. Famine struck. Ancient historical records in England and Ireland show that in 536 AD there was famine due to crop failure and wheat bread (the staple food of Europeans at that time) became very scarce.

Not only that, dim sunlight also causes world temperatures to drop and in subtropical areas snow starts to fall, even in the middle of summer. Not only Europe reported this, the ancient Chinese Empire in China also experienced crop failure. In other parts of Asia, the Gupta Empire in India and the Sassanid Empire in Iran also collapsed as a result of this prolonged catastrophe.

The impact was even felt on the American continent. There was a drought in the territory of the ancient kingdom of Moche in Peru until the dynasty became extinct. The giant city of Teotihuacan in ancient Mexico is also experiencing war and riots due to climate change causing drought and famine.

However, hardest hit were the Europeans, who were still under the rule of the Roman Empire. At that time, the Romans were still fighting against the barbarians called the German Vandals (from their name for "vandalism") who destroyed the city of Rome. But as if their current suffering wasn't enough, the enemy, whom they couldn't see, reappeared. The bubonic plague.

The so-called Justinian Plague (as happened during the reign of Emperor Justinus) is said to have killed 5,000 people a day in the city of Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium and wiped out about 40% of the city. population. The number of casualties due to the rage of this virus outbreak has never been clearly recorded, allegedly between 25-100 million. But the moderate figure accepted by most historians is 50 million, which is still a very large number.

But what actually happened? Scientists seem to agree on one thing: volcanic winters. As the name suggests, the great disaster that hit the year 536 AD was caused by a volcanic eruption. Of course historical records at that time are so unreliable that we don't know which volcano erupted, but there are various conjectures.

• In 1984, a scientist named R. B. Stothers postulated that the 536 AD catastrophe was caused by the eruption of Mount Rabaul in Papua New Guinea.

• In 1999, David Keys theorized that the eruption of Mount Krakatau in the Sunda Strait was responsible for the horrors that swept the world in 536.

• In 2009, a group of researchers from the observatory in New York proposed a completely different theory. From the results of their investigation of the ice in Greenland, they thought that the cause of the disaster was precisely a meteor that fell to earth.

• In 2010, Robert Dull, John Southon, and colleagues presented evidence that the Tierra Blanca Joven eruption in El Salvador, Central America erupted violently in 536 AD, creating a caldera lake called Ilopango. Seeing this coincidence, it is certainly not wrong if they think this volcano is responsible for climate change at that time.

• In 2018, researchers from the prestigious Harvard University campus put forward the theory that a volcanic eruption in Iceland in 536 AD was the cause of this global catastrophe.

There are so many explanations about the causes of this tragedy that befell 536, so which one is correct? What if we thought like this: what if everything was right? What if in that one year, 536 AD, there was a volcanic eruption in Papua New Guinea, the Sunda Strait, America and Iceland (plus all meteors could fall) almost simultaneously in one year? And all of that causes disasters in the form of war, famine, to epidemics that destroy tens of millions of human lives? Of course that proves that the year 536 AD is indeed the worst year in human history.

What is clear is that the effects of the prolonged catastrophe in 536 AD caused legendary traumatic effects on Europe's most suffering population. Allegedly due to the dark years of 536 AD due to various disasters, the Roman Empire finally collapsed and became the beginning of the Dark Age that gripped Europe for centuries.

In the Dark Ages, European understanding of knowledge and science declined dramatically and their lives were filled with primitiveness and superstition. Europeans never reached their prime until more than a millennium later, when in the 17th century there was a Renaissance period that illuminated European culture.

Even the legend of Ragnarok in Scandinavian mythology is said to have been inspired by the terrible suffering in AD 536, which is not surprising, because of the scale of horror, they thought it was the end of the world.