How Europe survived the end of the world, or what it would be worth making apocalyptic films about

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Russian Internet was blown up by a recording that caused a lot of laughter: the author reported that he wants to read something about the apocalypse, but not fiction, but eyewitness accounts who will share the secrets of survival. Laughter laughter, and if we consider the signs of the apocalypse Glad (hunger), Pestilence (epidemics), War (protracted military conflicts) and Death (a developed civilization, the wreckage from which the descendants barely understand how to use), then in the sixth century Europe, for example, one survived the apocalypse.

Glad: environmental disaster

"And this year the greatest miracle happened: all year the sun emitted light like the moon, without rays, as if it had lost its strength, having ceased to shine cleanly and brightly, as before," - this is a description of the year 536 by a Byzantine historian. due to the loss of the sun's rays in Byzantium, problems with crops began - the local crops were too cold for normal ripening.

In Ireland, far from Byzantium, which, it would seem, was accustomed to its not the warmest climate, famine broke out in the same and subsequent years due to crop failure. Probably, there were problems with crops throughout Europe: scientists who studied old trees in Ireland and Sweden believe that the severe cold snap, reflected in the annual rings of trees, did not occur at some local points.

Other scientists, examining the ice of Greenland, reported that the cold snap was caused by a large amount of ash in the air: as if something large had exploded on the ground in one or more places. Some believe that the catastrophe and air pollution caused the fall of asteroids, others - that volcanic eruptions, but the fact is the fact: in Europe (as well as in the Middle East and North Africa) it got seriously cold, a few years of poor harvest happened from the cold, there was nothing without cereals to feed the cattle, and a serious famine began, in places, probably catastrophic.

Influenced the climate and the human factor. The ancient Romans, on the one hand, did not like dense forests on the lands that they conquered, and considered it their duty to clear the land from them, not allowing the thickets to shelter the various aggressive barbarians there, on the other hand, they constantly used wood for household needs and were constantly looking for, where else to sow wheat to feed its vast population.

This led to the fact that by the sixth century the Romans significantly changed the climate on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, cutting down all the forests on them. North Africa has been particularly hard hit. The climate became, first of all, drier, and agricultural crops did not really like it, so the cold snap only finished off agriculture. Food became an expensive pleasure, and people would start eating each other if it weren't for

Pestilence: Giant Epidemic

It is believed that the plague came to the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) along trade routes from China. Perhaps, in China, it also got a little colder, and rodents, constant carriers of the disease, began to more actively go out to the person and his home. In any case, the plague first reached Egypt, which was at that time under the rule of the Byzantine emperors, and then safely covered both Eastern and former Western Rome, sweeping along with the still living fugitives from the epidemic along wonderful Roman roads to the very outskirts of the formerly Roman lands.

Egypt was dying out as entire cities and was unable to recover from this shock over the next hundred years, during which the plague continued to arise here and there over and over again. This made him almost helpless in the face of the Arab conquerors of the seventh century. Byzantium also lost many people and was greatly weakened. The plague took away extra mouths - but deprived the fields and working hands to cultivate them. As the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea writes:

“There was no salvation for a man from the plague, wherever he lived - not on an island, not in a cave, not on a mountain top … Many houses were empty, and it happened that many dead, in the absence of relatives or servants, lay for several days unburned. At this time, few could be found at work. Most of the people who could be met on the street were those who carried the corpses. All trade stopped, all artisans abandoned their craft …"

In Europe, the plague killed 25 million people - a huge number; but in Byzantium it was even more - 66 million. Plague decimated Britain and Ireland, cities founded by the Romans on German lands; people became unusually few.

War: did not stop and did not think to stop

The history of civilizations has always been the history of wars. It's just that wars against the background of the plague, crop failures and previously unprecedented spring frosts are perceived as especially nightmarish, and sometimes it turned out that one side defeated the other only because the plague reached it later or because there was still something to feed its army.

In the sixth century, Byzantium experienced a twenty-year war with the Persians, who conquered Yemen and drove out the Ethiopians, the Byzantine allies. The Slavs broke into Europe devastated by hunger and plague and occupied many territories, especially many German ones. The whole Elbe became Slavic. In northern Italy, the Slavs fought for booty with the Lombard Germans, who also came to grab a piece of the Roman pie. They did not pay special attention to the local population: they could not resist, and the Lombards simply methodically destroyed it. The Germans, it is true, others were oppressed and plundered by the Franks. Manage to win while plague and hunger mow down enemies, not you - that seemed to be the motto of the entire sixth century.

Death: civilizations die, people remain

The Western Roman Empire fell even earlier than the sixth century, but left behind many cities with strong multi-storey buildings, left roads, aqueducts (aqueducts), many beautiful marble statues, doctors who still tried to heal people and teach a new generation of healers, and many letters …

However, in order to somehow support the work of what is left of a lost civilization, you need a sufficient number of people who remember how to do it. In the sixth century, a critical number of such people died. Those who survived the famine did not endure the plague, those who survived among the plague died at the hands of another barbarian-conqueror or found themselves far from their homeland in slavery, where their "bookish" knowledge was not needed and only needed to be able to work with their hands. The connection with the Eastern Roman Empire became ephemeral, there was no one to support the remnants of culture, education, arts.

It is not surprising that Europe slipped from highly realistic sculptures of antiquity to rough homemade crafts, the achievements of painting and medicine, all kinds of social progress, illiteracy became the norm, and the remains of structures, the purpose of which was not understood, but which could still work, if there was a specialist - dragged away for building materials.

Even the sculptures were used for material: illiterate (not so long ago themselves converted) Christian missionaries, just in case, declared every human image an idol that should be destroyed. The marble was smashed, and new, rough buildings were decorated with rubble. Among the remains of Roman civilization, the half-extinct Europe lived thoughtlessly, as if among the incomprehensible wreckage of a failed alien expedition.

The sixth century was not the first apocalypse in Europe. Plumbing, Civil Rights and Technology: What the World Lost When the Greeks Conquered Troy and the Aryans Conquered the Dravids.