Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: David Keys
plague (c. 540), of the estimated 400,000 major ivory artworks made, some 120 survive; from the period 540 to 700, only 6 survive. The surviving figures are so strikingly different that they show, without doubt, that after the mid–sixth century very little ivory was coming into the empire. The golden age of ivory artistry had been terminated by the plague.
A century later, Mediterranean and European population levels had declined significantly, with Constantinople shrinking from a city of half a million to one of fewer than a hundred thousand inhabitants. Meanwhile, the mid-sixth-century climatic crisis and its consequences had been generating other mechanisms through which parts of Europe and Asia were to be transformed. The remote steppe of Mongolia was to become the unlikely source of change.
PART TWO
THE BARBARIAN
TIDE
3
D I S A S T E R O N
T H E S T E P P E S
I n A . D . 557 or 558 a fierce Asiatic people called the Avars arrived on the eastern fringes of Europe from Mongolia. Twenty years later, they had conquered significant parts of the eastern half of the European continent and had humbled the Roman Empire by invading the Balkans, including Greece itself, either directly or by proxy through their vassals. They became a major element in the drawn-out process in which the empire gradually lost so much of its territory and its strength, and through which European and Middle Eastern history was fundamentally changed. But what caused the Avar migration has always been something of a mystery.
All that history records is that by A . D . 545, after 150 years of being the ruling ethnic group in Mongolia, Avar power was challenged by another Mongolian people—the early Turks. It is quite clear from the historical sources that the Avars had inexplicably become weaker in relation to their vassals, the Turks, and by 552 the Turks had turned the tables on their Avar overlords and taken over Mongolia. 1 Many of those Avars who had not been slaughtered by the victorious Turks trekked west into exile, toward Europe.
To gain insight into the probable causes of this tribal revolution, let us look first at other similar changes on the Mongolian steppes, and at particular aspects of steppe ecology. Drought and famine on the steppes were what had finally precipitated the end of the Hun empire in the mid–second century A . D . at the hands of the Avars’ ancestors, who had inhabited the semimountainous terrain of eastern Mongolia and western Manchuria. And it is drought and famine that seem to have brought about the collapse of the now little-known Uighur empire around A . D . 840. 2 That famine weakened the once-powerful Uighurs through starvation and accompanying internecine strife, and made them sitting targets for subjugation by ferocious Kyrgyz tribesmen from the forests of the hillier adjacent regions. 3
Tree-ring, ice-core, historical, and archaeological evidence from around the world shows that there were major climatic problems in the 530s. More specifically, the records of the nearest literate civilization, north China, reveal that severe drought did kill many Chinese in A . D . 537 and 538. It’s highly improbable that the drought and famine stopped politely at the Great Wall of China; it must be assumed, with a considerable degree of confidence, that Mongolia too was hit by the disaster. Indeed, tree-ring evidence from Siberia—on the other side of Mongolia—reveals that in the years 535–545 the region suffered the worst climatic conditions in a 1,900-year period. 4
The catastrophe would have affected both the Avar and Turkic inhabitants of Mongolia, but the Turks would almost certainly have been less affected than their Avar masters. Although some Turkic tribes lived on the flat steppe, many inhabited the partly forested hills and mountains immediately to the north. The grass-covered steppe was (and still is) much more sensitive to drought than the forested uplands. Grass, with
A century later, Mediterranean and European population levels had declined significantly, with Constantinople shrinking from a city of half a million to one of fewer than a hundred thousand inhabitants. Meanwhile, the mid-sixth-century climatic crisis and its consequences had been generating other mechanisms through which parts of Europe and Asia were to be transformed. The remote steppe of Mongolia was to become the unlikely source of change.
PART TWO
THE BARBARIAN
TIDE
3
D I S A S T E R O N
T H E S T E P P E S
I n A . D . 557 or 558 a fierce Asiatic people called the Avars arrived on the eastern fringes of Europe from Mongolia. Twenty years later, they had conquered significant parts of the eastern half of the European continent and had humbled the Roman Empire by invading the Balkans, including Greece itself, either directly or by proxy through their vassals. They became a major element in the drawn-out process in which the empire gradually lost so much of its territory and its strength, and through which European and Middle Eastern history was fundamentally changed. But what caused the Avar migration has always been something of a mystery.
All that history records is that by A . D . 545, after 150 years of being the ruling ethnic group in Mongolia, Avar power was challenged by another Mongolian people—the early Turks. It is quite clear from the historical sources that the Avars had inexplicably become weaker in relation to their vassals, the Turks, and by 552 the Turks had turned the tables on their Avar overlords and taken over Mongolia. 1 Many of those Avars who had not been slaughtered by the victorious Turks trekked west into exile, toward Europe.
To gain insight into the probable causes of this tribal revolution, let us look first at other similar changes on the Mongolian steppes, and at particular aspects of steppe ecology. Drought and famine on the steppes were what had finally precipitated the end of the Hun empire in the mid–second century A . D . at the hands of the Avars’ ancestors, who had inhabited the semimountainous terrain of eastern Mongolia and western Manchuria. And it is drought and famine that seem to have brought about the collapse of the now little-known Uighur empire around A . D . 840. 2 That famine weakened the once-powerful Uighurs through starvation and accompanying internecine strife, and made them sitting targets for subjugation by ferocious Kyrgyz tribesmen from the forests of the hillier adjacent regions. 3
Tree-ring, ice-core, historical, and archaeological evidence from around the world shows that there were major climatic problems in the 530s. More specifically, the records of the nearest literate civilization, north China, reveal that severe drought did kill many Chinese in A . D . 537 and 538. It’s highly improbable that the drought and famine stopped politely at the Great Wall of China; it must be assumed, with a considerable degree of confidence, that Mongolia too was hit by the disaster. Indeed, tree-ring evidence from Siberia—on the other side of Mongolia—reveals that in the years 535–545 the region suffered the worst climatic conditions in a 1,900-year period. 4
The catastrophe would have affected both the Avar and Turkic inhabitants of Mongolia, but the Turks would almost certainly have been less affected than their Avar masters. Although some Turkic tribes lived on the flat steppe, many inhabited the partly forested hills and mountains immediately to the north. The grass-covered steppe was (and still is) much more sensitive to drought than the forested uplands. Grass, with
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