Catastrophe

January 31, 2000
In Keys's startling thesis, a global climatic catastrophe in A.D. 535-536--a massive volcanic eruption sundering Java from Sumatra--was the decisive factor that transformed the ancient world into the medieval, or as Keys prefers to call it, the "proto-modern" era. Ancient chroniclers record a disaster in that year that blotted out the sun for months, causing famine, droughts, floods, storms and bubonic plague. Keys, archeology correspondent for the London Independent, uses tree-ring samples, analysis of lake deposits and ice cores, as well as contemporaneous documents to bolster his highly speculative thesis. In his scenario, the ensuing disasters precipitated the disintegration of the Roman Empire, beset by Slav, Mongol and Persian invaders propelled from their disrupted homelands. The sixth-century collapse of Arabian civilization under pressure from floods and crop failure created an apocalyptic atmosphere that set the stage for Islam's emergence. In Mexico, Keys claims, the cataclysm triggered the collapse of a Mesoamerican empire; in Anatolia, it helped the Turks establish what eventually became the Ottoman Empire; while in China, the ensuing half-century of political and social chaos led to a reunified nation. Huge claims call for big proof, yet Keys reassembles history to fit his thesis, relentlessly overworking its explanatory power in a manner reminiscent of Velikovsky's theory that a comet collided with the earth in 1500 B.C. Readers anxious about future cataclysms will take note of Keys's roundup of trouble spots that could conceivably wreak planetary havoc. Maps. BOMC and QPBC selections.

February 1, 2000
In the years 535 and 536 C.E., according to archaeological journalist Keys, a dusky haze blotted out the light and heat of the sun and brought about both massive droughts and floods. The famines and plagues that resulted from these climate changes then drove tribal groups out of the heartlands of Asia and into the Mediterranean world of the old Roman Empire. Then, the wars and displacement of long-settled peoples that resulted destroyed the old order and, in Keys's opinion, marked the emergence of the modern world. Keys supports his thesis with an impressive array of scientific and historical evidence. Although it seems unlikely that any single factor could have such catastrophic consequences, the book, written in an engaging manner, should stimulate interest in the role of climate in human events. Suitable for academic libraries.--Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNY

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2000
Isn't world history too messy and complicated to be susceptible to single-cause explanations? Not to Keys, who simplifies the eclipse of the Eastern Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, the beginning of nation-states from Ireland to Japan, and assorted other civilizational rises and falls by sourcing them ultimately to a volcanic eruption in the Sunda Strait separating Sumatra and Java. From ice cores and tree rings climatologists know temperatures nosed down around A.D. 535, a fact that Keys, while hedging it as a "possible" cause, narratively treats as the actual initiator of the "proto-modern" world. Keeping that condition in mind, the skeptical reader can still engage with this Keys' lively, popular story. At its center figures a Mongolian people, the Avars, made itinerant by droughts, plagues, and wars. They headed west across the steppe, and the rest is history. Whatever the merit of Keys' single chain of causality, his marshalling of a variety of evidence and literary sources in his cause produces rhetoric that can persuade. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)