[…] the sun seems to have lost its wonted light and appears a bluish colour. We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon and to feel the mighty vigour of its heat wasted into feebleness.

Yet the real strides in historical understanding of this “worst ever year” are emerging through application of such advanced techniques as dendroclimatology and analysis of ice cores.

Dendroclimatologist Ulf Büntgen detected evidence of a cluster of volcanic eruptions, in 536, 540 and 547, in patterns of tree-ring growth. Likewise, “ultraprecise” analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier undertaken by archaeologist Michael McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski has been key to understanding just how severe the climate change of 536 was.

Such analyses are now seen as important, even essential, resources in the historian’s methodological toolkit, especially for discussing periods without an abundance of surviving records.

Some historians – including Kyle Harper, Jared Diamond and Geoffrey Parker – use developments in this growing field to construct whole revisionist narratives about the rise and fall of particular societies. For them, conditions on our planet are far more significant in driving our history forward than we ever realised.

Coping with adversity

But what was it like living through a climate-changing event such as that which began in 536? It’s a question historians continue to ponder as we sift through our sources.

Most of those alive in 536 probably didn’t know they had it so bad. As historians, we are prone to over-rely on anecdotal doom-laden snippets like the quotations from Procopius and Cassiodorus.

Yet, like the proverbial frog in boiling water, the average person back then may only have realised slowly just how grim conditions in their world were getting. The worst moment would not in fact have been in 536 but some time after – when the full effects of plagues and droughts, chills and famines had truly set in.

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