How Far Away Volcanoes Collapsed Entire Empires
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
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Did you know that there is a surprising link between volcanoes, climate change, and ancient Chinese history? Learn about the volcanoes that collapsed entire empires in this new episode of SciShow!
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The Link Between Volcanoes, Climate, and Chinese History
Head to shopify.com/scishow to learn more and for a 14-day free trial. Thanks to Shopify, an ecommerce platform that helps you start, grow, and manage your business, for supporting SciShow.
I just read on CBC that Shopify laid off 1000 staff today amid tough times.. I hope business from here can help
Damn, people will have their pitchforks at the ready, won't they?
😅
Anthropogenic climate change can best be observed near airports where runway tarmacs can heat to over 100 degrees F or 40+ Celsius. Hot air, CO2, and exhaust from jet engines as well can be observed and recorded. Jet travel which began in earnest in the middle of 20th century could be a significant contributor to climate and temperature changes.
So is the Green screen left blank because Hank is Green or because the SciShow logo being Green or because the topic is about the environment and that's a Green topic?
IDK. All I know is that, that is a whole lot of Green so I guess this is the Green episode. Next episode the color Green and it's affects on mirrors. 😂
Give this guy credit since you're combing UA-cam looking for what's trending and making copycat videos now. ua-cam.com/video/d0hGDedvus4/v-deo.html
Fun fact: when there is ice over a volcano and then it melts, the reduction in pressure can wake a volcano up. Learnt from geologyhub, another great science show.
GeologyHub is a great channel for volcanoes
Woah that is fun. Sounds like a plot for an evil villain to cause calamity.
or the more boring idea of climate change.
I don't know about Greenland's geology, but the crust rebound from melting ice should give geologists a great deal of data for centuries to come.
I love geologyhub too!
*nervously looks at antartica*
Turns out people tend to get pissed off when all the food's gone, especially in china where the cultural/religious idea of the mandate of heaven meant that any amount of uncertainty or suffering in the population was taken as a direct challenge to the ruling dynasty from the gods above themselves.
I like this better than “divine right of rule.” ‘Cause well. They’re often not wrong
Yeah the Mandate of Heaven was the FIRST thing modern China got rid of lol. It's actually madness to think they allowed such a thing to ever exist in China as it meant being the ruler of China was the world's most nerve-wracking job. I suppose something like that is necessary to actually control a billion people in the middle ages though. It's easier to say "Listen to this guy, because everything is his fault if things go wrong and his own soldiers will just kill him".
no such thing as above or mandate or cultural or religious or pissed or that ideax etc, cepuxuax, think, feel any nmw and any s perfx
@@zes3813 you suffered a stroke halfway through that comment, huh?
@@midnight8341 Take a look at their comment history on this channel, you're in for a treat.
It’s so crazy to think about how these far flung islands on the other side of the world, once considered a total backwater, have some often decided the fate of so many empires. Once again, Indonesia’s importance is vastly under appreciated.
I loved learning about volcanoes. I’ve climbed Mt. Vesuvius, Mt. Etna, Mt. St. Helens, eyjafjallajokull in Iceland, White Island in New Zealand and visited Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.
Can you pronounce that Iceland mountains name ? I know you can’t prove it to me, but honestly , are you able to pronounce that name?
travelling!
eye a fall ou kull?
Basically just pronounce the j as a y and you're mostly fine.
@@justincraig398 Honestly, I have no idea of pronunciation since I don’t speak Icelandic. I can speak 4 languages plus English, but unfortunately that’s not one of them.
I thought you would mention the 1783 eruption of Laki in Iceland, which is thought to have been a contributing factor in the French revolution
Þeir sýndu amk fagradalsfjall, fengum smá rep
Nah
@@thespegs actually yeah. It exacerbated crop failure and made things worse. It didn't start the revolution but it was a factor.
French revolution was triggered by Louis XVI who somehow embraced SJWism.
@@boulderbash19700209 bruh that makes no sense what are u talking abt 💀
Looking Back: Has anyone applied this to the Mayan Empire ending? Twenty years ago when I was in college Archaeologists accepted it was likely civil unrest, failure of monoculture (dramatic increase in reliance on maize), and outside pressure from other peoples.
Looking Forward: Anyone else read Termination Shock yet? ;^)
I heard it was because of western diseases introduced by European settlers that wiped them out.
Many think the Illopango Caldera eruption in 536 AD kicked it off...considering it happened right in the middle of a mega Mayan metro area it is estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people were instantly wiped out
I've long been fascinated with the prospect of civilizations collapsing and regimes changing due to extreme natural disasters. I wonder how many examples of sudden civil unrest throughout ancient history could have been caused by asteroids/meteor impacts or air bolides. There does seem to be a few cases where a meteor like the one that caused the Tunguska explosion might have obliterated an ancient city. Sodom and Gamora come to mind.
Interesting speculation. Needs more and better evidence. Causality for something as complicated as human civilization is most often complicated. I usually consider these low probability explanations as low probability. It would be a mistake to rule them out however. We know what can happen, and what can happen will happen.
There is record of celestial events having resulted in superstitious and disastrous military decisions leading to annihilation (Athenians in Sicily.) Or affecting one army to the point that put them at a psychological disadvantage. (Macedonians at Pydna.)
Somewhat related,
ua-cam.com/video/InRHJTfbf0o/v-deo.html
@@andywomack3414 Much like volcanic eruptions though, physical evidence of meteor impacts can dug up if you know where to look. The most obvious evidence would be an impact crater, but often times those get eroded away or if its a bolide event; not produced at all. That's where sediment deposits come in. Like volcanic ash, meteorite leave behind trace amounts of mineral deposits in the atmosphere when they explode, which settle down and can be found frozen in ice core samples. Many impact events have already been found this way, especially since meteors contain high amounts of rare-earth metals that make them stand out in sediment layers, like iridium for example.
@@AceSpadeThePikachu Ground penetrating radar and lidar have added to that list of ways to see beneath the surface. I have been aware of earth science from before plate tectonics was a thing, and watched that discovery unfold on the pages of "Scientific American." Add the fact of extinction events caused by extra terrestrial impact that was discovered shortly after, the late twentieth century was an exciting time for Geology.
Another great humbling of humanity to realize the potential fragility of our existence.
I'm planning to write about that, albeit in a pure fantasy setting.
@@andywomack3414 Only if you're looking for it to be a singular explanation. As a major contributing factor it is already documented.
Jared Diamond (commonly known as the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) wrote a book on societal collapse (called Collapse, lol) that explored a significant number of environmental and climate-related issues and their impacts on history. It's not an uncommon reason for societies to fail by any means...
Great book
@@tylernaturalist6437 I also have that book in my house as bought for partner's present years ago. Should find and finish reading probably lol
@@vickiclee9332 You might like this term (from lithub):
Salvation came, as it often does, in the form of a word: Tsundoku, Japanese for the tendency to buy books and let them pile up around the house unread. When I stumbled across it, I felt as if someone had reached across the Pacific to shake my hand.
Tsundoku dates from the Meiji era, and derives from a combination of tsunde-oku (to let things pile up) and dokusho (to read books). It can also refer to the stacks themselves. Crucially, it doesn’t carry a pejorative connotation, being more akin to bookworm than irredeemable slob.
Easter Island.
@@publicdomain1103 Seems there is much more evidence to say that europeans bringing disease to Easter Island is what collpased their society. Great episode of the Fall of Civilisations Podcast goes through the historical sources and archiological evidence and lays a pretty convincing argument. Well worth a listen.
I was growing up in northern Illinois when Mt. Saint Helens erupted. About a week after the eruption the sky had a different tint, and clouds turned reddish more early in the day--2000 miles away.
Ah, part of my passions....the ties between climate, weather, and how history changed. Add in cosmic events and how they effect the world, from higher levels of cosmic rays getting through, which might possibly effect rain levels or snow levels and how our position in the Milky Way effects our planet. It's something I love that it's not just my passion to learn about. Oh, and how Milankovitch Cycles effect history, too. Anyways, thank you for this episode!
Noice
What sorta channels you watch about it? What kind of wiki hole can you send me down?
Sounds interesting.
There is a 200 year gap between the Minoan eruption and the collapse of the Minoan Civilization. The eruption may have played a role, but was not the immediate cause.
But there must've been one serious tsunami that hit the Northern part of the island right?
How do we know the date of the the collapse of the Minoan civilization down to 200 years?
@@umwha 🤣
@@mennobot3884 Probably, but likely not the first tsunami to strike Crete during the time of the Minoans. A casual Google Earth look at the locations of many of their "palaces" shows they are often located near the coast but on hillsides well above sea level and likely out of reach of potential tsunami.
Also the entirety of the caldera that forms the modern island of Santorini was not the product of that eruption, rather from a series of volcanoes that grew up then collapsed into the underlying magma chamber. That tsunami may not have been as large as many imagine.
Besides, in the geologic sense, massive earthquakes, spectacular volcanic eruptions, and tsunami are common occurrences in the Mediterranean area. In 365 AD a thrust-fault generated earthquake off the southern coast of Crete sent a tsunami into the city of Alexandria that carried a ship three miles inland, according to a Roman who visited the place a few years after. Yet despite that "day of sorrows" Alexandria continued as one of the great cities of antiquity.
My point, these ancient people were smart, knew catastrophe, knew how to recover and rebuilt, and did so many times.
However, the loss of the port of Akrotiri may have dealt an economic blow that, in addition to the growing strength of the Mycenaean empire, and the environmental degradation of the island, meant the Minoans never fully recovered from the loss of that important port-of-call.
If only linear A could tell us more.
@@andywomack3414 thanks for the explanation :)
These are perfect examples of how when the poor are disenfranchised the aristocracy loses. This generally happens in places of large disparity.
FEED THE POOR.
I love how school made many think science and history are separate, but they very much are intertwined
What is history if not the scientific study of societal changes over time?
You are so correct
Great insights
Since volcanoes are associated with empire collapse, I wonder if our ancestors witnessed volcanoes, and they passed on the idea of Hell as a place for tyrants. Interesting to think that Hell has a similar description to an open volcano.
the idea of a burning hell is christian .
its a testament to christianitys power that people think its an ancient idea
Uh, or it’s quite literally what cells remember. Genetic memory is getting more study these days. Essentially, if you can be born with instincts, can your DNA have “memories”? If yes, I wonder if “hell” is just the single cell’d organisms memory of living on a planet that was early in its formation. Hot, volcanic and literally one cell against the world.
The Greek God Hephaestus is the god of blacksmiths, metalworking, carpenters, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. Hades (the god) whose sidekick was Hephaestus, and Hades (the underworld) were written in the Odyssey by Homer circa 2800 yrs ago. The Mediterranean is rife with volcanic activity and plate tectonic movement.
The Pompeii story gets even scarier once you learn that there is no word in Latin for volcano.
What do you mean? How does it get scarier ? What word did they use ?
Just checked translate and they gave me "ignivomus" as Latin for volcano. Might be a word added later to their vocab post Vesuvius maybe?
@@justincraig398 It probably means that they not knew volcanoes existed. So if today you get scared of a volcanic eruption, imagine your fear when you really have no idea what is happening.
First a deafening explosion on a society that the loudest noise is made by screams of clashes of metal, after that you see a dark cloud rising so tall that it becomes night, the temperature starts to rise, and then you see, something with an unnatural glow, it looks like fire, but it flows like a river, and its moving fast and destroying everything it touches.
That sounds like Hell has open its doors.
Before Vesuvius, the closest Latin had to volcano was "fiery mountain".
After Vesuvius, Latin gained a new word. It roughly translates as "VULCAN'S WILD NIGHT OUT STAY BACK OR YOU'LL GET SINGED"
@@justincraig398 It's scarier because it means the people of Pompeii had absolutely no idea what was going on.
Funny how youtube can detect the words "climate change" in a video and add the disclaimer we see above, but it still cannot filter out all the videos we report daily that need to be manually checked after days of making them money.
What disclaimer?
bearing in mind i am trying to do this from memory (and my memory is awful)
i believe there was a solid link proven between some heavy volcanic activity and the great famine in europe in the 14oos... and the following plagues...
I don't think it has been definitively proven, but there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that is the case. I think it is one of those "most likely scenario" kind of situations.
*Geographics* has a video of that! Called something like: The Great European Famine 14th century
That channel (and its related channels) focus more on storytelling, than explaining the science of a subject, so if that interests you, check it out! 🙂
Found it! *The Great European Famine: The First Catastrophe of the 14th Century*
ua-cam.com/video/7yWT-iFn7HI/v-deo.html
You mean the 14th century, not the 1400s; that puts it into the 1300s and on the back of the eruption in 1257 of a tropical volcano (Mount Samalas near Mount Rinjani, Lombok, Indonesia) followed by three smaller eruptions in 1268, 1275, and 1284, that did not allow the climate to recover. It was the medieval warm period that encouraged a growth in population (Europe for the most part) and the change in climate spiraled into the Little Ice Age with the Great Famine 1310-1330 brought on by sustained years of bad weather, that was shown in higher rainfall, and less warm weather for growth and ripening of grains. Of course, the lack of grain contributed to population decline since people died from malnutrition, and higher infant mortality rate, and later in the 1300s malnourished people couldn't fight the illness that was the plague. (Don't worry, I don't 'know' this - my brain sux too, I had to look it up last week for something else)
Chinese dynasties: _Thriving with the Mandate of Heaven_
Some volcanoes: "Your Mandate has been revoked."
As always, good stuff.
I remember several years ago there was a volcanic eruption (supposedly in Russia) that heavily effected the weather in Dallas TX. It must have been early to mid spring. The temperature shot up from ~70 to the high 80’s and then over night dropped to the 20’s along with a pretty extreme sleet storm. Everything was covered in a layer of ice. Not sure if anyone else here remembers that.
Sleet storms are really cool. Everything is still green it’s just covered in a layer of ice. However, the trees don’t like to be weighed down like that (the storms are usually followed by a lot of wood chopping).
Yes I do, I lived in Lewisville and they shut the city down for 3 days. The news was flabbergasted at how the Temps dropped so quickly and they had no explanation. I did not know there was a volcano eruption in Russia though.
"They can only change the temp for like a 2-3 years."
Yellowstone: "I'm about to end this man's whole career."
Further to the outlier, is there data indicating that there were significant social and economic supports, compared to other eruptions?
“Major disasters can cause problems that topple unstable regimes” seems like one the most obvious things you could say about history.
oh i thought the video meant volcanoes being stealth killers in the "its stealthy if theres no witnesses" kinda way
Yes, but not major disasters half a world away!
they changed the title, my joke is ruined
Can’t wait to play floor is lava in real life.
I strongly suspect that the rise in religious extremism in the Mideast and the US might be somehow related to climate change. Even with the general condition of the world being the best its ever been we have been witness to political issues in this country (such as the growing hatred of immigrants in a country composed of immigrants and the secession movements in Texas and Alaska) might be in someway related to global climate stress. Certainly, people who get their news from ratings-driven news programs would be prone to think the world was in worse shape than it is and this might be a destabilizing factor.
Just look at the water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates and the desertification of upper Arabia, you’re onto something
158 eruptions over 1,916 years means there was an eruption every twelve years, on average. Therefore, statistically every single event that occurred during that period happened within ten years after or two years before an eruption.
But what is the standard deviation from that mean?
Dang I didn’t even think about that, I definitely don’t buy this theory anymore then lol
6:57
I want to look closer at the study and find out how they came up with that 1% figure. "Using statistics" is just too vague when statistics are so easily misread, and 1% is a really convenient number...
I really wanna see the timeline that they came up with now.
I've heard hypotheses in the past that the titanomachy of Greek mythology was likely based on some volcanic eruption. And, you did mention the fall of the Minoans, so I wonder if that was the source.
I Heard it too
Surprised you didn't mention the eruption of Mt. Baekdu circa 900s CE, which is linked with the end of the Tang Dynasty and political upheaval all over East Asia.
And the fall of Balhae.
Also the ash from Baekdu reached Japan.
They were merged with the Wu Clan, which then became the Wu-Tang Clan
i know this is SciShow, but this video could really use more historical research/references to historians. Scientists, of course, can contribute to historical study - i don't want anyone to think I'm suggesting otherwise. But environmental historians and historians of science (among others) have been talking about environmental determinism and many of the topics in this video for decades. We may not have "data" in the same sense, but our knowledge is just as valuable and important for explaining these events. we've been championing the agency of nature in human history for, again, decades. I know it's a short video so y'all can't include anything, but it came across as reductive. As an environmental historian, i try to work with scientists as much as possible because i think collaboratively we have much to contribute to each other. but it has to go both ways, humanities and sciences have to both collaborate, not just one reaching out to the other.
i hope this doesn't come across as super critical, it just kinda struck a nerve for me. Love the work that y'all do!!
Pompei: what a lovely day!
Mt.Visuvius: hold that thought
Let's hope we can learn from volcanoes and topple any governments that deny climate change or push against radical change to address it.
"Radical times call for radical ideas" - a radical guy
that's the spirit
Not a fan of this one. Just because an eruption occurs in close temporal proximity to a dynasty's collapse doesn't make them connected! Hundreds of volcanoes erupt every century that is not strange.
Amazing, cheers from nova scotia.
For those who keep going on about statistics and probabilities:
Volcanos affect climate, climate affects food production.
A society which is already unstable can experience cascading failures in the system over several years resulting in its ultimate fall from one or several years of crop failures.
We've seen societies fail or need to have outside intervention)from drought (not caused by volcanism) and resulting food shortages, or increased cost of imported food (Egypt recently (Chang in government) Ethiopia, et al ).
Paricutin was born and buried an entire town in the 1900s
Luckily its magma is the chunky type, slow and piles up more than it expands horizontally, so inhabitants were able to evacuate without casualties. And later build the town again 20km away.
Paricutín is part of the world’s largest monogenetic volcanic field, known as the Michoacán-Guanajuato Volcanic Field.
Monogenetic eruptions like Paricutín can occur anywhere in the volcanic field; there is no central volcano. A new vent opens somewhere in the volcanic field with these monogenetic eruptions.
It’s interesting to note that several cities are (partially or fully) built on these monogenetic volcanic fields. Auckland immediately comes to mind, but also cities like Managua, along with the southern portion of Mexico City. Campi Flegrei, although a caldera, has various monogenetic vents west of Naples. Monogenetic vents can also open along the flanks of larger central volcanoes, threatening cities like Goma. All of these are places where a vent could open up in the middle of a city, although such eruptions (aside from Naples) would probably be fairly small.
ive noticed the drop in temperatures caused by smoke and ash clouds!! im californian, and whenever the sky's red or grey with nearby burning wildfire it's suddenly spring-warm instead of summer-hot outside. the air hurts a bit to breathe tho
I was intrigued by the title of this video because the book "Saints" begins (in its first paragraph) by suggesting that the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora created worldwide climate change that drove the family of 9-year-old Joseph Smith from Vermont to New York, where he would eventually discover his gold plates and later start the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prior to reading Saints, I had never considered the societal effects of volcano-caused climate change. Here was a video discussing it more in-depth... And it spent a strange minute focusing on the very same Mt. Tambora eruption, which apparently didn't topple a Chinese dynasty but DID start a worldwide religion.
Scientists now think that the eruption of Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai may actually make warming worse because it injected huge amounts of water vapor into the stratosphere, where it heats the normally icy part of the atmosphere and causes it to retain that heat. Because it was an underwater eruption, it was unique in that its power was able to blow so much water so high into the atmosphere. Most volcanoes cause climatic effects by injecting huge quantities of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, which reflects sunlight and causes a cooling effect.
i'm coming out of this video with my interest piqued, and more questions. great topic!
The book "Catastrophe An Investigation Into The Origins Of The Modern World" by David Keyes explores this about the year 536 AD.
Whether a Volcanic or Celestial Impact Event, something triggered societal collapse and change world wide, ending the civilizations of the Ancient world and setting into motion the forces which produced our present construction of civilization.
So a climate trouble causes agricultural trouble which causes political trouble. Indeed something to pay attention to as global climate change looms.
Not all of the eruptions caused a collapse but the ones that did were surprisingly close in time but not distance. It usually takes more than one factor to topple a regime, unless that single factor is a vastly more powerful empire...which historically isn't an issue for China...except that one time.
Thanks to all of the Chinese that did a great job recording history. It would have been great if the Lady selling Pink Sauce used Shopify.
Actually the eruption of Mount Tambora, did cause a regime change. The bad weather at Waterloo was fatal to Napoleon Bonaparte's cavalry and guns, because they were heavier than the British, Prussian and Dutch ones, so they got bogged down in the mud, damaging the French's war tactics.
Hold on there hank.
Sure the volcano induced climate change may have caused emperors to fall but... it could also be them losing the mandate of heaven causing volcanoes to erupt.
I read this in Dale Dribbles voice...
@@dastardlymink0369 did u mean Dale _Gribble?_ I’m not familiar with a Dale “Dribble” lol I’m guessing autocorrect was probably the culprit here, right?
@@MerkhVision Yeah it was lol
We don't have a Mount Parker in the Philippines, only Mount Melebingoy.
Positive: we can study, plan, and prepare for volcanic anthropogenic impacts.
Negative: we will refuse to do so.
He is using the volcanic eruptions history to talk about something else.
Now that is a killer video title!
This is awesome, combing through history and make correlations like that.
Humanity, Chapter 19
"In which Captains of the Industry learn to manufacture their very own Climate Catastrophes and blame the ensuing strife on the dispossessed."
I wonder if better technology reduces this effect. Example, without industrial agriculture/weather science abnormally cold winters cause mass livestock death. In 2022 the farmer just turns on the heaters in the barn.
Barns don't have heaters. Keeping cows warm usually involves feeding more hay.
Ranga Tonga has caused some breathtaking sunsets here in South Australia.
How correlated is this with actual regime change? Many of these regimes lasted decades or even centuries and endured many different natural disasters including various eruptions. Why would these instances standout as anything noteworthy?
Don't ask questions, just blindly believe whatever is presented here. That's the catch!
One example of more localized volcanic eruption having significant effects on a larger community is with Dene people of Northwestern America. About a thousand years ago there was a volcanic eruption which covered a significant area in The Yukon and Alaska with a thick layer of Ash. This event coincides with the migration of the Dene people to more southern latitudes, as far south as the southwestern USA. Some of the Dene who live in Arizona like the Navajo fit this story. To further add evidence to this the Language of the Navajo is eerily similar to the Northern Tutchone who still reside in The Yukon. All this said, it is still only a theory, but it is quite possible that the volcanic eruption drove mane Dene people to search for other places to live. Food for thought.
Hey, maybe the knowledge that the ecological havoc caused by climate change could turn into a revolution will actually make governments care about climate change
They will try to do something shortly before the mob breaks down the doors. Until then it will be the usual pattern of denial, minimization, shifting blame to convenient scapegoats and so on and so forth.
It should, if they have any foresight at all lol
Always interesting, thank you.
Now hang on there. They found 158 volcanic eruptions in the 1915 year period... an average of about one every 12 years. I feel like the 62 of 68 dynasties collapsing with an eruption in the -10/+2 range is probably expected.
Now if the eruptions were clustered together, and those clusters contained the dynasty collapses, you might have a scoop.
Edit: Independent experiments back up the validity of the theory (details in replies). Statistics are kinda wild.
Most of those dynasties were short-lived ones during the interregnum periods of intense upheaval. The more stable dynasties (ex. Han, Ming) lasted centuries.
Which is to say that the temporal distribution of dynasties were heavily clustered in short periods of time and the short-lived ones were often contemporaneous with other short dynasties.
6:57
I agree. I want to look closer at the study and find out how they came up with that 1% figure. "Using statistics" is just too vague when statistics are so easily misread, and 1% is a really convenient number...
@@Eclipsed_Archon There is nothing particularly convenient about 1%, the statistically limits typically used are 5% or 0.3%
This was my first thought too, so I decided to run a computational experiment. Concretely, I designate 68 non-overlapping groups (representing changes in dynasty) of 12 years (for simplicity, I choose 1-12, 13-24, ..., 805-816), and generate 158 random numbers between 1 and 1915 (representing eruptions). I then count how many of the dynasty changes have at least one eruption.
This experiment I have run 10,000,000 times, and here are the conclusions: The average number of dynasty changes with eruptions is 42.8, every experiment had between 25 (4 cases) and 61 (1 case) dynasty changes with eruptions, and the most frequent number of dynasty changes with eruptions was 43 with 1,151,118 cases.
Based on this, having 62 dynasty changes with eruptions is very unlikely to happen if there is no correlation; indeed their 1% seems not low but high.
The reason there can be one eruption every 12 years on average yet so few 12 year periods have an eruption is that the eruptions are not evenly spaced; some 12-year periods will have many eruptions, and some will have none.
The weakness of my experiment is that I assumed periods of dynasty change to not overlap, but in reality dynaties can last less than 12 years. Let us consider the extreme case where every dynasty lasted just a day. Then either an eruption happens in that 12 year period leading to 68 dynasty changes being affected by an eruption, or no eruption happens in that period and no dynasty changes are affeted by an eruption. There is a 63% chance that at least one eruption happens in that period, so it is far more likely that 62 or more dynasty changes will be affected than in the non-overlapping case. The reality is probably somewhere in between these two cases, and it can be this middleground that leads to their 1%.
Volcanic eruptions in Iceland could be culprit of the collapse of the bronze age civilizations around 1100BC.
An eruption ok mount Krakatoa around 536AD could also be the culprit of the terrible historical reports we have on draught, pestilences, migration of the Avars in Hungary and overall the beging if what we call "Dark Age" in Europe
Can't help thinking that they in China also used the doctrine that the old dynasty had lost the mandate of heaven, because they had made the heavens dissatisfied, which would result in natural disasters. Then replacing the old dynasty was totally a righteous thing to do because why else would the heavens send disaster other than the old dynasty being evil.
Thanks!
If Vesuvius goes up, Naples is toast. My pops watched it erupt, during The Italian Campaign in WW2, from The Officer's Club Verenda in Naples. I've some sketches he did during the intervening years, after the war. He's a good artist.
"We are in a better position than anyone in history to prepare ourselves for the changes that are coming."
And yet we're stubbornly refusing to do anything because the fossil fuel profit margins next quarter is more important than the future of our nation or even of our species as a whole to the people with the power to implement any such preparatory measures. Paper straws and a regressive tax on fast food carry-out bags isn't going to prepare anybody for anything.
This was fascinating!
extremely interesting
Are we SUPPOSED to be pondering the implications of our current situation? Are the dramatic environmental stresses that are happening now all over the globe an indicator of impending system collapse? … No? Oh good. I was worried there for a second.
Does Shopify have a plan for this?
This comment cracks me up.
Great episode.
Excellent climate change info! Thank you.
Chinese dynasty: you can't defeat me
society: I know but he can 🌋
That was really interesting!
AWESOME Video About Volcanic History
So one or two volcanoes could help us out?
Living in Auckland, New Zealand. This doesn't fill me with confidence haha
thanks for the video, you guys are great~
I feel like you guys are stalking me! I'm in Santorini right now on holiday! :D :D
When mount saint helen erupted my mom was a kid in canada and the whole summer there was no sun, just cloudy weirdness
Watching this after yesterday's 7.3 earthquake magnitude (northern Philippines) followed by another earthquake this morning.
I have to throw a little cold water on this paper's analysis, although I acknowledge that the underlying premise seems reasonable. If the researchers identified 158 eruptions over 1915 years, that works out to one eruption per 12 years. So if the researchers pick a 12-year period bracketing the fall of a dynasty, there will probably be an eruption during that time span, just statistically. Were randomly-chosen 12 year periods not connected to a dynastic collapse less likely to have volcanic eruptions? And were eruptions in the Southern Hemisphere less likely to be correlated with dynastic collapses>
I had heard this theory before in connections with Icelandic volcanoes, scientists were looking for connections between eruptions and the french revolution and some ancient revolution in Egypt...
When I was a kid, I watched a show on the Discovery Channel that hypothesised a (real) volcanic eruption in (India? not 100% sure of the location) could've caused the 10 Plagues of Egypt, in the order they are described in Shemoth.
The 1816 eruption probably marked the beginning of Qing Dynasty's initially slow but soon accelerating decline into darkness.
Very interesting. I have an interest in Ancient Near East history and the collapse of the Egyptian Old Kingdom and the Akkadian Empire at roughly the same time have often been regarded as evidence for a climate problem at that point in time. However I recently read a paper disputing that viewpoint:
*Rapid Change of Climate Did Not Cause the Fall of the Akkadian Empire* by Arkadiusz Sołtysiak (a reader in archaeology at the University of Warsaw).
Iceland and the Bronze Age Collapse 👌👍
So there were 158 volcanic events between 1 CE and 1915 CE, and you assumed they have an impact 10 years before and 2 years after. That would mean a 12 year swath per eruption. If they’re equally placed that would mean 1896 of 1915 years were significantly effected by eruptions according to your methodology.
Three big ones (biggest?) U didn't talk about:
1 the black plague in 536 AD theorized to be caused by 2 VEI 7 eruptions w/in a couple of years. Illapongo in El Salvador and Krakatoa in Indonesia.
2 the Bronze age Collapse theorized to be caused by an eruption in Iceland.
3 Mt Toba 75,000 yrs ago causing the human genome bottleneck.
Stats check: They looked at 168 volcano eruptions over a 2,000 year period, and then checked a 12 year period each eruption. Now, if you string 168 periods of 12 years together, the result is more than 2,000 years. Of course that's a worst-case view: periods between eruptions will vary somewhat. Assuming some reasonable statistical distribution, the years "associated" with an eruption probably outnumber those not so associated. If the ratio is close to 90%, then one should expect 90% of historical-event X to be associated with a volcano eruption. If the ratio is very different from 90%, then we have quite a coincidence.
I wonder if we will even notice the difference the Hunga- Tonga volcano will make in our temperatures given how much quicker climate change has been happening compared to what was expected. In the uk we are 30 years ahead of schedule and I have found for the last 6 years that I have actively been talking about what is happening now that climate change is here in ways people find hard to dispute. Unfortunately any difference in temperature will spur on climate change deniers and the current push for extending fossil fuels in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I came in thinking Pompeii, got a pleasant surprise instead.
I’m an archaeologist working in BC Canada. When I excavate and see that layer of ash 😍
asking a very dramatic and radical question here: can a volcanic winter combat global warming?^^
Temporarily, and it would be a solution to a problem that would be as bad or worse as the original problem. It’s not as though global warming and volcanic created cooling would give a nice temperate climate.
Yeah I guess so but only in the short term
And also reduce crop yields due to less sun. Not sure it would help us
@@joels5150 i kinda think so too. Even with a couple years of "winter", there is still alot of CO2 in the atmosphere. Sure alot of people might perish but we will continue there, where we left off i guess
They spew tons of CO2 into the air. Think of Venus....murky air, planet hotter than Mercury.
“Were in an era of global climate change” Havent we always been?
Can't believe you forgot to mention the link between a major volcanic event in Iceland and the French revolution... "Let them eat cake".
I would think that technology advances could have been a helping factor in the 1800’s
😊💚👍🍀🐢
Everytime I hear a reference to the Tunga region I think of, "It's Tunga Time" from the history of the world.
Future massive volcanic eruptions leading to global cooling (alongside the more immediate local devastation and continental-scale air traffic disruption, of course) should be on people's radars every bit as much as the next major global pandemic. Both of these sorts of events, whether we're talking about the next Tambora or the next Covid, are acute global catastrophic risks.
So what you're telling me is that all we gotta do is find a volcano large enough to cool the planet. Got it!
Ancient Chinese: “The Emperor has lost the Mandate of Heaven! We demand regime change!”
Meanwhile, Vulcan in his forge: “Hehe, woops….”
Wonderful
Build huge vacuum machines to suck the ash out of the air
Of course it is reasonable that eruptions can cause social unrest and collapse but the statistics are what cause issue for me. They examined a period of 1915 years and determined there were 158 eruptions which they were able to date with a "general" level of accuracy. They looked for eruptions up to 10 years before and 2 years after the official date of the dynastic collapse, a 12 year time span. The issue is if you divide 1915 years by 158 eruptions you get almost exactly 1 eruption every 12 years (12.1). Of course eruptions do not happen on a regular timeframe but it still seems highly unlikely to me they got to a p value of 0.01 without further data manipulation.
Chinese historical record are comprehensive, Except in April 15 1989 when nothing happened apparently, according to The Chinese Goverment.