Guess what was the worst year humanity has ever had. We help: no 2020

There is nothing to beautify about this – 2020 was a lousy year. Lighting fires and burning forests, crashing planes in Iran and Pakistan, a huge explosion in Beirut, a social unrest after the assassination of George Floyd, and on top of all that, even the corona virus swept the world. Humanity has suffered greatly this year, and we have received a huge slap in the face, both physically, mentally and financially.

Unfortunately, Hungary also benefited greatly from the pandemic and the economic recession: unemployment is on the rise, while mortality statistics also show an extremely sad picture. Unfortunately, the world does not develop in a straight line, in a constant movement, and sometimes a tragic year has come.

Anyone who has personally come out of the horrors of 2020 is sure to see the world differently since then and cannot wait for this horrible year to end. Some people have openly argued that this was the worst year in our history. While it’s not easy to compare historical horrors on a pharmacy scale, some scholars say there’s still a year worth of “The most horrible period of humanity” speak to. And this is not the year 2020, not even close.

536

Many of them may be thinking about the world wars right now, or the great economic crisis of 1929-1933. Possibly the Spanish cold of 1918, or the great plague of 1349, which claimed a large number of human lives. But the worst year was not one of them, scientists say. But even a much more terrible past year than these, which literally overshadowed humanity: according to our calculation 536.

“It was one of the worst times people have ever lived, if not the worst.”

Says Michael McCormick, a professor of history at Harvard University. Why exactly? Because the sunlight just disappeared, for up to 18 months. A strange veil of fog covered the Earth, from Europe to Asia.

“The sun was shining in such a way that its power wasn’t as if only the moon had shone all year long.”

The famous Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea wrote about this year that the poor had to go through. As bad as this day without sunlight sounds, it really could have been that bad.

Thanks to research on ice cores, we now know exactly what may have happened in this extremely unfortunate year. Presumably, an Icelandic volcano erupted, which (perhaps accompanied by more eruptions) scattered the atmosphere with ash, blocking humanity’s sunlight. And the consequences of this catastrophe could be listed at some length, but for now, we will only highlight a few alarming facts from the investigation.

Due to the weak solar radiation, a cooling received like the one that came with it. It has not been seen on Earth for 2300 (!) Years. In China, even in summer, it has been recorded that it is snowing. Unsurprisingly, agriculture went bankrupt and from the records of Irish historians it can be concluded that the crops simply died and people no longer had bread.

The famine struck almost everyone, and unpredictably many died. This catastrophe had such a long-lasting impact that people became bitter even years later. Scientists speculate that this may also have been the cause of the bubonic plague that broke out in Egypt a few years later.

It is now difficult to calculate exactly how many people died as a result of this catastrophic volcanic eruption, but it is no exaggeration to say that almost all the inhabitants of the whole earth suffered this year. And not just the poor.

Burned in people’s memories

Some research, for example, has revealed that in Scandinavia, the then social elite began to dump their gold reserves, which was presumably a very desperate attempt to reconcile the gods. There is also historical research that suggests it is known from Scandinavian mythology. Ragnarök The phenomenon (“the twilight of the gods”), which is about the great battle at the end of the world, actually comes from this infernal period. This terrible year may have burned so much in the cultural memory of the people that age-old legends were woven around it.

The writer David Keys, in his book, directly assumes that this period may have contributed to the downfall of the Avars, as well as the migration of peoples around Mongolia to the west. However, these claims are already highly speculative and have not been widely accepted in the scientific literature. In other words, it is not necessarily worth ascribing all the great historical changes of that time to this terrible year. But it is truly surprising that after 536 a large number of large-scale historical processes began.

However, one thing is pretty sure: 536 was a horrible year, most likely much worse than anything else. And this also proves that once nature thinks about it, it is capable of even greater destruction than man. Fortunately, we still don’t know if dormant volcanoes pose a similar threat today.

A word like a hundred: much more 2020 than 536. The coronavirus is not a dog either, but there are few pests more horrible to humanity than the loss of sunlight. And asteroids should leave us alone.