Product Description:

Everybody knows the Dark Ages weren't really dark, right? Not so fast, counters archaeological journalist David Keys, maybe it's more than just a slightly judgmental metaphor. His book Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World, based on years of careful research spanning five continents, argues that sometime in A.D. 535, a worldwide disaster struck and uprooted nearly every culture then extant. Given contemporary reports of the sun being blotted out or weakened for nearly a year and a half, followed by famine, drought, and plague, it's hard not to think that so many reports from all over the world must be related.

Keys shows a keen grasp of both the written historical record from Asia, Africa, and Europe and the archaeological evidence from the Americas, and tells many tales of great havoc destroying old empires and laying the ground for new ones. Rome may have fallen, but Spain, England, and France rose in its place, while farther east, Japan and China each unified and gained strength after the chaos. Could an enormous volcanic eruption have had such influence on the world as a whole, and could the same thing happen tomorrow? Catastrophe makes no predictions, but leaves the reader with a new sense of history, nature, and destiny. --Rob Lightner

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: 3.82 out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Twisted History
This book is a history of the world in 535 and following, the time of the "darkening of the sun", a event described in every part of the globe where written records existed. I remember reading about this long ago, it is believed that there must have been a volcanic blast that sent a black cloud around the planet and blocked the sun for a period of time.

The conclusions reached by the author here are far fetched, in some cases ridiculous. I am an avid reader of history and it is difficult to get a accurate descriptions of events and understand human motivations in the past, the further back you go the more this is true, yet David Keys has a definite answers for everything, solving great mysteries with simple, clear cut answers. He offers the real reason for the collapse of the Roman ... Read More

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- How Forces of Nature Shape Human History
"Catastrophe" refers to a mid-6th century climactic cataclysm that author David Keys believes destroyed the geopolitical status quo of late antiquity and gave birth to the protomodern era from which our current world circumstances derived. According to the hypothesis put forward in "Catastrophe", around the year 535 AD there occurred a major atmospheric disturbance that blocked out much of the Earth's sunlight all over the globe. Tree ring and ice-core evidence, as well as archeological and contemporary written accounts indicate that there was, indeed, severe climactic disruption at this time, and that it almost certainly was the result of a tremendous volcanic explosion. In "Catastrophe", David Keys describes the ways in which he believes the famine, drought and plague that resulted from this ... Read More

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- A fascinating historical detective story
Recent years have seen the publication of several books offering radical new explanations of ancient events or presenting sweeping revisionist theories of history. Examples include Noah's Flood, Eden in the East, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders, and 1421: The Year China Discovered America.

Catastrophe is one of the best of these. Archaeological writer David Keys has assembled multiple arguments supporting his theory that a major natural disaster around the year 535 altered the world's climate for years, causing famine and plague and triggering the collapse of existing political systems. He gives us brief but well-written summaries of events that sprang from this catastrophe, including the rise of Islam. According to Keys, this event ended an old world and gave birth to a new one whose ... Read More

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