From crisica@idt.net Sun Sep 10 01:25:14 2000 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id BAA132674 for ; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 01:25:13 -0700 Received: from u3.farm.idt.net (root@u3.farm.idt.net [169.132.8.12]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id BAA31520 for ; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 01:25:12 -0700 Received: from 18spd (ppp-7.ts-2-bay.nyc.idt.net [169.132.216.55]) by u3.farm.idt.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id EAA14532; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 04:24:55 -0400 (EDT) Reply-To: From: "Christopher Robbins" To: "Late Antique" , "BYZANS-L" , Subject: The NTD virus (was: ... London Times) - long Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 04:24:54 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0000_01C01ADF.126AEB40" X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <39BA4707.6C999EF2@charm.net> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C01ADF.126AEB40 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit DW posted the following (here edited) from the London Times: _____________________________________________________ "The story of the death of King Arthur and its references to a wasteland may have been inspired by the apocalyptic effects of a giant comet bombarding the Earth in AD540, leading to the Dark Ages, a British scientist said [...]" Oh, brother! But there is a serious warning to be taken from this, namely that even the best of minds can be infected by NTD (Nutty Theory Disease). Don't believe it? Then let's take a look at some of the equally ludicrous theories that were put forth as causal to a Dark Age that will be more familiar to the Classics community, that which afflicted Greece and virtually the entire Near East at the end of the Aegean Bronze Age. (1) C.F.A Schaeffer on the ruin of the Anatolian cities ca. 1200 BC: "...il est plausible d'admettre que les destructions massives qui firent disparaître, au temps de Suppiluliuma, l'empire hittite, sa capitale et nombre d'autres villes importantes en Hatti, ne sont pas imputables à des actions guerrières, mais à de désastreux tremblements de terre dont l'Asie Mineure, l'une des régions du globe les plus éprouvées par les séismes, a été si souvent le théâtre." (2) Sir Arthur Evans on the fire that destroyed the Knossos palace and baked its tablet archives: "...it seems best to assign a seismic cause." But even for this distinguished figure, his explanation of how an earthquake caused the fires but little damage to neighboring sites is nuttier still. You see, it was just a moderate earthquake (hence affecting only Knossos) but it occurred when the Notios (south wind) was blowing. So the minor quake upset some lamps and the Notios fans the flames of those lamps into a blaze that so thoroughly destroys the palace that it had to be abandoned. I am not joking; this is what Evans proposed. (3) What about Hissarlik (i.e., Troy VIh)? Per Carl Blegen, this once "royal" city was likewise destroyed and burned by an earthquake. What, no Achaeans? :-) (4) Perhaps more to the Classicist soul is the Peloponnese where far more sites than Mycenae alone were destroyed, plundered, burned, and eventually abandoned. How did all this happen? In a conclusion that was shared by others as well, Spyridon Iakovides reports: "During the last quarter of the c13 BC a violent earthquake, signs of which have been noticed both inside and outside the citadel, overthrew the palace and many other buildings and started fires which caused the total destruction of many of them." Presumably the earthquake carried off the treasure as well, although how it planned to spend it is not mentioned. That's probably enough to show that NTD can affect even the most distinguished figures in a field. It would further seem that nutty theories and dark ages tend to go together, although not necessarily in that order. And in this regard. let us return briefly to the London Times article, which said: >Dr Baillie also cited the death of King Arthur, which is dated to 537, 539 and 542 in various works [...] There is not a shred of evidence that a King Arthur ever existed, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's elaborate romantic fictions, composed six centuries later in his _Historia regnum Britanniae_, are nothing but the combination of his imagination, his pro-Breton sentiments, and what appears to be his father's name, Arturus. As this was a common Breton name at that time (though not with the Welsh), it has been inferred that Geoffrey was of Breton descent, which may have contributed to his sympathy with the ancient Britons. Like the Romans before them, the Anglo-Saxons had first to contend with the native Britons, mostly those who had not been subsumed into the Roman world of the Britannia province. These battles appear to have been fierce indeed, if intermittent. But again like the Romans, the A/S kingdoms eventually prevailed and drove their Briton challengers back into the so-called Celtic fringe, with Offa's dyke standing in lieu of the Hadrian and Antonine walls. The matter of "Saxon or Celt", as the movies of my childhood used to say, was well settled before the A/S kingdoms became Christianized and literate. So even the best sources that we have about the A/S-Briton conflict are those recorded by Latin clerics a century or so after the fact and taken from the memory and oral history of people who were not alive when the events transpired. And even those are mostly from way up north of the Humber in present-day Yorkshire, where the first florescence of A/S culture in England was expressed. This is frail evidence indeed, and there is no possible way it could pinpoint the death of any Briton chieftain, least of all one named Arthur, since this name was not appended to this lore until some 600 years later. And to rely on a mythical fantasy written in the c12 for the climatic conditions in the c6 seems rather unadvisable to me. But what about the Dark Age? The "darkness" involved has always been more attendant to our vision than theirs. As we now know vastly more about the period to which this term was applied (roughly the first five or so centuries after the demise of the Western Empire) than was known when it was coined, the term has effectively been abandoned by medieval historians. As to the alleged cause of this Dark Age, we return to the London Times article: "The impacts filled the atmosphere with dust and debris; a long winter began. Crops failed, and there was famine, Dr Mike Baillie of Queen's University, Belfast, told the British Association for the Advancement of Science. There was now overwhelming evidence from studies of tree rings of a catastrophic climate change at that time, he said. "Dr Baillie, who is based at the university's school of archaeology and palaeoecology, said studies of Irish oaks showed that the climate suddenly became inhospitable around AD540. Other researchers had discovered the same narrow rings on trees in places such as Germany, Scandinavia, Siberia, North America and China. "For all these trees to show the same rings at the same time means it must have been a profoundly unpleasant event, a catastrophic environmental downturn, in AD540, which is in or at the beginning of the Dark Ages." "The tightly bound rings are consistent with fierce frosts that would have devastated agriculture and made a malnourished population more vulnerable to the plague of 542, which killed millions. Plague-carrying rats and pests would have been looking for sustenance, thus hastening the spread of the disease. [...]" Sounds grim. If only it were true. If we may refer to a "Dark Age" from the standpoint of those who experienced it and in terms of the brutality and the collapse of order, law, and civilized culture plus the disruption of economic relations and patterns that attended the early onrush of Germanic barbarians into Europe as the authority of the Western Empire receded, then we may think of the fierce struggles of countless petty barbarian duchies for land, survival, and consolidation and the newness of it and the shock effect on extant populations, then perhaps nominate the period from, say, the mid-c5 to the late-c6 as something of a Dark Age. Even for the top social strata is was no easy ride, as landed senatorial-class aristocrats in the provinces scrambled to save their skins by becoming administrators and recorders for one or another local barbarian prince. And the massive sums which that same class in Rome had to come up with to bribe the new warrior interlopers they now had to confront. It was the price, one might say, for their sneering and tax-avoiding refusal to adequately fund the army earlier when there still was a chance. Since the Dr Baillie of the London Times article is at a university in Belfast, let us look at Britain for this period of supposed nuclear-type winter, fierce frosts, catastrophic environmental downturn, devastated agriculture, crop failures, famine, malnourished population more vulnerable to the plague of 542, which killed millions, plague-carrying rats and pests hastening the spread of the disease, all of which purportedly began with some sort of meteor shower "in AD540, which is in or at the beginning of the Dark Ages." The tenuous Dark Age date aside, Classicists certainly know about the vicious plague epidemic that broke out between AD 541-543 and continued into the AD 570's. Though largely confined to the Mediterranean, its effects were nonetheless horrific. But it didn't stop Justinian or his Persian, Avar, and Bulgar adversaries from near continuous engagement any more than the plague stopped the Plantagenet kings or their Valois adversaries from carrying on the 100 Years War eight centuries later. But to test this proposed meteor induced start of a Dark Age and the alarming effects suggested to ensue therefrom, let us return to our focus on the other side of the "canal de la Mancha". The first A/S kingdom (Kent) was established in AD 455, the same year the Vandals sacked Rome. The following period was brutal and grim, to be sure, but by a century later the contest with the Britons had been settled in a way that would never be seriously challenged and the basic structure of the A/S kingdoms had been set - from Bernicia and Deira in the north (merged in AD 550 to form Northumbria) to Wessex in the south. By the end of the c6, A/S speech was used by populations from the Firth of Forth to Land's End. In AD 597 the other Augustine arrived in Kent to become the first Archbishop of Canterbury. The process of becoming literate and Christian, begun earlier in some measure by itinerant monks who came over from Ireland then down from Scotland, was underway, and by the end of the c7 it was complete. And with that, the function of A/S kingship also changed from plundering warrior to law giver and law enforcer. There were some shifts in the Bretwalda role, but nothing like before and in all events with long periods of stability first under Northumbria, then under Mercia, and finally and, of course, permanently under Wessex. In the late c8 the first commercial treaty in English history was made with the great empire in Aachen, and Mercia's King Offa was marrying off his daughters to Charlemagne's sons. We cannot say that it was a kingdom united; it would take the Danish wars to achieve that. But from the mid-c6 on, we can see an A/S England that was a steadily growing, increasingly prosperous, and a by-and-large stable collection of agrarian mini-states that was well on its way in the development of trade and political relations with the wider continental world. To be sure, the Danish wars that began in the mid-c9 came very near to collapsing A/S England. But this had nothing to do with meteor showers and much to do with land hungry Scandinavian Vikings confronting successful agrarian farmers whose swords had long since been effectively rent into plowshares. And there is no small analogy here as well to Athens vis a vis Macedonia in the BC c4. But whether by chance or by cause, there came the extraordinary figure of Alfred and his heirs, who in the course of a mere three generations had taken back all of England, unified the realm and successfully incorporated the Danes (now with plowshares too) into it, effected a literary and legal renaissance, set a standardized coinage, had diplomatic emissaries both to and from all the leading continental powers, and was only shortly away from putting a final end to Norse pretensions in England. >From AD 960 on it was clear that A/S England was experiencing a growth surge in both wealth and population, leading to a striking period of so-called monastic reform (i.e., church patronage) and a spectacular flourishing of late-Saxon artisanship, architecture, literary production and the copying of texts, and domestic industries, such as fisheries and the experimentation with new crops and agricultural methods. The intercession of Cnut in the early c11 advanced this prosperity by the considerable augmentation of trade with his Scandinavian domains and the suppression of piracy on the Baltic trade routes. All this while showing unprecedented respect for A/S law and tradition, even to the point of enforcing Christian conversion on his own troops that he had brought with him to England. By the mid-c11, therefore, late Saxon England was the most literate, most artistically and culturally advanced, one of the most wealthy if not the most, and in all events the one with the most effective administration and tax collection system of all the European world. It was an astonishing history that began to unfold around ca. AD 550. And it is no wonder at all that it was the prize for which both Scandinavian and Latin Europe were hungry and would soon be in competition to seize, that prize going to the latter in 1066. Looking back on this, then, we may wonder where was this calamitous Dark Age that Dr. Baillie from Belfast and his Irish-oak tree rings so ominously and boldly asserted must have begun in ca. AD 550? Even if we take the definition I had earlier suggested for such as it might be seen in the eyes of the then contemporary peoples, that Dark Age did not begin in ca. AD 550. In Britain, at least, it ended in ca. AD 550. And from that point on we find no support in the historical record of Britain for some nuclear-type winter, fierce frosts, a catastrophic environmental downturn, devastated agriculture, crop failures, famine, a malnourished population vulnerable to the plague, and plague-carrying vermin everywhere hastening the spread of the disease, and all this leading to the onset of a spine-chilling and meteor induced Dark Age. What we find is just the opposite. It is sometimes said that specialization has been one of the keys to the Western world's remarkable success. We leave the question to philosophers and tinkers. But our Dr. Baillie is a specialist, one in archaeology and palaeoecology it seems. So we do not doubt that his Irish oaks have those tree rings, and we imagine that his training in those disciplines would define for him the parameters and limits of the reasoned conclusions that can be drawn from those tree rings alone as evidence. But we suggest that it may be wiser to demur on fervid speculations regarding human and historical conditions where there is no supporting evidence at all. Cheers, CRR ------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C01ADF.126AEB40 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
DW posted the following = (here=20 edited) from the London Times:
______________________________________________= _______

"The=20 story of the death of King Arthur and its references to a wasteland may = have=20 been inspired by the apocalyptic effects of a giant comet bombarding the = Earth=20 in AD540, leading to the Dark Ages, a British scientist said [...]"

Oh, brother!  But = there is=20 a serious warning to be taken from this, namely that even the best of = minds can=20 be infected by NTD (Nutty Theory Disease).  Don't believe it?  = Then=20 let's take a look at  = some of=20 the equally ludicrous theories that were put forth as causal to a Dark = Age that=20 will be more familiar to the Classics community, that which afflicted = Greece and=20 virtually the entire Near East at the end of the Aegean Bronze = Age.

(1)=20 C.F.A Schaeffer on the ruin of the Anatolian cities ca. 1200 BC: "...il = est=20 plausible d'admettre  que les destructions massives qui = firent dispara=EEtre,=20 au temps de Suppiluliuma, l'empire hittite, sa capitale et nombre = d'autres=20 villes importantes en Hatti, ne = sont pas=20 imputables =E0 des actions guerri=E8res, mais =E0 de d=E9sastreux = tremblements de terre=20 dont l'Asie Mineure, l'une des r=E9gions du globe les plus =E9prouv=E9es = par les=20 s=E9ismes, a =E9t=E9 si souvent le th=E9=E2tre."

(2)=20 Sir Arthur Evans on the fire that destroyed the Knossos palace and=20 baked its tablet archives: "...it seems best to assign a seismic=20 cause."  But even for this = distinguished=20 figure, his explanation of how an earthquake caused the fires but little = damage=20 to neighboring sites is nuttier still.  You see, it was just a = moderate=20 earthquake (hence affecting only Knossos) but it occurred when the = Notios (south=20 wind) was blowing.  So the minor quake upset some lamps and = the Notios=20 fans the flames of those lamps into a blaze that so thoroughly = destroys the=20 palace that it had to be abandoned.  I am not joking; this is = what=20 Evans proposed. 

(3) What about Hissarlik (i.e., = Troy VIh)? Per Carl Blegen, this once "royal" = city was=20 likewise destroyed and burned by an earthquake.  What, no Achaeans? = :-)

(4) Perhaps more to the Classicist soul = is the=20 Peloponnese where far more sites than Mycenae alone were destroyed, = plundered,=20 burned, and eventually abandoned.  How did all this happen?  = In a=20 conclusion that was shared by others as well, Spyridon = Iakovides reports:=20 "During the last quarter of the c13 BC a violent earthquake, signs of = which have=20 been noticed both inside and outside the citadel, overthrew the palace = and many=20 other buildings and started fires which caused the total = destruction of=20 many of them." Presumably the earthquake carried off the treasure as = well,=20 although how it planned to spend it is not = mentioned.

That's probably enough to show that NTD can = affect even=20 the most distinguished figures in a field. It would further seem that = nutty=20 theories and dark ages tend to go together, although not necessarily in = that=20 order.  And in this regard. let us return briefly to = the London=20 Times article, which said:

>Dr=20 Baillie also cited the death of King Arthur, which is dated to 537, 539 = and 542=20 in various works [...]

There is not a shred of evidence that a King = Arthur ever=20 existed, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's elaborate romantic fictions, = composed six=20 centuries later in his _Historia regnum Britanniae_, are = nothing but=20 the combination of his imagination, his pro-Breton sentiments, and = what=20 appears to be his father's name, Arturus.  As this was a = common Breton=20 name at that time (though not with the Welsh), it has been inferred = that Geoffrey was of Breton descent, which may = have contributed to his=20 sympathy with the ancient Britons.  Like the Romans before them, = the=20 Anglo-Saxons had first to contend with the native Britons, mostly those = who had=20 not been subsumed into the Roman world of the Britannia province.  = These=20 battles appear to have been fierce indeed, if intermittent.  But = again like=20 the Romans, the A/S kingdoms eventually prevailed and drove their = Briton=20 challengers back into the so-called Celtic fringe, with Offa's = dyke=20 standing in lieu of the Hadrian and Antonine = walls.

The = matter of "Saxon=20 or Celt", as the movies of my childhood used to say, was well = settled=20 before the A/S kingdoms became Christianized and literate.  So even = the=20 best sources that we have about the A/S-Briton conflict are those = recorded by=20 Latin clerics a century or so after the fact and taken=20 from the memory and oral history of = people who=20 were not alive when the events transpired.  And even those are = mostly from=20 way up north of the Humber in present-day Yorkshire, where the first = florescence=20 of A/S culture in England was expressed.  This is frail evidence = indeed,=20 and there is no possible way it could=20 pinpoint the death of any Briton chieftain, least of all one named = Arthur, since=20 this name was not appended to this lore until some 600 years = later.  And=20 to rely on a mythical fantasy written in the c12 for the climatic=20 conditions in the c6 seems rather unadvisable to = me.

But what about the Dark Age?  The = "darkness"=20 involved has always been more attendant to our vision than theirs.  = As we=20 now know vastly more about the period to which this term was applied = (roughly=20 the first five or so centuries after the demise of the Western Empire) = than was=20 known when it was coined, the term has effectively been abandoned by = medieval=20 historians.  As to the alleged cause of this Dark Age, we return to = the=20 London Times article:

"The=20 impacts filled the atmosphere with dust and debris; a long winter began. = Crops=20 failed, and there was famine, Dr Mike Baillie of Queen's University, = Belfast,=20 told the British Association for the Advancement of Science. There was = now=20 overwhelming evidence from studies of tree rings of a catastrophic = climate=20 change at that time, he said.

"Dr=20 Baillie, who is based at the university's school of archaeology and=20 palaeoecology, said studies of Irish oaks showed that the climate = suddenly=20 became inhospitable around AD540. Other researchers had discovered the = same=20 narrow rings on trees in places such as Germany, Scandinavia, Siberia, = North=20 America and China. "For all these trees to show the same rings at the = same time=20 means it must have been a profoundly unpleasant event, a catastrophic=20 environmental downturn, in AD540, which is in or at the beginning of the = Dark=20 Ages."

"The tightly bound = rings are=20 consistent with fierce frosts that would have devastated agriculture and = made a=20 malnourished population more vulnerable to the plague of 542, which = killed=20 millions. Plague-carrying rats and pests would have been looking for = sustenance,=20 thus hastening the spread of the disease.=20 [...]"

Sounds grim.  If only it were = true. =20 If we may refer to a "Dark Age" from the standpoint of those who = experienced it=20 and in terms of the brutality and the collapse of order, law, and = civilized=20 culture plus the disruption of economic relations and patterns that = attended the=20 early onrush of Germanic barbarians into Europe as the authority of = the=20 Western Empire receded, then we may think of the = fierce struggles of=20 countless petty barbarian duchies for land, survival, and consolidation = and the=20 newness of it and the shock effect on extant populations, then perhaps = nominate=20 the period from, say, the mid-c5 to the late-c6 as something of a = Dark=20 Age.  Even for the top social strata is was no easy ride, as = landed=20 senatorial-class aristocrats in the provinces scrambled to save their = skins by=20 becoming administrators and recorders for one or another local = barbarian=20 prince.  And the massive sums which that same class in Rome had to = come up=20 with to bribe the new warrior interlopers they now had to = confront. =20 It was the price, one might say, for their sneering and = tax-avoiding=20 refusal to adequately fund the army earlier when there still was a=20 chance.

Since the Dr Baillie of the London = Times=20 article is at a university in Belfast, let us look at Britain for this = period of=20 supposed nuclear-type winter, fierce frosts, catastrophic environmental=20 downturn, devastated agriculture, crop failures, famine, malnourished = population=20 more vulnerable to the plague of 542, which killed millions, = plague-carrying=20 rats and pests hastening the spread of the disease, all of which = purportedly=20 began with some sort of meteor shower "in=20 AD540, which is in or at the beginning of the Dark Ages."

The tenuous Dark Age = date aside,=20 Classicists certainly know about the vicious plague epidemic that broke = out=20 between AD 541-543 and continued into the AD 570's.  Though largely = confined to the Mediterranean, its effects were nonetheless = horrific.  But=20 it didn't stop Justinian or his Persian, Avar, and Bulgar adversaries = from near=20 continuous engagement any more than the plague stopped the Plantagenet = kings or=20 their Valois adversaries from carrying on the 100 Years War eight = centuries=20 later.

But to test this proposed meteor = induced start=20 of a Dark Age and the alarming effects suggested to ensue therefrom, let = us=20 return to our focus on the other side of the "canal de la Mancha".  = The=20 first A/S kingdom (Kent) was established in AD 455, the same year the = Vandals=20 sacked Rome.  The following period was brutal and grim, to be sure, = but by=20 a century later the contest with the Britons had been settled in a way = that=20 would never be seriously challenged and the basic structure of the A/S = kingdoms=20 had been set - from Bernicia and Deira in the north (merged in AD = 550 to=20 form Northumbria) to Wessex in the south.  By the end of the c6, = A/S speech=20 was used by populations from the Firth of Forth to Land's = End.

In AD 597 the other Augustine = arrived in Kent=20 to become the first Archbishop of Canterbury.  The process of = becoming=20 literate and Christian, begun earlier in some measure by itinerant monks = who=20 came over from Ireland then down from Scotland, was underway, and = by the=20 end of the c7 it was complete.  And with that, the function of = A/S=20 kingship also changed from plundering warrior to law giver and law=20 enforcer.  There were some shifts in the Bretwalda role, but = nothing like=20 before and in all events with long periods of stability first under = Northumbria,=20 then under Mercia, and finally and, of course, permanently under = Wessex. =20 In the late c8 the first commercial treaty in English history was = made with=20 the great empire in Aachen, and Mercia's King Offa was marrying off his=20 daughters to Charlemagne's sons.  We cannot say that it was a = kingdom=20 united; it would take the Danish wars to achieve that.  But from = the mid-c6=20 on, we can see an A/S England that was a steadily growing, increasingly=20 prosperous, and a by-and-large stable collection of agrarian mini-states = that=20 was well on its way in the development of trade and political relations = with the=20 wider continental world.

To be sure, the Danish wars that = began in the=20 mid-c9 came very near to collapsing A/S England.  But this had = nothing to=20 do with meteor showers and much to do with land hungry Scandinavian = Vikings=20 confronting successful agrarian farmers whose swords had long since been = effectively rent into plowshares.  And there is no small analogy = here as=20 well to Athens vis a vis Macedonia in the BC c4.  But whether by = chance or=20 by cause, there came the extraordinary figure of Alfred and his heirs, = who in=20 the course of a mere three generations had taken back all of England, = unified=20 the realm and successfully incorporated the Danes (now with plowshares = too) into=20 it, effected a literary and legal renaissance, set a standardized = coinage, had=20 diplomatic emissaries both to and from all the leading continental = powers, and=20 was only shortly away from putting a final end to Norse pretensions in=20 England.

From AD 960 on it was clear that A/S = England=20 was experiencing a growth surge in both wealth and population, = leading to a=20 striking period of so-called monastic reform (i.e., church patronage) = and a=20 spectacular flourishing of late-Saxon artisanship, architecture, = literary=20 production and the copying of texts, and domestic industries, such as = fisheries=20 and the experimentation with new crops and agricultural methods.  = The=20 intercession of Cnut in the early c11 advanced this prosperity by the=20 considerable augmentation of trade with his Scandinavian domains and the = suppression of piracy on the Baltic trade routes.  All this while = showing=20 unprecedented respect for A/S law and tradition, even to the point of = enforcing=20 Christian conversion on his own troops that he had brought = with him to=20 England.

By the mid-c11, therefore, late = Saxon England=20 was the most literate, most artistically and culturally advanced, one of = the=20 most wealthy if not the most, and in all events the one with the most = effective=20 administration and tax collection system of all the European = world.  It was=20 an astonishing history that began to unfold around ca. AD = 550.  And it is no wonder at all that it was the prize for which = both=20 Scandinavian and Latin Europe were hungry and would soon be in = competition=20 to seize, that prize going to the latter in 1066.

Looking back on this, then, we = may wonder=20 where was this calamitous Dark Age that Dr. Baillie from Belfast and his = Irish-oak tree rings so ominously and boldly asserted must have begun in = ca. AD=20 550?  Even if we take the definition I had earlier suggested = for such=20 as it might be seen in the eyes of the then contemporary peoples, that = Dark Age=20 did not begin in ca. AD 550.  In Britain, at least, it ended in ca. = AD=20 550.

And from that point on we find no = support in=20 the historical record of Britain for some nuclear-type winter, = fierce=20 frosts, a catastrophic environmental downturn, devastated agriculture, = crop=20 failures, famine, a malnourished population vulnerable to the plague, = and=20 plague-carrying vermin everywhere hastening the spread of the = disease,=20 and all this leading to the onset of a spine-chilling and meteor=20 induced Dark Age. 

What we find is just the = opposite.

It is sometimes said that = specialization has=20 been one of the keys to the Western world's remarkable success.  We = leave=20 the question to philosophers and tinkers.  But our Dr. Baillie is a = specialist, one in archaeology and palaeoecology=20 it seems.  So we do not doubt that his Irish oaks have those tree = rings,=20 and we imagine that his training in those disciplines would define for = him the=20 parameters and limits of the reasoned conclusions that can be drawn from = those=20 tree rings alone as evidence.
 
But we suggest that it may be = wiser to demur=20 on fervid speculations regarding human and historical conditions where = there is=20 no supporting evidence at all.
 
Cheers,
CRR
------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C01ADF.126AEB40-- .