Summary

It was a catastrophe without precedent in recorded history: for months on end, starting in A.D. 535, a strange, dusky haze robbed much of the earth of normal sunlight. Crops failed in Asia and the Middle East as global weather patterns radically altered. Bubonic plague, exploding out of Africa, wiped out entire populations in Europe. Flood and drought brought ancient cultures to the brink of collapse. In a matter of decades, the old order died and a new worldessentially the modern world as we know it todaybegan to emerge. In this fascinating, groundbreaking, totally accessible book, archaeological journalist David Keys dramatically reconstructs the global chain of revolutions that began in the catastrophe of A.D. 535, then offers a definitive explanation of how and why this cataclysm occurred on that momentous day centuries ago. The Roman Empire, the greatest power in Europe and the Middle East for centuries, lost half its territory in the century following the catastrophe. During the exact same period, the ancient southern Chinese state, weakened by economic turmoil, succumbed to invaders from the north, and a single unified China was born. Meanwhile, as restless tribes swept down from the central Asian steppes, a new religion known as Islam spread through the Middle East. As Keys demonstrates with compelling originality and authoritative research, these were not isolated upheavals but linked events arising from the same cause and rippling around the world like an enormous tidal wave. Keys's narrative circles the globe as he identifies the eerie fallout from the months of darkness: unprecedented drought in Central America, a strange yellow dust drifting like snow over eastern Asia, prolonged famine, and the hideous pandemic of the bubonic plague. With a superb command of ancient literatures and historical records, Keys makes hitherto unrecognized connections between the "wasteland" that overspread the British countryside and the fall of the great pyramid-building Teotihuacan civilization in Mexico, between a little-known "Jewish empire" in Eastern Europe and the rise of the Japanese nation-state, between storms in France and pestilence in Ireland. In the book's final chapters, Keys delves into the mystery at the heart of this global catastrophe: Why did it happen? The answer, at once surprising and definitive, holds chilling implications for our own precarious geopolitical future. Wide-ranging in its scholarship, written with flair and passion, filled with original insights, Catastrophe is a superb synthesis of history, science, and cultural interpretation.

Author Biography

David Keys - archaeology correspondent of the London daily paper, The Independent, and leading TV archaeological consultant - has visited over one thousand archaeological sites in sixty countries.

Aims and Caveats

Acknowledgments

xiii

List of Illustrations

xvii

Introduction

(6)

PART ONE THE PLAGUE

The Winepress of the Wrath of God

(8)

The Origins of the Plague

(10)

PART TWO THE BARBARIAN TIDE

Disaster on the Steppes

(5)

The Avar Dimension

(9)

PART THREE DESTABLIZING THE EMPIRE

Revolution

(6)

``The Cup of Bitterness''

(7)

Changing the Empire: The Cumulative Impact of the Plague and the Avars

(5)

PART FOUR THE SWORD OF ISLAM

The Origins of Islam

(12)

Islamic Conquests

(4)

Behind the Roman Collapse

(10)

PART FIVE THE TURKIC DIMENSION

The Turkish Time Bomb

(7)

The Jewish Empire

(13)

PART SIX WESTERN EUROPE

Disaster in Britain

105

(8)

The Waste Land

113

(5)

The Birth of England

118

(7)

Irish Conception

125

(5)

French Genesis

130

(6)

The Making of Spain

136

(13)

PART SEVEN DISASTER IN THE ORIENT

Chinese Catastrophe

149

(12)

The Rebirth of Unity

161

(4)

Korean Dawn

165

(7)

``Ten Thousand Strings of Cash Cannot Cure Hunger''

172

(11)

PART EIGHT CHANGING THE AMERICAS

Collapse of the Pyramid Empire

183

(15)

The Darts of Venus

198

(7)

North American Mystery

205

(3)

From Art to Oblivion

208

(9)

The Mud of Hades

217

(6)

Birth of an Empire

223

(4)

Glory at the Heart of the Cosmos

227

(12)

PART NINE THE REASONS WHY

In Search of a Culprit

239

(10)

The Big Bang

249

(13)

Reconstructing the Eruption

262

(5)

The Endgame

267

(6)

PART TEN THE FUTURE

Beyond Tomorrow

273

(8)

Appendix

281

(12)

Notes

293

(30)

Supplemental Materials

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