Krakatoa Changing History

[Hyperionxvii 1,503]

I didn't really know much about this. Is this in any way an accurate theory? Amazing that a volcano could have completely rewrote history.

Krakatoa History Changer

 

[onlookerofmayhem 4,930]

1 hour ago, Hyperionxvii said:

I didn't really know much about this. Is this in any way an accurate theory? Amazing that a volcano could have completely rewrote history.

Krakatoa History Changer

 

Could you elaborate on the theory you're referring to?

I don't really want to watch a 45 minute video to get the point.

Thanks.

Edited January 24 by onlookerofmayhem
Words

[Hyperionxvii 1,503]

43 minutes ago, onlookerofmayhem said:

Could you elaborate on the theory you're referring to?

I don't really want to watch a 45 minute video to get the point.

Thanks.

Not my theory. The video explains it all. But basically, it's the theory that the Krakatoa eruption of 535 basically reset civilization so that there's a distinct line between the old world, pre-Krakatoa, and the new world, post-Krakatoa which we now live in.

If that interests you, you should watch it. As far as I know, this is one guy's theory and he's set out on a mission to gather facts to prove his theory. It is certainly interesting, I have no idea what level of acceptance it has now. 

 

 

[jaylemurph 13,584]

49 minutes ago, Hyperionxvii said:

Not my theory. The video explains it all. But basically, it's the theory that the Krakatoa eruption of 535 basically reset civilization so that there's a distinct line between the old world, pre-Krakatoa, and the new world, post-Krakatoa which we now live in.

If that interests you, you should watch it. As far as I know, this is one guy's theory and he's set out on a mission to gather facts to prove his theory. It is certainly interesting, I have no idea what level of acceptance it has now.

...well, the basically unchanged nature of the Roman Empire on either side of that date seem to me to argue against this theory.

--Jaylemurph

[Hyperionxvii 1,503]

5 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

...well, the basically unchanged nature of the Roman Empire on either side of that date seem to me to argue against this theory.

--Jaylemurph

Thanks, Jaylemurph! I knew I had never heard this before, just found it interesting enough to ask. 

 

[RAyMO 5,790]

59 minutes ago, Hyperionxvii said:

one guy's theory and he's set out on a mission to gather facts to prove his theory.

I admit to not being well versed in these sort of things - but isn't the normal process to have some facts first and then formulate a theory to explain them?

[Hyperionxvii 1,503]

Just now, RAyMO said:

I admit to not being well versed in these sort of things - but isn't the normal process to have some facts first and then formulate a theory to explain them?

Maybe he was vying for a show on the History channel? I don't know, it sounds plausible, I mean not like anything crackpot. He did seem to have some evidence beforehand that may have added up.

[jaylemurph 13,584]

I'm a medieval historian, and my area of expertise is the Early Middle Ages and the transition to that from the Classical era, and I can't think of /any/ culture that was seriously affected in 535 (granted, there was Justinian's Plague, but while that killed a lot of people, it didn't fundamentally change any social or political establishments).

--Jaylemurph

[Abramelin 5,118]

3 hours ago, Hyperionxvii said:

I didn't really know much about this. Is this in any way an accurate theory? Amazing that a volcano could have completely rewrote history.

Krakatoa History Changer

 

Nothing really new:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535–536

[Hyperionxvii 1,503]

Just now, jaylemurph said:

I'm a medieval historian, and my area of expertise is the Early Middle Ages and the transition to that from the Classical era, and I can't think of /any/ culture that was seriously affected in 535 (granted, there was Justinian's Plague, but while that killed a lot of people, it didn't fundamentally change any social or political establishments).

--Jaylemurph

Do you know who that guy is? He came off as a serious guy. That's why I posted it here, because I know some of you guys will know what's legit and what's not.

[Hyperionxvii 1,503]

This is why I love this site. If I find something, I can throw it out here and get it debunked, or not. At least I've gotten to the level that I won't be posting Bosnian Pyramids, Yonaguni ruins, or anything written by Polar for review. I'm moving up! Ectoplasmic residue not for long! 

[Hyperionxvii 1,503]

14 minutes ago, Abramelin said:

Nothing really new:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535–536

New to me. I mean I've been aware of the Krakatoa eruption for a long time and that of course it affected global weather some, for a while. I'd just never seen anyone propose a theory that it changed history in profound ways. 

[Abramelin 5,118]

7 minutes ago, Hyperionxvii said:

New to me. I mean I've been aware of the Krakatoa eruption for a long time and that of course it affected global weather some, for a while. I'd just never seen anyone propose a theory that it changed history in profound ways. 

As you can read on the Wiki page, not everybody agrees with Keys.

But that something major happened around 536 CE, ànd influenced history, many agree on.

[Wepwawet 2,129]

6 hours ago, Abramelin said:

 

But that something major happened around 536 CE, ànd influenced history, many agree on.

The plague beginning in 541AD had a huge impact. Wipe out a large percentage of a population and it will change history, as the later Black Death did.

[Hanslune 14,594]

11 hours ago, jaylemurph said:

I'm a medieval historian, and my area of expertise is the Early Middle Ages and the transition to that from the Classical era, and I can't think of /any/ culture that was seriously affected in 535 (granted, there was Justinian's Plague, but while that killed a lot of people, it didn't fundamentally change any social or political establishments).

--Jaylemurph

Ah, but there wasn't any sign of distress in the Sasanian (who seemed to have sailed through that period without collapsing) in Persia along with The Gupta Empire in India or Chinese history which had the period known as the Northern and Southern dynasties that shows anything - they were closer of course so should have suffered more. Yet the Tarumanagara kingdom in Java seems to have survived too,

[jaylemurph 13,584]

7 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

The plague beginning in 541AD had a huge impact. Wipe out a large percentage of a population and it will change history, as the later Black Death did.

Perhaps then you could cite some major socio-political events directly attributed to this plague then?

—Jaylemurph

[Wepwawet 2,129]

35 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

Perhaps then you could cite some major socio-political events directly attributed to this plague then?

—Jaylemurph

Weakening of the Roman Empire and inability to hold the remnants of the old western part against another wave of Germanic invaders, and, due to population levels not having risen enough, loss of Egypt, and it's grain, to the Islamic invasions in the next century. That's going on what I was taught at school.

[jaylemurph 13,584]

1 minute ago, Wepwawet said:

Weakening of the Roman Empire and inability to hold the remnants of the old western part against another wave of Germanic invaders, and, due to population levels not having risen enough, loss of Egypt, and it's grain, to the Islamic invasions in the next century. That's going on what I was taught at school.

So nothing /specific/ or /directly/ attributable, then?

Justinian had to create a new court to deal with all the new inheritance claims from the vast number of the dead. That’s specific and direct. But it’s not exactly epoch-making in the way I understand you to mean.

What you mention are multi-causal situations extending over generations, if not centuries. To directly attach them as results merely of plague is extremely tenuous.

And that’s not even touching the increasingly out-of-date view of Germanic tribes as “invading” or as the barbarous other half of a dichotomy with “civilised” Rome. 

—Jaylemurph 

[Wepwawet 2,129]

25 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

So nothing /specific/ or /directly/ attributable, then?

Justinian had to create a new court to deal with all the new inheritance claims from the vast number of the dead. That’s specific and direct. But it’s not exactly epoch-making in the way I understand you to mean.

What you mention are multi-causal situations extending over generations, if not centuries. To directly attach them as results merely of plague is extremely tenuous.

And that’s not even touching the increasingly out-of-date view of Germanic tribes as “invading” or as the barbarous other half of a dichotomy with “civilised” Rome. 

—Jaylemurph 

As I'm just repeating what I was taught in school, and make no pretences to having any in depth knowledge, let alone expertise on the subject, I don't see why I need to make an in depth reply, particulalry when doing some quick searching about this I find that the view contra what I was taught is the work of two academics in the last few years. I'll let this become settled before I consider if what I was taught needs to be revised in my own mind.

We may breed like flies these days jumping up many billions in a century, but back then it took longer. After the Black Death it took Florence until nearly the end of the 14th Century to build it's population up to about two thirds of it's pre Black Death population. A second wave of plague then knocked them back, and by a hundred years after the Black Death the population was still only 50% of what it had been. I believe that there were waves of plague in the Sixth Century? so there can be long term effects. The world we live in today is to an extent the result of the Black Death, primarily the "rise of the peasant".

As for invasions, did not the Lombards have a pretty easy stroll into Italy as the population had been decimated by plague and war. That's something else I was taught in school.

[jaylemurph 13,584]

56 minutes ago, Wepwawet said:

As I'm just repeating what I was taught in school, and make no pretences to having any in depth knowledge, let alone expertise on the subject, I don't see why I need to make an in depth reply, particulalry when doing some quick searching about this I find that the view contra what I was taught is the work of two academics in the last few years. I'll let this become settled before I consider if what I was taught needs to be revised in my own mind.

We may breed like flies these days jumping up many billions in a century, but back then it took longer. After the Black Death it took Florence until nearly the end of the 14th Century to build it's population up to about two thirds of it's pre Black Death population. A second wave of plague then knocked them back, and by a hundred years after the Black Death the population was still only 50% of what it had been. I believe that there were waves of plague in the Sixth Century? so there can be long term effects. The world we live in today is to an extent the result of the Black Death, primarily the "rise of the peasant".

As for invasions, did not the Lombards have a pretty easy stroll into Italy as the population had been decimated by plague and war. That's something else I was taught in school.

You seem really caught up in this idea of direct causes and results, it seems to me. 

As I said before, the issues you keep mentioning are multi-causal and long-term. Yes, the Langobards had a relatively easy time assuming control over northern Italy, but to attribute that solely to depopulation is simplistic, particularly in the wake of the protracted demise of the Western Empire over the course of the previous century and a half. 

Ditto the “rise of the peasant” — that’s a result far more of long-term economic trends and the results of larger political restructuring concomitant with the demise of Roman imperial power over several generations. 

You need to pick a position, I respectfully suggest — either you don’t have enough (current) knowledge to make an informed, in-depth reply, in which case there’s no reason for you to continue to rebut me and provide more-or-less strawman arguments as above, or you do, and can effectively respond to my original request for direct, specific examples. 

It just seems like you have an opinion but not enough data to hold it up.

—Jaylemurph 

[Wepwawet 2,129]

54 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

You seem really caught up in this idea of direct causes and results, it seems to me. 

As I said before, the issues you keep mentioning are multi-causal and long-term. Yes, the Langobards had a relatively easy time assuming control over northern Italy, but to attribute that solely to depopulation is simplistic, particularly in the wake of the protracted demise of the Western Empire over the course of the previous century and a half. 

Ditto the “rise of the peasant” — that’s a result far more of long-term economic trends and the results of larger political restructuring concomitant with the demise of Roman imperial power over several generations. 

You need to pick a position, I respectfully suggest — either you don’t have enough (current) knowledge to make an informed, in-depth reply, in which case there’s no reason for you to continue to rebut me and provide more-or-less strawman arguments as above, or you do, and can effectively respond to my original request for direct, specific examples. 

It just seems like you have an opinion but not enough data to hold it up.

—Jaylemurph 

Look, until I read an authoratitive work overturning what I was taught at school, I'll keep to what I've always believed. My "position", and that word is too strong, is what I was taught in school, and I do not have to, and have no inclination to defend what I was taught. If it was wrong, fine, I'll overwrite the old files in my brain, but not on the basis of comments on a forum. That's not to say that I think you are wrong, but that it seems, as I said before, that this is not a settled issue, so as a non expert I will wait until a settled position emerges.

You seem to be suggesting that as I do not have your knowledge of the subject, then I should shut up, even to make general points, and they were general points, not my thesis nailed to a church door, or to be proven right or wrong by an ordeal by fire, and they get rained on anyway, at least in Florence.

Edited January 24 by Wepwawet

[jaylemurph 13,584]

36 minutes ago, Wepwawet said:

Look, until I read an authoratitive work overturning what I was taught at school, I'll keep to what I've always believed. My "position", and that word is too strong, is what I was taught in school, and I do not have to, and have no inclination to defend what I was taught. If it was wrong, fine, I'll overwrite the old files in my brain, but not on the basis of comments on a forum. That's not to say that I think you are wrong, but that it seems, as I said before, that this is not a settled issue, so as a non expert I will wait until a settled position emerges.

You seem to be suggesting that as I do not have your knowledge of the subject, then I should shut up, even to make general points, and they were general points, not my thesis nailed to a church door, or to be proven right or wrong by an ordeal by fire, and they get rained on anyway, at least in Florence.

It seems to me you want the respect of authority without the bother of maintaining it -- to make authoritative claims on your own behalf of those of the nameless folk whom you (sort of) cite without backing them up -- but it doesn't work that way. Your appeal to authority -- you're going to continue to believe what you've been taught, but you don't bother to say exactly who or what that is -- isn't very effective when you can't be bothered to communicate the details, and an appeal to authority is only as good as the authority itself. And nameless, detail-less reference is no reference at all.

You don't effectively refute any point I've made, you grossly simplify the historical facts but you still maintain you and your anonymous sources are correct. In this, you don't seem too different to Mario Dantas. I think maybe debating with the likes of Atalante has blunted your argumentation skills.

--Jaylemurph

[Wepwawet 2,129]

9 hours ago, jaylemurph said:

It seems to me you want the respect of authority without the bother of maintaining it -- to make authoritative claims on your own behalf of those of the nameless folk whom you (sort of) cite without backing them up -- but it doesn't work that way. Your appeal to authority -- you're going to continue to believe what you've been taught, but you don't bother to say exactly who or what that is -- isn't very effective when you can't be bothered to communicate the details, and an appeal to authority is only as good as the authority itself. And nameless, detail-less reference is no reference at all.

You don't effectively refute any point I've made, you grossly simplify the historical facts but you still maintain you and your anonymous sources are correct. In this, you don't seem too different to Mario Dantas. I think maybe debating with the likes of Atalante has blunted your argumentation skills.

--Jaylemurph

Before this edit I had dealt with your post point by point, but I realized that you are simply playing a game, and I will not fall for it. On the other hand, if you think you are making serious points in your post, then I suggest you take a step back, read you posts, and mine, again, and consider how your posts can be interpreted when then are so over the top. I made a brief reply to another poster based on what I remembered from my schooldays, and you are attacking me as if I were a pyramidiot making unevidenced claims that G1 was a landing pad for ET, thank you.

I could see where this was heading, I know when a poster has got the bit between their teeth and wants to come in at full gallop, so made an attempt at levity at the end of my previous post, unfortunately, either you do not understand the references, or dissmissed that part of my post as you just want to keep charging in, for god knows what reason.

Edited January 25 by Wepwawet

[Abramelin 5,118]

Maybe read this Wiki page about extreme weather in 535-536 CE:

LINK

Volcanic dust created problems for crops and harvest, and resulted in famine. Mostly in N(W?) Europe. First bubonic plague.

Another possible cause is the impact of a couple of comets.

 

[Abramelin 5,118]

Say Jaylemurph, could you please stop trolling and being a severe pain in the rear?

I know you assume many respect your take on things, but respect only lasts that long.