Catastrophic Event Preceded Dark Ages

L O N D O N, Sept. 8 -- Something catastrophic occurred on Earth 1,500 years ago that may have led to the Dark Ages andcoincided with the end of the Roman Empire and the death of King Arthur, a Northern Irish scientist said today.

It could have been a bombardment of cometary debris or theeruption of a super volcano.

But whatever it was, it is clearly etched in the chronologyof tree rings from around the world, according to ProfessorMike Baillie of Queen’s University in Belfast.

Written in Trees, Not Books

The global environmental event that occurred around A.D. 540 is not recorded in any history books. But the tree ringchronologies compiled from samples of trees, some preserved inbogs, which date back thousands of years, single out somethingthat was quite extraordinary.

“It was a catastrophic environmental downturn that shows upin trees all over the world,” Baillie told a news conference atthe British Association for the Advancement of Scienceconference. “This event is clear in the tree ring records.”

The height of a tree is indicative of the quality of soilit is growing in but the rings hold clues about past climateconditions and have been used to date events in the past.

They correctly recorded the year without a summer in theNorth American region in 1816 and the eruption of variousvolcanoes around the world.

Baillie believes the slowdown of tree growth recorded inthe rings around A.D. 540 was due to a bombardment of cometarydebris which happened around the time of King Arthur’s death,the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the DarkAges.

Sky on Fire

Traditional myths recorded in 13th-century texts refer to acomet in Gaul around A.D. 540, when the sky seemed to be on fire,according to Baillie.

“These myths hint strongly at a bombardment vector for theenvironmental downturn but are almost universally dismissed asfiction or fantasy by academics,” he said.

Baillie is appealing to historians to accept that somethingterrible happened around 540 and to find a record of it.