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General Forum >> Mass grave in London reveals how volcano caused global catastrophe
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Mass grave in London reveals how volcano caused global catastrophe |
coldrum
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17-09-2002
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|  Posted 04-09-2012 at 15:06
When archaeologists discovered thousands of medieval skeletons in a mass burial pit in east London in the 1990s, they assumed they were 14th-century victims of the Black Death or the Great Famine of 1315-17. Now they have been astonished by a more explosive explanation – a cataclysmic volcano that had erupted a century earlier, thousands of miles away in the tropics, and wrought havoc on medieval Britons.
Scientific evidence – including radiocarbon dating of the bones and geological data from across the globe – shows for the first time that mass fatalities in the 13th century were caused by one of the largest volcanic eruptions of the past 10,000 years.
Such was the size of the eruption that its sulphurous gases would have released a stratospheric aerosol veil or dry fog that blocked out sunlight, altered atmospheric circulation patterns and cooled the Earth's surface. It caused crops to wither, bringing famine, pestilence and death.
The Icelandic volcano of 2010, which spewed out ash which disrupted flights for a few days, was miniscule in comparison.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/05/medieval-volcano-disaster-london-graves
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coldrum
Joined:
17-09-2002
Messages: 780
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| Posted 04-09-2012 at 15:07
London’s volcanic winter
Mass graves were needed all too often in the Medieval world, but establishing the specific tragedy behind any given set is difficult. Now Don Walker believes that a group in Spitalfields cemetery can be linked to a massive volcanic eruption, as he told Matthew Symonds.
The destructive force unleashed by Vesuvius, Krakatoa and Mount St Helens made those volcanoes household names. Yet all three are dwarfed by the largest eruption of the last millennium. Probably occurring in early 1258 AD, it violently ejected between 200 and 600 megatons of sulphate into the Earth’s atmosphere. Around eight times the yield from Krakatoa, this was an eruption on a cataclysmic scale.
Despite its magnitude, the identity of the volcano responsible remains a mystery. El Chichón in Mexico, Quilotoa in Ecuador and, most recently, a site in Indonesia have all been named as possible culprits. But while the source of the sulphates remains elusive, the eruption’s fingerprints can be found around the globe. Ice cores from both the northern hemisphere and Antarctica preserve its debris, while a thick layer of ash lies among the sediments in Lake Malawi, nestled between Mozambique and Tanzania. Traces can even be found in the records of contemporary chroniclers writing far from the tropics.
http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/londons-volcanic-winter.htm
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