What do these three years have in common? Events occurring in each changed the course of human history.
A fragmented comet is thought by many to be the source of the first global catastrophe (12,000 B.C.). What caused the upheaval at the end of the Bronze Age is still uncertain (1177 B.C.). During the early years of what would become known as the Middle Ages, a supervolcano in what is ocean between Sumatra and Java sent the world into chaos (535 A.D.).
For eighteen months the Sun was veiled after the eruption in 535 (or 536 according to some sources). Failed crops, flood and drought, and the rise of devastating plagues in the wake of the eruption shaped history by the weakening and collapse of some empires, leading to the rise of others in the shadows of their ruins. It is fascinating to see the ripples spreading through time, from such a distant era, impacting the world even now.
There are many inputs in history, decisions big and small, known and unknown, that nudge or outright push the river of time. As David Keys writes in Catastrophe, this past is both an “explanation of our history, and a chilling warning for the future.”
The natural disasters of recent centuries have been largely localized and temporary in their effects. How long will our luck hold out? Supervolcanoes lay dormant under Yellowstone, Naples, and in Papua New Guinea and California. If one of them explodes, will humanity band together to survive the aftereffects, as they do in all those fictional disaster movies? Or will it be more like Mad Max?
Our hubris, and ignorance of history, puts us in danger of ignoring the natural world and what it can do, and has done, to humanity.
Our ancestors would prevail through the dark times, but as we look back, we realize we are a forgetful race of people. We have forgotten why nations and civilizations rose and fell, and think it won’t happen again.
Every nation or empire that came to an end, thought the same.
Darrick Dean 