COMETS, VOLCANOES, EARTHQUAKES AND PLAGUE Part 1

6th Century Cataclysmic Events, Global Cooling, Famine and the Justinian Plague

The archetypal “INFECTIOUS DISEASE DEVASTATES MANKIND!” stories are the great plagues of the past. The Black Death first and foremost, and the more ancient Justinian plague. These stories provide some of the strongest reasons for us to regard globe-spanning decimation from a pathogen-fueled pandemic as a likely threat – that is, IF these plagues were actually caused by a pathogen.

Tobin Owl presents the case that these plagues were not pathogen driven and that, of the various potential explanations available to us, the evidence of a pathogen driver for the great loss of life is weak and unnecessary. He begins his investigation with surprising and eye-opening considerations on the Justinian plague and will proceed to the Black Plague in a future essay.

– J. H.

...[T]hose caught in the earth beneath the buildings were incinerated and sparks of fire appeared out of the air and burned everyone they struck like lightning. The surface of the earth boiled and foundations of buildings were struck by thunderbolts thrown up by the earthquakes and were burned to ashes by fire... it was a tremendous and incredible marvel with fire belching out rain, rain falling from tremendous furnaces, flames dissolving into showers ... as a result Antioch became desolate ... in this terror up to 250,000 people perished.

– The  Chronicle of John Malalas describing the great Antioch “earthquake” of 526 C.E.

Introduction

One knows not but that, confronted with the facts of the repeatedly confirmed lack of human to human transmission of plague, the germ theorists of the late 19^th and early 20^th century invented the myth of animal and insect carriers, in spite of the fact that Clot Bey, chief physician to the viceroy of Egypt and head of the French government’s commission to study plague in that same country, had inoculated himself and various animals with blood and pus of plague victims on two occasions in 1835 without ill effects.

And despite that no less than 38 persons had previously been participants in similar experiments.

In 1803,

“M. Valli, an Italian physician, inoculated twenty-four persons with a mixture of variolous and plague matter.”

Dr. Sola, also, a Spanish physician,

“inoculated fourteen deserters condemned to death, in 1818, at Tangiers, with a mixture of plague matter.”

But these people remained unnaffected.

The Infectious Myth Busted: Is Plague Contagious?

During a severe pneumonic (i.e. respiratory) plague outbreak in Hong Kong in 1894, the discovery was made of the bacterium yersinis pestis, credited to Alexandre Yersinis, a student of both Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur. The bacterium, isolated from the blood of plague victims, was promptly blamed for causing the disease.

The popular nursery school fairytale about the plague, handed down to us know-it-all moderns by the quacks running the techno-enhanced stage play, depicts rats clogging the streets, travelling west and north during Black Plague of the 14^th century at ten times the speed of any normal plague surrounded by a flurry of biting fleas that transmitted to humans the terrifying scaly monster bacteria. The bacteria that, somehow—not even the stage directors knows quite how—caused the horrible disease complete with large black and blue blisters and streaks, and swollen lymph nodes, dubbed buboes.

 Apparently, we are supposed to believe fleas are infinitely more adept at transmitting disease than doctors with scalpels and the blood and pus of plague victims. Bewilderingly, Iceland was devasted twice by plague in the 15^th century. Unfortunately for the narrators of the rat tale, there were no rats in Iceland until the 18^th century and fleas were unknown there before 2016.  If the early 20^th century germ theorists had been as astute as our modern experts in scientism, they would have dispensed with the idea of bacteria from the start and blamed it all on a magical flying virus.

Suffice it to say that the stage directors themselves can cite little historical evidence for the above rat-infested drama. But that doesn’t bother anyone because no one actually studies the original accounts that mention strange things like trees covered with dust, earthquakes near and afar, foul smells coming from land and sea, shores littered with dead fish and animals, frogs and snakes raining from the sky, swarms of locust coming from the east, comets seen overhead. All just superstitious folklore, symbolic allegory, mind you. No one who actually witnessed the plagues of the middle ages or even of the 17^th to 19^th centuries could be trusted to report what they saw with any semblance of realism, or so we are led to believe.

Twice in the past 2000 years, humanity has been decimated by plague of the kind that in some places carried off 50 to 70 percent of the population within a short period of time. To say this was all due to fleas, and a mutant ninja microbe, strains the imagination. And is the height of historical reductionism.

THE JUSTINIAN PLAGUE (6^th CENTURY)

“Comets are vile stars,” wrote a Chinese official in 648 AD. “Every time they appear in the south, they wipe out the old and establish the new.  Fish grow sick, crops fail. Emperors and common people die, and men go to war. The people hate life and don’t want to speak of it.”

[…]

In the summer of 536 AD, a mysterious and dramatic cloud of dust appeared over the Mediterranean and for eighteen months darkened the sky as far east as China. According to the Byzantine historian Procopius, “During this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness. . . and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear.”

Analysis of Greenland ice that was deposited between 533 and 540 AD shows high levels of tin, nickel and iron oxides, suggesting that a comet or fragment of a comet may have hit the Earth at that time. The impact likely triggered volcanic eruptions, which spewed more dust into the atmosphere. With the darkened sky, temperatures dropped, crops failed and famine descended on many parts of the world.

In 541 AD a mysterious illness began to appear on the outskirts of the Byzantine Empire. Victims suffered from delusions, nightmares and fevers; they had lymph node swellings in the groin, armpits and behind their ears. The plague, named after the reigning Emperor Justinian, arrived in Constantinople, the capital of the empire, in 542 AD. Procopius noted that bodies were left stacked in the open due to a lack of space for proper burial. He estimated that in the city at its peak, the plague was killing ten thousand people every day.

The current explanation for the correlation of comets and disease is that of “panspermia.”  We now know that outer space is populated by clouds of microorganisms, and the theory holds that comets are watery bodies—dirty snowballs—which rain new microscopic forms on the earth, to which humans and animals have no immunity.

However, recent evidence indicates little if any water on comets.  Rather, they are asteroids that have an elliptical orbit and become highly charged electrically as they approach the sun, an exchange that creates the comet’s bright coma and tail. Their surfaces exhibit the kind of features that happen with intense electrical arcing, like craters and cliffs; bright or shiny spots on otherwise barren rocky surfaces indicate areas that are electrically charged.  Comets contain mineral alloys requiring temperatures in the thousands of degrees, and they have sufficient energy to emit extreme ultraviolet light and even powerful x-rays.  Moreover, as comets approach the sun, they can provoke high-energy discharges and flare-ups of solar plasma, which reach out to the comet.

Not a dirty snowball! Electrical activity photographed on a comet.

Solar discharge toward a comet

Thus, comets can create electrical disturbances in the atmosphere even more powerful than those created by man-made electrification—and this radiation includes demonstrably dangerous ionizing radiation. No wonder the ancients were afraid of comets!

[…]

The plague reappeared at periodic intervals over the next three hundred years with the last recorded occurrence in 750 AD—possibly explained by still-orbiting cometary debris. It eventually claimed 25 percent of inhabitants in the Mediterranean region. Then the plague disappeared from Europe until the Black Death of the Fourteenth Century…

—Comets or Contagions, by Sally Fallon, Nourishing Traditions

There are, as it happens, four occasions in the last 1500 years where scientists can confidently link dated layers of ammonium in Greenland ice to high-energy atmospheric interactions with objects coming from space: 539, 626, 1014, and 1908 - the Tunguska event.

New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection (book review)

A bright glow visible over London at midnight from the1908 Tunguska air burst 5,630 km away in a remote region of Siberia. The explosion was heard over 1000 km away and brightened the skies as far away as Ireland, occurring durng the heigt of the Beta Taurida metoer shower, said to have been debris from a comet.  Photo: Royal Museums Greenwich collection AST0050.27

The 20-megaton atmospheric explosion flattened 1287 square kilometres of forest, felling 80 million trees, but left no crater.

...the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire Northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my shirt was on fire;

Then I saw a wonder: trees were falling, the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as if there was a second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them.

— Eyewitness account of the Tunguska event. (The witness would have had to have been many miles away from the explosion to have survived.)

...before the plague at Clermont [France] great prodigies terrified that region. For three or four great shining places frequently appeared about the sun and the rustics used to call them suns, saying: "Behold, three or four suns in the sky." Once on the first of October the sun was so darkened that not a quarter of it continued bright, but it looked hideous and discoloured, about like a sack. Moreover a star which certain call a comet, with a ray like a sword, appeared over that country through a whole year, and the sky seemed to be on fire and many other signs were seen…

 — Saint Gregory, Bishop of Tours, Auvergne, Histories Bk 4 Ch 31, on the period 535-536 CE

Salvador’s Lake Ilopango, near the capital city of San Salvador … may have been the site of one of the most horrific natural disasters in the world. It may also be the long-sought cause of the extreme climate cooling and crop failures of A.D. 535-536 …

The massive Plinian-type event with pyroclastic flows would have instantly killed up to 100,000 people, displaced up to 400,000 more and filled the skies with ash and dust for more than a year. The new findings would make it the second-largest volcanic eruption in the last 200,000 years.

Such an eruption would explain the episode in Mayan history known as the Classic Period Hiatus, when the Maya stopped building stelae, decorative stone columns erected to mark events, Dull said. It would also finally explain the global cooling of A.D. 535-536, an 18-month period of cloudy skies, crop failures and famines that was described in both Roman and Chinese historical accounts…

The cooling, known as the A.D. 536 event, had been attributed to a number of sources over the years including a bolide impact. In 2008, analysis of ice cores recovered in Greenland and Antarctica — dated to A.D. 536 — showed similar levels of sulfate, indicating a massive tropical volcanic eruption had ejected ash around the planet. However, the location of a tropical volcano that erupted in A.D. 536 and produced a sufficient volume of ash to block the sun remained unknown. Some suggested Rabaul; others Krakatoa. But the dates and sedimentary evidence didn’t align.

In 2001, Dull had re-evaluated carbon-14 dates of a thick, white layer of tephra, locally called the Tierra Blanca Joven (TBJ), or “young white land,” which had placed the Ilopango eruption at A.D. 260. Dull’s 2001 analysis placed it sometime between A.D. 408 and 536. At the time, however, the TBJ eruption was not thought to have been large enough to have caused global cooling.

Over the last few years, however, other researchers have discovered TBJ tephra deposits — dated from A.D. 400 to 600 — even further afield, in Nicaragua, Honduras and in offshore deposits. The wider geographic distribution of TBJ deposits indicates the eruption produced a much larger volume of ash and debris, which Dull now calculates at 84 cubic kilometers, nearly five times larger than previously thought. “An eruption that big has to leave a big hole in the ground,” Dull said, and the dimensions of Ilopango’s caldera, at 11 kilometers by 17 kilometers, fit the bill. Such an eruption would merit a rating of 6.9 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, larger than the 1816 eruption of Tambora, which caused the “year without a summer."

— AAG: Eruption of El Salvador's Ilopango explains A.D. 536 cooling, by Sara E. Pratt, Earth Magazine

MULTIPLE comet impacts around 1500 years ago triggered a “dry fog” that plunged half the world into famine.

Historical records tell us that from the beginning of March 536 AD, a fog of dust blanketed the atmosphere for 18 months. During this time, “the sun gave no more light than the moon”, global temperatures plummeted and crops failed, says Dallas Abbott of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. The cause has long been unknown, but theories have included a vast volcanic eruption or an impact from space.

“Co Abbott and her team have found the first direct evidence …

— Comet Smashes Triggered Ancient Famine, by Ker Than, New Scientist (2008)

Though none of the above sources indicate it overtly, the combined evidence would seem to indicate that an intense period of comet/asteroid activity over a span of years—perhaps beginning around or even before the time of the great Antioch “earthquake” (which itself may have been a meteor air burst; see quote at the beginning of this article)—could have set off a series of earthquakes and volcanoes. Poison gases released from meteor explosions or from trapped reservoirs beneath the crust sickened and killed fish, animals and humans alike. A modern day example of a “mysterious illness” appearing after a meteor impact was seen in Desaguadero, Peru.

Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor,"… Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized…

I’ll revisit these thoughts in Part 2 of this series (and a possible Part 3).

The fascinating video below featuring the work of dendrochronologist Mike Baillie suggests it may have been the infamous Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, rather than Ilopango, that led to the darkened skies of 533-536. Given the intense cosmic and seismic activity of the period, I wonder if it could have been both, in addition to comet fragments or meteor air bursts that would not have left a crater on the ground.

UPDATE:

(Below is a long update, followed by a timeline of 6th century events at the end of this article.)

In a more recent [2020/2021] video interview (see below), Bailey tells the story of how for 20 years he was convinced that the extreme events recorded in Irish bog oak tree ring narrowing for the years 536 and especially 540-541 CE must have been caused by comet activity, but in 2015, Greenland ice core samples indicating heavy volcanic activity for the years 529 and 534 CE were revised when researchers realized they had made a seven year error.

The graph above shows high levels of sulphuric acid in Greenland ice cores for the years 529 and 534. But in 2015, researchers realized they made a 7 year error.

When the ice core reading is corrected by moving the dates 7 years forward it corresponds perfectly with Irish dendrochronologists’ dates for narrow tree rings, meaning that apocalyptic-scale volcanic activity is indicated during the time period. In fact, he says they have since learned there were several, not just one, cataclysmic volcanic eruptions during that time period, including Ilopango and Krakatoa, as well as volcanoes in Alaska. So it seems my thoughts about more than one supervolcano eruption being possible during the period were justified. Baillie concludes that the observation of comets coming very near the earth during that time period is then not to be seen as the cause of the extreme climate event, though I must admit that his easy brushing off of his former conclusions about comets having been major players in these events is unsatisfactory to me personally. It seems to me that indeed comets must have had an effect on the earth and helped cause a great deal of abnormal volcanic and seismic activity and likely also contributed to a contaminated atmosphere.

Beginning around 1:05:00 Baille tells how there were multiple comets that were visible in the skies during the period and that one of those comets was visible for several months, from Ireland to China. Around the same time period, the death of the legendary King Arthur was said to have occured.

Baillie suggests that, according to scholars, Arthur was a Celtic diety rather than a historical figure, and associates him with the legendary Irish hero and demigod Cú Chulainn. Although these two figures belong to two different time periods—Cú Chulainn is associated with the Ulster Cycle ranging from about 200 BCE to 100 CE while Arthur is associated with the 6th century CE—and two different cultural traditions—Irish and Welsh—perhaps there is something they have in common.

Baillie tells of his discovery in the 1990s, when he first started reading about Cú Chulainn, of some very strange descriptions of the diety. One story tells of Cú Chulainn as bright as the sun, but rising out of the West rather than the East. Another story speaks of three layers of hair and other bizzarre descriptions of the diety. The screenshot below shows some of Baillie’s notes on the latter.

Struck by the bizzarreness of this description, Bailie concluded it could only be referring to a bright comet (Cú Chulain is described as a “bright” warrior). The following drawings of a Donati’s Comet of 1858 as seen through a telescope show a striking similarity to changes said to have been undergone by Cú Chulainn, leaving one to conclude that the latter may very well have been a description of a comet come so near the earth that such details could be seen with the naked eye.

Drawing’s of Donati’s Comet (1858) show multiple layers of “hair” and strange goings-on with the comet’s “eyes”

I found a smilar description of Cú Chulainn on Mythopedia. What Baillie describes as a “frenzy” or “paroxism” appears to be a reference to Cú Chulain’s ríastrad, or supernatural fit of rage:

In battle, Cú Chulainn’s most important asset was his supernatural rage, called ríastrad, sometimes translated as “warp spasm.”^[4] When Cú Chulainn used his ríastrad, he became an unstoppable force that would kill friend and foe alike. The ríastrad had such an effect on him that his body would contort with rage: 

“You would have thought that a spark of fire was on every hair. He closed one eye until it was no wider than the eye of a needle; he opened the other until it was as big as a wooden bowl. He bared his teeth from jaw to ear, and he opened his mouth until the gullet was visible.”

A book by Baillie on the subject was published in 1999, under the title, Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters With Comets, describing 5 major environmental catastrophes between c. 2350 BC (the period of the Biblical Flood) and c. 540 AD (the global winter, corresponding with legendary death of King Arthur) that are recorded in extremely narrow tree rings in Irish bog oaks and other tree ring records for these periods.

From a review of the book:

The tree-ring record points to global environmental traumas between 2354 and 2345 BC, 1628 and 1623 BC, 1159 and 1141 BC, 208 and 204 BC and AD 536 and 545. Baillie argues that the tree rings are recording first the Biblical flood, then the disasters that befell Egypt at the Exodus, famines at the end of King David’s reign, a famine in China that ended the Ch’in dynasty, and finally, the death of King Arthur and Merlin and the onset of the Dark Ages across the whole of what is now Britain.

The biblical account of Exodus and contemporary annals from China speak of cometary activity preceding calamity.

[…]

…Baillie goes a step further, arguing that a series of cometary impacts around the size of the 20-megaton explosion at Tunguska in Siberia in 1908 might be enough to trigger earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions and ocean floor outgassing. This would explain why comets are seen as portent, along with the occurrence of flooding and poisonous fogs-all reported at the time of Exodus and during others of Baillie’s five catastrophes.

Whether Baillie’s mention of Cú Chulainn in the interview was supposed to be a allusion to the events circa 200 BC or to the later 540 events is unclear to me, though the former better fits the Ulster Cycle Cú Cullain was said to belong to.

Another book by Baillie, co-authored by Patrick McCafferty and published in 2005, is titled, The Celtic Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology.

In 2007, Baillie published New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection, which argues for cometary involvement in the chaotic times in the 14th century. (See review by World Archaeology or a more thorough reveiw by Laura Knight-Jadczyk)

To wrap things up, the following screenshots from the interview cited previously compliment my timeline below, giving an overview of 6th century events at a glance:

Timeline of 6^th century cataclysmic events followed by the Justinian plague:

(some dates may be estimates)

526 CE – The great Antioch “earthquake” (note the description at the head of this article indicates it may actually have been a meteor air burst over the city)

533-540 CE –deposits of tin, nickel and iron oxides in Greenland ice cores for these years suggest that a comet or fragment of a comet may have hit the Earth

535-536 CE – a cloud of dust over the Mediterranean darkens the sky for 18 months; global temperatures drop dramatically and famine ensues, possibly brought on by multiple asteroid events, eruption of El Salvador’s Ilopango volcano, eruption of Krakatoa, or all of the above

536-541 CE - Extreme tree ring narrowing in 536 and especially 540-541 CE in Irish bog oaks indicates very bad climate; this coincides with high sulphuric deposits in Greenland ice cores for the same years, pointing to extreme volcanic activity

539 CE – high levels of ammonium in Greenland ice cores suggest “high-energy atmospheric interactions with objects coming from space”

540 CE –Mayan “dark age” begins lasting over 100 years; massive crop failure and abandonment of cities, reports of a “dark fog”

541 CE – a mysterious illness appears on the edge of the Byzantine Empire

542 CE – the illness reaches Constantinople, capital of the Empire, killing an estimated 10,000 people per day in the city

590 CE – after decades of low ebb the plague strikes the city of Rome for the first time since the Justinian Plague of 542 CE

626 CE - again as in 539 CE, high levels of amonia in Greenland ice cores indicate “high-energy interactions with objects coming from space”; thus one might surmise high levels of comet/meteor activity sporadic throughout the period

750 CE – plague continues to appear periodically until this year, then disappears until the 14^th century

Tobin Owl is an independent researcher/writer. Over the past four years he’s conducted in-depth investigation focusing on the history of modern medicine, medical science, geopolitical conspiracy and the environment. Articles written prior to his move to Substack are found on his website Cry For The Earth

Notes:

It has been suggested that Pope Gregory’s 1233 Bull leading to the mass slaughter of cats led to an increased rat population that paved the way for the Black Death (see entertaining story here). However, this doesn’t explain why the plague killed millions in China more than a decade before the Black Plague in Europe that began in 1348. British archeologist Barney Sloane points out that the rat-flee-plague hypothesis also doesn’t square with the facts in London where evidence is that the plague hit mid-winter when rats would have been less active and flees dormant. He doesn’t see evidence of masses of dead rats in the archeological digs either, something one would expect if the rats succumbed to bubonic plague. He argues that instead the culprit must have been a mysterious airborne respiratory virus that spread via people’s breath or coughing (sound familiar?). In Part 2, I’ll examine how the respiratory “virus” fits better with 14th century accounts than flee bites and rats—which are not mentioned in those accounts—but overlooks something more glaring and obvious.