Customer Reviews

Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Within minutes of finishing this riveting, wide-ranging book, I was composing an email recommending it to several friends.

The author -- archaeologist and journalist David Keys -- posits that a single event in about 535 CE triggered between 18 months and 3+ yrs of bad weather worldwide. The first calamity to follow the catastrophe was drought in some places, massive floods in others. On the heels of terrible weather came famine worldwide and plague in the old world.

Implicated in and resulting from these, he traces massive movements of peoples in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and radical changes in government everywhere. (He reaches a bit when discussing North America, which has the thinnest archaeological and no historical evidence.)

Among -- but not limited to -- the changes he attributes to the catastrophe are these --

- the triumph of the Anglo-Saxons over the Celts

- the entrenchment of Buddhism in Japan, and Japan's unification

- new governmental structures in various SE Asian states

- the "fall" of the Roman Empire

- the rise of Islam

- the flowering of Anasazi culture

- the rise of the first pan-Peruvian empire

- the abandonment of Arianism

- the development of a Jewish state in today's southern Ukraine, leading to the separation of the Ashkenazim from the "original" Jews

A significant part of the book is spent in explanation of some of the science used in dating historic events. Keys explains dendrochronology (dating by tree rings), the development of the study of glacial ice cores, and variations in carbon isotopes over time, among other methods. His explanations are thorough but simple, never lapsing into jargon.

As an example of the breadth of his reach, here are the entries for "O" in the index (chosen because it's significantly shorter than most): Obadiah, king of Khazars; Oc Eo (Funan); Oghuz Turks; Ohio State University Institute of Polar Studies; Opone (East Africa); Osman; Ostrogoth; Ottoman Empire; Outuken Yish; Oxkintok, Teotihuacano influence in.

Despite the fact that Keys writes as a layman, for a lay audience, the book is well footnoted. Don't worry, they're at the back of the book and can be ignored by those who choose to do so. Readers who use footnotes will find dozens of topics (that would be distractions in the text) explored, or at least mentioned in the notes.

Keys also includes a several-page bibliography. I have already read several titles mentioned in the bibliography and no doubt will continue to use it as a resource.

I am bored by reviewers who go on about what a book isn't. What Catastrophe is, is a well-annotated book that's readable, nicely written, and thoroughly researched, that won't insult its readers and is likely to inspire quite a few to explore new areas of interest. Oh yes, it's entertaining too!

I must admit I opened this book with some doubts, expecting to struggle through an "Eric von Daniken" potboiler of implausible facts and theories. To his credit, Keys doesn't venture too far from the historically proven facts -- such as they are, because this is a poorly documented era -- in his quest to puzzle out just what did happen to set the cultural pot boiling so frantically in the period 540-650CE.

Trouble is, the historically verifiable facts are very thin on the ground. But if you've never pondered what sent Byzantium on its steepest nosedive, why Islam took over so much of the Middle East in so short a time, what prompted the collapse of the Celts, why several Central and South America civilizations foundered around this time, here's a theory worth considering, if 'coincidence' isn't good enough for you ... a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia, with a consequent climatic upheaval (drought, storms, plague, etc.)

Like all determinist approaches to ancient history, the theory is essentially unverifiable, but it's an entertaining book on the darkest of the dark ages, nonetheless. I'm sure academics can find much to criticize, but it seems well-researched, and is very clearly written. People will be talking about this book a lot over the next few months, so arm yourself for the inevitable debates!

Keys' aim of the book was well stated in the introduction - "to help change people's view of the past - and of the future". After reading this 300-plus-page description of fairly well documented research and speculation, I found his approach to the information novel more than anything. For the first time in history, we have the opportunity to effectively investigate and analyze collected data from the time period between 535 and 536. Keys presents us with an opportunity to view tree ring evidence, geopolitical instabilities, and geological speculation in the context of a worldwide historical framework. Moreover, he suggests that "a force of nature ultimately lay behind much of the change experienced by the world in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D." As someone outside of the field of archaeology, anthropology or geological science, I found the historical perspective that is offered unique (it's definitely the first time I've read anything about the evolution of religions, volcanology and the rise and fall of civilizations in the same book). My one critique concerning the writing style itself is that it tends to be repetitive in places, especially toward the end of chapters, and it's clear that Keys wishes to play to the historically savy audiences as much as possible, bouncing between discussions of Ashkenazi non-Cohenic Levites and non-Levite Ashkenazi Jews, which makes some passages difficult to follow (what was the point of this chapter, you'll ask yourself). There are chapters which tend to be more academic than explanatory, delving into details that could have been omitted without losing the spirit of the work. Overall, I found the book enjoyable and a good introduction into the subject. If one day more conclusive evidence surfaces from the interest generated, I applaude Mr. Keys for the effort. I think he's done the scientific community a great service and offers a new perspective on what might be considered dry history.

I enjoyed reading Catastrophe, but I took it with a large grain of salt. Keys makes a solid case that a disaster, possibly a huge volcanic eruption, happened sometime around 535 AD. The aftermath was worldwide drought, floods, famine, plague and the collapse of ancient civilizations around the world.

The book seems to be on to something (unlike the silly Chariots of the Gods and its ilk), but there are reasons to be skeptical about the author's conclusions.

First, Keys covers a great deal of ground for someone who is described on the book jacket as an "archaeology correspondent" for The Independent, a London daily paper. He makes a number of important judgments about ancient Chinese, Indonesian, American, British, European and Middle Eastern sources, as well as about geology, meteorology and even physics. His books suggests that he consulted specialists before drawing his conclusions, but I can't avoid the impression that some of his claims might be hotly disputed by experts in in the relevant field. In short, it's a little hard for the lay person to judge whether Keys has the qualifications needed to make the judgments upon which his arguments ultimately depend.

Second, Keys has a disturbing tendency to use words like "undoubtedly" and "certainly" when describing the ancient world. I've read a great deal of history, and I have learned that nothing is ever really "certain" or "undoubted," especially if we're talking about events that happened 1500 years ago. Rather, such words often reflect an author's uncouncious effort to shore up a weak argument.

Finally, Keys gets a little swept away by his thesis, constantly re-asserting that whatever happened in 535 caused (however indirectly) the birth of the modern world. Perhaps, but the same may be said of many other events that happened before and since. No need to get carried away--it's quite enough to argue that something exciting happened, that it affected a great many people and cultures, and that the world was changed in interesting (and sometimes frightening) ways.

Having said all that, I enjoyed the book, which is why I gave it four stars. It covers the world history of the early "dark ages" in a crisp and fairly readable style. The author advances and does a good job of defending an interesting theory about why many civilizations seem to have collapsed (or at least taken a turn for the worse) in the sixth century AD.

On the whole, this book reminds me of Charles Pellegrino's Unearthing Atlantis and its sequel, Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, both of which invoke a "catastrophe" (specifically, the eruption of Thera/Santorini) to explain the Atlantis legend and the events described in the Old Testament. Catastrophe is not, however, in the same league as Ryan & Pitman's Noah's Flood, which relies on what appears to me to be very rigorous science to show that the Flood legend may have its origins in the collapse of a natural dam between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

You'll probably enjoy Catastrophe, but don't be surprised if the experts (for whatever they're worth) roll their eyes when they read and write about this book.

Catastrophe, by David Keys, is an effort to attribute several significant changes in history that occurred in or near the 6th Centuary AD to drastic global weather changes, and to attribute those changes to a volcanic eruption. Keys ammasses an enormous amount of evidence to support these attributions, enough by itself to make the work impressive. However, on the whole his trail of evidence is a bit suspect.

Keys offers ample convincing evidence that the 6th century AD saw startling changes in weather. In doing so, he presents data from literally around the globe; moreover, his various sources of information seem to corroborate one another. This represents the most solid part of his argument, although he didn't tell us if he omitted evidence that didn't support his conclusions. From here, Keys proceeds to suggest what affects this weather pattern may have had on the world.

Some of these suggestions are more believable than others. His attribution of plague outbreaks to the weather patterns seems reasonable. Similarly a discussion of impacts on the Roman Empire is well argued and somewhat supported. From there, though, Keys trots about the globe presenting marginal evidence that most of the major events of the 6th Century (and some thereafter) are directly attributable to this weather pattern. In doing so, Keys includes a lot of marginal evidence and reaches for some causal relationships that are probably a lot more complicated than his book suggests. In particular, I found his version of events in the Middle East, Europe and China not so well supported.

I was a little bothered by the language and evidence of some of these chapters. Frequently, Keys uses phrases such as "almost certainly" to describe a cause-and-effect relationship, without providing any real supporting evidence. In one place, his endnote to such a comment simply repeats the "almost certainly" phrase without offering any additional information or citing a source. I think this fact really weakens the credibility of his work.

As he moves toward the end, Keys tries to pinpoint the source of the weather patterns. Toward this end, he nominates the eruption of a volcano in Java. However, in doing so, he needs to significantly re-interpret Javan historical accounts based on second and third hand sources. And while there's some limited basis for doing so, the connection is, from my point of view, far from a slam-dunk. It's easy to see that Keys left this section for the end because it's the least supported part of his chain of argument and potentially unravels the whole thesis.

On the whole, the book is an impressive projection of a lot of focused research. Sadly a lot of the evidence presented is weak in supporting Keys premise. In the end, it's easy for the reader to see that some, perhaps even a lot, of the things that Keys suggests caused major historical changes are credible. Still, a lot aren't. I give the book three stars for pulling together and presenting this information, which is in itself an impressive feat. Keys is not convincing in telling us that a volcanic eruption in 535 AD rewrote most of human history from that point on, however. Other than that, the book is interesting and fairly readable, and worth the time to take a look.

"Catastrophe" rocketed to fame as a result of a PBS series which devoted two one hour episodes to its thesis: that an eruption of what was probably a monstrous earlier version of the volcano Krakatoa created weather disruptions and tidal phenomena which wiped out many Classical civilizations, brought on LITERAL "dark ages" in many societies, and helped to create the Medieval world and lay the foundations of the modern.

The Keys theory is so widely accepted now (just five years after the publication of the book) because it is not only backed by masses of contemporary documentary evidence, but also because it explains, better than any other theory, the global decline of civilization in the 6th Century of the Common Era. In mathematical terms, it is "elegant." It is a latter-day Occam's Razor cutting through generations of theories based upon individual cultures or isolated events to show that they could all have at their heart a single event which triggered, as the title says, global "Catastrophe." (Definitely with a capital "C"!)

Keys uses Chinese records to show that a loud bang was heard over hundreds of square miles around 535, and that this was followed by a fall of yellow ash. Other records, from Japan and parts of modern Indonesia, support this occurence. Keys, after weighing and rejecting alternative theories, suggests that only a massive volcanic eruption could be the culprit for the event recorded by the Chinese, and shows, decade by decade, using historical records, dendrochronological (tree ring) records, ice samples, and other measurements, that what happened was no ordinary eruption, but possibly the largest volcanic eruption in history, which darkened skies around the world, creating a "volcanic winter" which brought famine and plague in its wake. Amazingly, he does it in plain, easy-to-read language, a hallmark of historiographic greatness.

Keys documents major climatic disruptions and uses established scientific models to project the impact of these changes on people as diverse as the Central Asian Avar and Turkish horse nomads, East African herdsmen, South American fishermen, and Anglo-Saxon and Britannic farmers in the modern British Isles. His conclusion is stunning: the eruption triggered waves of nomadic migrations which helped to bring about the decline of the recently revived Byzantine empire (which was well on its way to reconquering much of the old Roman Empire), destroyed flourishing urban cultures in the Americas, ruined the powerful Southern Arabian kingdoms which had existed for centuries (thus creating the power vacuum later filled by Mohammad's follwers), and also wrought devastation remembered in Arthurian romances.

One of the crucial contributions which Keys has made is an explanation of the otherwise unexplainable irruption of the bubonic plague out of Africa and into the Byzantine and Indian worlds. The plague -- which spread as far as Britain and permanently ended any chance that an independent Celtic Church would be established, separate from Rome -- killed millions of then and former Romaions (inhabitants of the original Roman Empire) and blasted any hopes of re-establishing the Empire, relegating it instead into an ever-dwindling Greek-centered Eastern Empire, subject to nomadic incursions from Arabia and central Asia.

In the Americas, Teotihuacan and Tikal alike suffered from near-simultaneous climatic disruption which ended their civilizations -- contemporaneously with the decline of the great cities of the Classical Eurasian world. Only the Keys Catastrophe theory explains BOTH phenomena -- the end of urban cultures in the Americas AND in Africa-Eurasia.

In east Asia, Keys blames the super-eruption for the famines whch led to the revolt of Hou Jing, which ended southern Chinese independence and led ultimately to the establishment of the Sui Dynasty and the near-continuous unification of China as a single cultural entity since then. In 535, the very year which Keys gives for the eruption, the Korean state of Silla, probably faced with climatic turmoil and famine as bad as China's, abandoned its pagan past and adopted Buddhism, laying the groundwork for the unification of THAT country, too. Again, no other theory provides a unified explanation for the near-simultaneous events.

The Keys theory is not without its weaknesses. I have particular doubts about the Indonesian chronicles which he utilizes, but which, if authentic, indicate that the Sunda Strait is a relatively modern phenomenon, and, until 535-536, Java and Sumatra formed a super-island, dominated by an unfortuante civlization (called Holotan by the Chinese). If the records Keys uses are correct, Holotan was destroyed (along with much of the island) by the super-eruption, putting it alongside Thera as a major cultural center destroyed by a single volcano. Undeniably, however, major changes took place in Southeast Asia after 535, including the establishment of Proto-Cambodia and Proto-Thailand only one generation later, along with other, more diffuse civilizations, presumably filling the gap left by the vanished Holotan.

The Keys theory will likely be subject to much criticism in the years ahead, and further refinements, but it is already so well-established as a convenient explanation for the catastrophic events of the Sixth Century C.E. that anyone who wants to understand histories of the period being written nowadays simply MUST be familiar with "Catastrophe."

I give "Catastrophe" Five Stars, the highest rating, for its historiographic significance, ease of reading, and current impact on historical thinking.

Explosive indeed. There's nothing else you can call a book that states that the origins of modern civilization can be traced to a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in AD 535 on the Island of Java, Indonesia. More accurately - civilization began in the 100 year period that followed the explosion. According to the author the eruption "blotted out much of the light and heat of the sun for 18 months and resulted, directly or indirectly, in climatic chaos, famine, migration, war and massive political change on virtually every continent". The mechanics worked something like this: blocked sunlight led to crop failures everywhere creating famines, which promted mass movement of people - migrations and invasions, which helped spread disease along with destruction. The conclusion was massive dislocation of economic, social and political structures throughout the world - plunging it into the Dark Ages. The following events are said to have some connection with the eruption: the Plague, the rise of Islam, the collapse of the Roman Empire, the demise of the great Mesoamerican cultures - Aztec, Maya , Nazca, the rise and fall of the Turkic kingdom and the Jewish empire of Khazaria and finally even the fate of England's legendary King Arthur.

With the mention of Arthur, you may be feel that you can now peg the books' publishing category - 'fantasy' or 'historical novel'. Nope, it's straight science (not fiction) - Archaeology (Keys is the archaelogical journalist for 'The Independent' in the UK), Geology, Climatology and History. Certainly there is some serious research here (ice core sampling and tree ring analysis were extensively used) and many well respected experts in their fields provided input, but it is the author's historical analysis and his overall conclusion that in the end is on shaky ground.

A lot of the history is drawn from the Javanese 'Book Of Ancient Kings' which, if I dare put it into another context - is no different that the debates which rage over the authenticity of Biblical events today. Quite simply, you either take a literal interpretation and believe what the book says or you take a more subjective view and see meanings and metaphors, some of which, through changes in time and culture, are not so easily interpreted and understood today. Keys compounds the problem. Unlike some biblical events, for which scientific evidence not only exists, but has been tested and proven, none of the theories in the book have yet been scientifically proven.

Keys does make a good case for a mammoth explosion on Java which split the Island, creating Sumatra and the intervening shallow Sunda Strait. Afterall this is the area where the later Tambora (1815) and Krakatoa (1886) explosions took place, both of which were stated as being much less powerful than the 535 explosion. The best aspects of the book are the descriptive archaeological explorations and the discussions on volcanoes and their power. Indeed the concluding section of the book will be of particular interest to those readers living in Wyoming. Science confirms it and the author says "brooding an estimated 6 miles beneath the scenic wonderland of America's Yellowstone National Park is a vast liquid time-bomb the size (in volume terms) of Lake Michigan...Made of molten rock, this ultra-hot 1652 degree Fahrenheit subterranean reservoir of volcanic magma will almost certainly one day burst forth upon the world..." Have a Nice day.

That the Earth suffered catastrophic weather conditions starting around 535AD and lasting for many years thereafter, is becoming a scientifically accepted "fact." As explained in "Catastrophe: a Quest for the Origins of the Modern World," these conditions weakened the Eastern Roman Empire; created horrendous living conditions in the western part of Great Britain that were remembered and later incorporated into the Arthurian legend; contributed through drought in the America's to the fall of the Teotihuacan civilization in Mexico; and through flooding to the collapse of a major center of civilization in Yemen.

Almost wherever in the world that there was significant use of writing in the 6th century AD, from Constantinople to China, references to this catastrophe have shown up in contemporary documents. Many such documents are cited in this book. In the 20th century, the occurrence of the catastrophe and its worldwide impact has been confirmed by the analysis of ice-cores from Greenland and Antarctica and by the study of annual growth rings in wood from across the world that can be safely dated to the 6th century.

The author of "Catastrophe," David Keys, has a theory about the event - or closely related events - that caused of this catastrophe. I found his theory plausible and frightening. Plausible because of the way he lays out his facts, and frightening because there appears to be no reason such dramatic and devastating events could not happen occur again - in the next thousand years or in the next ten years.

Mr. Keys is an excellent writer. He certainly makes this book fully accessible to the non-scientist. He also is apparently quite well informed about both the historic and archeological record from around the world during the 6th century and for a long time afterwards. In fact, most of his book consists of plausible - usually directly climate related - explanations for all kinds of civilization collapses, barbarian migrations, and shifts in economic and political power in different parts of the world following the "event" of 535AD. These explanations are fascinating, and, as just mentioned, always plausible. On the other hand, I doubt that they can all be right, and wished that author had given a little more credit to happenstance and the decisions of individuals in shaping the "origins of the modern world."

This book covers the world-wide disaster of the mid-sixth century and delineates its effect on world history over the next two hundred and fifty years. While the author's thesis is attractive and partially substantiated in regard to the initial effect, his interpretations of the course of human history seem overbroad.

The synergistic effects of plague and meterological conditions are interesting. However, a more detailed narration upon the effect of the dissolution of the societal infrastructure would have been appreciated.

Panati's EXTRAORDINARY ENDINGS OF PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING AND EVERYBODY notes the effects of the sixth century plague pandemic on Roman society in three pages and offers almost as much information as Mr. Keys does in three hundred.

While one can accept that written records are not extant, a better appreciation of the interdependencies of the infrastructure and their failings would have yielded a more "complete" work. A study of urban regional planning might have yielded clues as to what primary services failed and how such failures accelerated the demise of vibrant societies.

At a certain point, essential services such as refuse collection and water distribution might have deteriorated. The sheer volumes of death would have exhausted social services and compelled the polity into new and different paths. The survival rate of the Justinian plague was only 5%. How quickly will a society faced with such a problem exhaust itself? Such failures would have echoed into other areas of urban life, and penetrated into the surrounding environment. While one can grant that hard evidence may not exist, I think that such an analysis would bring home the disaster in a more relevant fashion to the reader.

Urban societies are technologically fragile; a study of the primary political states of the sixth century and their possible "choke points" could have offered a more "novel" approach, e.g. the Justinian plague literally destroyed many of the noble families of the late Roman Empire. At what point does it become impossible to secure competent administrators? How quickly can an advanced society fall into technical and functional obsolescence? These are the lessons that should have received additional emphasis.

Keys' data on ice core samples and tree ring analysis buttress his argument of a global disaster. However, I felt that he could have delved more deeply into the actual dissolution of the various political entities. Thus, while the book offers a global perspective of a period more often ignored, there remains room for deeper analysis.

Mr. Key's authoritative research created a unique and new approach to the writing of history. His synthesis of science, culture and history was informative and entertaining. He identifies the volcanic eruption between Sumatra and Java in 535 that led to a climatic disaster that he believes helped create the modern world. He did convince this reader that the "Dark Ages were more literal than figurative." However, many of his historical conclusions were overstated. Chapters 19-29 lacked a depth of evidence and were too speculative. His constant use of words like "undoubtedly" made the reader question if he truly beleived his entire thesis? I concluded that he was at most one third correct, but ended in disagreeing that climate changes "alone" caused the birth of the modern world. I give it 4 stars for effort, but only 3 in its totality.