Do You like book Catastrophe: An Investigation Into The Origins Of Modern Civilization (2000)?
Another great book setting out (and succeeding, in my opinion) to resolve a great historical puzzle: in this case, why so many cultures around the world seemed to undergo a period of "dark ages" and upheaval before the period we call the Middle Ages. The author draws on documentary, archeological, and geological evidence from Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Oceana to paint a compelling portrait and timeline of a worldwide climate catastrophe--and, in the spirit of a whodunit, to specifically identify the cause of the catastrophe.
—Brent Ranalli
A book like this makes you realize that academia has really stomped all the joy out of big global theorizing. In the 19th century this guy would have been considered a genius and a polymath... but today, the book comes across more as an enjoyable but thinly-sourced magnificent obsession.One of the most helpful tricks I learned in graduate school was that, in the long run, the LEAST INTERESTING question you can ask about a work of history (or in this case historical archeology) is whether it is "true". Was Robespierre actually Sea-Green and Incorruptible? Did Cleopatra's nose change the course of history? Was the fall of Rome caused by the love of military glory over civic virtue? Who really cares? In the end, history is writing and writing is art. The fact that all of these phrases have continued to be referenced by others, not just in other histories but in the visual arts and fiction and movies, shows that the great historians of the past have stamped their individual creative judgments on the contents of the dusty archives.So I try to ask why an author would WANT a particular thesis to be true and what it would mean for our understanding of the world if that thesis were true. And in this case, my takeaway was that no matter how many great civilizations humanity manages to hack out of the planet... nature always bats last, and sometimes with crushing force. That is something I worry about a lot as we live with the consequences of global warming, so I'm probably pretty responsive to the message here.As for the evidentiary problems... yeah, it's hard to deny them, especially in the written records. For a literally earthshattering event that had ramifications for at least two years, the literati don't seem to have taken that much heed. I didn't know anything about 80% of the civilizations mentioned in the book, so I rather enjoyed a whirlwind intro to the Kazars -- a whole Turkic tribe that basically converted to Judaism en masse! -- and the blood-soaked culture of Teotihuacán. I take it that tree-ring counting is the best line of evidence for the "extreme weather of 535" thesis, read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536.One big area for improvement is that the author totally fails to convey the effects of a volcanic eruption this gigantic. In fact the structure of the book tries to lay out the EFFECTS -- often many years after the actual explosion -- while leaving the CAUSE a "mystery" until the final chapters. Compare to a book like _Krakatoa_ which STARTS with the eruption's immediate global devastation. Obviously this eruption would not have been lucky enough to have a great historian on site -- unlike Pliny the Younger's classic account of the eruption of Vesuvius -- but when Krakatoa erupted the sound was heard and noted around the world, etc. I personally witnessed the eruption of Mt St Helens as a child and have some idea of what a big volcanic eruption looks like... but most people today have no context whatsoever for an eruption of the size proposed here.
—Joyce
For months with no relief, starting in 535 AD, a weird, crepuscular haze robbed much of the Earth of its sunlight. As global weather patterns altered radically, crops failed in Asia and the Middle East. Bubonic plague, spreading like a firestorm out of Africa, wiped out whole counties in Europe. Flood and drought brought ancient cultures to the brink of collapse -- and pushed a few of them over the edge. The Roman Empire, the greatest power in Europe and the Middle East, lost half its territory in the century following 535 AD. Meanwhile, as wave after wave of horse-riding "barbarians" swept down from the central steppes, forced from their ancestral homes by famine and plague, looking for new territory, invading the civilizations they found in their way and looting them to the ground, a new religion, Islam, spread through the Middle East. What caused this catastrophe, leading to the revolutions that convulsed the world for a century or more, and permanently changing its political and cultural geography in countless ways? The probable culprit was the eruption of a supervolcano in the strait between Sumatra and Java -- the very location of Krakatoa, which erupted so catastrophically in 1883, though with less devastating effects than the eruption of 535 AD because of relatively modern methods of transporting food, medicine, and other supplies to where they were most needed after the eruption of Krakatoa, coupled with the activities of charitable organizations that acted to meet the need. Today, a new volcano grows in the same place, Anak Krakatoa, or "Child of Krakatoa." The implications for the world's future are frightening.
—Yael