Did the ancient world go BOOM?

CATASTROPHE: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World
By David Keys
Ballantine Books
Hardcover, 343 pages

In these millennial times, who doesn't love a good catastrophe? The media is hip to it, as a two-hour documentary based on this book will be aired by PBS-TV in May. It will undoubtedly dish up enough famine, bizarre, killing storms and horrifying plagues to satisfy anyone's morbid curiosity. However, the revolutionary aspect of David Keys' book is the big picture it draws of human history. He traces threads of the modern geopolitics back to a single, planet-shaking event that occurred in the year A.D. 535. Keys message is that global catastrophe can occur, and that a "resynchronization" of human history could happen again.

This book is a brief history of civilization, covering peoples on every continent. I must admit I was a little impatient when realized I'd have to read to page 240 before the who-dun-it part. However, I'm a better, smarter person because of it, and you will be too. The history only makes sense, as London-based author Keys is one of Europe's leading archaeological journalists. For more than a decade he's written for major newspapers, has originated and presented more than 20 archaeology programs to British and American television audiences.

Archaeology functions as a mix of science, history and interpretation, rather like the way we humans function using logic, intuition and experience. As more sophisticated scientific tools, tests and computer models have become available, archaeologists have become more certain about dates, composition of structures and objects, but to some degree, their use and cultural significance will always remain in the realm of intuition and the art of interpretation.

The weakness in Keys' worldwide theory are the instances where he has no lake deposits, oxygen isotope, tree ring or ice core data for scientific proof and he cites folk history. In one example, a chapter on Britain, he conjures the characteristics of the "waste land" of Arthurian fable, and relies on the "selected" date for Arthur's death as evidence for the A.D. 535 cataclysm. In another instance concerning the mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi people from what is today New Mexico and Arizona, tree ring data show no evidence of climatic change in the years or decades following A.D. 535. Keys then points to increased trade with Eastern Woodland tribes as proof of climate change to the east that moved traders uncommonly far from home. However, these weak areas don't mean that Keys' theory is wrong.

Historic records indisputably chronicle depopulation of towns, cities and immense land areas in the wake of famine or plague. Sickness cut down rulers, as well as peasants. Political instability became a ripe medium for hatching plots, assassination and insurrection. Loss of a tax-paying population and other resources tipped power balances. Changing times sparked religious turmoil, bloody warfare and mass migrations. Keys' novel idea is that these regional happenings were ultimately the result of one helluva nasty event. He quickly analyzes the possibility of an asteroid or comet as culprit, and ticks them off his list of agents of doom, to decide what fits best is one of the worst volcanic eruptions in 50,000 years.

Keys believes it occurred in the area of western Java and southern Sumatra, the modern Sunda Strait, also the location for the 1883 Krakatoa explosion. Keys' dramatic and horrible evocation of the event starts with earthquakes and tidal waves affecting the region. The pressure of the magma building miles beneath the earth then caused a crack to open, beginning the first phase of the eruption.

A vast cloud if ash would have billowed forth, followed by a column of red-hot magma that would have shot out of the mountain like a fountain. A week or two later, as the magma came yet nearer to the surface, one of the earthquakes accompanying the eruption probably fractured the rock above the magma chamber; allowing the sea to rush into the wide tubes through which the magma was rising from the chamber to the surface. The second phase began with a vast explosive event that shot even larger quantities of molten magma into the air at up to 1,500 miles per hour, reaching heights of perhaps thirty miles. The sound from this explosion would have broken the eardrums of most humans and animals living within a fifteen-mile radius.

The shock wave from the explosion would have moved outward at 750-1,500 miles per hour, devastating everything in its path for up to twenty miles. Houses, bridges, temples, and every single tree would have been leveled like so many matchsticks. And within an estimated ten-mile radius there would also have been massive fire damage as the shock wave compressed the air, heating it to a very high temperature and causing combustible material to simply burst into flame.

After that he describes fragments, partially solidified, falling to earth, the ash cloud collapsing, and the ensuing pyroclastic flow. This would have been thousands of times larger than the flows on the island of Monserrat in 1997-1998, which killed everything in its path with a tidal wave of steam, gases, ash and rocks. The most damaging aspect however, was dispersal of microfragments of chemical ash into the stratosphere. It is this material traveling around the planet, that blocked the sun, lowered temperatures. This worked to cause drought which led to both crop failure and the calamitous movement of plague into non-immune species in the following years.

The Y2K bug failed to topple Western civilization, but Keys reminds us we are not impervious to disaster. Geological danger lurks here in the U.S. where the world's largest dormant volcano snores like an ancient dragon beneath Yellowstone National Park. Since 1988, the land there has been rising and the pattern of geyser activity has changed. And Europe has its Campanian/Camp Flegrei complex, which has been flexing its magma muscle beneath Naples in recent years.

Still it's difficult to imagine that any disaster, natural or manmade, could have repercussions so uncontrolled, and so complex as to disrupt governance, unhinge and reconfigure the existing geopolitical order. Yet, with our present knowledge of threats from geological events, from cosmic impact, from our own depredation of the environment, we know planetary catastrophe can happen. And if we don't think about how we'll face that future, our civilization too, will be history.

CATASTROPHE: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World
David Keys
1999
ISBN 0-345-40876-4
Ballantine Books
The Ballantine Publishing Group, A Division of Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10022
www.randomhouse.com/BB/

Main Index / News / Features / Reviews / Links / Back to Top

Transmit your message to Cool Universe

©Copyright 2000