Theories

Chaos from Above- Did Asteroids and Comets Turn the Tides of Civilization?
By Mike Baillie, Discovering Archeology, July/August 1999

The heart of humanity seems at times to have lost its cadence, the rhythmic beat of history collapsing into impotent chaos. Wars raged. Pestilence spread. Famine reigned. Death came early and hard. Dynasties died, and civilization flickered. Such a time came in the sixth century A.D. The Dark Ages settled heavily over Europe. Rome had been beaten back from its empire. Art and science stagnated. Even the sun turned its back. "We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigor of the sun's heat wasted into feebleness," Italian historian Flavius Cassiodorus wrote at the time. "We have summer without heat. The crops have been chilled by north winds, (and) the rain is denied." In China, "the stars were lost from view for three months." The sun dimmed, the rain failed, and snow fell in the summertime. Famine spread, and the emperor abandoned his capital amid political and economic disasters. Then came pestilence. The Justinian plague, named for a Byzantine emperor, apparently began in central Asia, spread into Egypt, and then swept across Europe. Hundreds of thousands died. The world had gone to hell in a hurry, if the historical accounts can be believed. But with neither evidence of global disaster nor a viable cause, the records were widely doubted by historians.