Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World Read Free

Peru, power shifted from the arid lowlands to the wetter, mountainous Andes, which paved the way, centuries later, for the rise of pre-Columbian America’s largest empire.
     
    T he mystery climatic disaster of 535–536 resynchronized world history.
    The contemporary Roman historian Procopius wrote of the climate changes as “a most dread portent.” In describing the climate in that year, Procopius wrote that “the sun gave forth its light without brightness like the moon during this whole year.” Other accounts of the event say that the sun became “dim” or “dark” for up to eighteen months. Its light shone “like a feeble shadow,” and people were terrified that the sun would never shine properly again. In some parts of the empire, there were agricultural failures and famines.
    In Britain, the period 535–555 saw the worst weather that century. In Mesopotamia there were heavy falls of snow and “distress among men.” In Arabia there was famine followed by flooding.
    In China in 536 there was drought and famine, and “yellow dust rained down like snow.” The following year, the crops were ruined again—this time by snow in the middle of August. In Japan, the emperor issued an unprecedented edict, saying that “yellow gold and ten thousand strings of cash [money] cannot cure hunger” and that wealth was of no use if a man was “starving of cold.” In Korea, 535 and 536 were the worst years of that century in climatic terms, with massive storms and flooding followed by drought.
    In the Americas, the pattern was similar. Starting in the 530s, a horrific thirty-two-year-long drought devastated parts of South America. In North America, an analysis of ancient tree-ring evidence from what is now the western region of the United States has shown that some trees there virtually stopped growing in the years 536 and 542–543, and that things did not return to normal until some twenty-three years later, in 559. Similar tree-ring evidence from Scandinavia and western Europe also reveals a huge reduction in tree growth in the years 536–542, not recovering fully until the 550s.
    Up until now, there has been no explanation for such extraordinary climatic deterioration. Certainly the dimming of the sun (without doubt caused by some sort of atmospheric pollution) and the sudden worldwide nature of this deterioration point toward a massive explosion in which millions of tons of dust and naturally occurring chemicals were hurled into the atmosphere.
    But what was the nature of that explosion?
     
    I believe that I have discovered what happened so many centuries ago—and, toward the end of this book, I make my case for proving exactly what this staggering disaster was. Before you reach that portion of the book, however, you will see, in substantial detail, the effect that event had on the entire world that existed then—and how an ancient tragedy shaped the world in which we live today.
    In doing the research for this book, I have developed a greatly increased respect for the forces of nature and their power to change history. That respect, as well as the new perspective it engenders, has changed my view of the very nature of history, which must be understood in holistic terms and which really functions as an integrated, planetwide phenomenon.
    If I have done my job well, what you are about to read is an analysis of the mechanisms and repercussions of catastrophe, a hitherto unknown explanation of our history, and a chilling warning for the future.

PART ONE
     
    THE PLAGUE
     

1
     
    T H E  W I N E P R E S S  O F 
T H E  W R A T H  O F  G O D
     
     
    “W ith some people it began in the head, made the eyes bloody and the face swollen, descended to the throat and then removed them from Mankind. With others, there was a flowing of the bowels. Some came out in buboes [pus-filled swellings] which gave rise to great fevers, and they would die two or three days later with their minds in the same state as those who