What does the high value at the right of the x-axis indicate?

I've encountered the reevaluation and I find it initially very unconvincing. For one thing, I'm pretty sure that there was a population decrease and a decrease in trade after about 550 AD which only gradually was recouped by about 800. (Those aren't exact dates at all). The Gothic, Frankish and Lombard kingdoms did claim to be heirs of Rome, and they did try, but they didn't do a very good job of it.

It's hard to exaggerate the poverty of the literature 600-800 AD. I spent awhile looking at it in translation, and it's almost all chronicles of a very crude sort, law codes, and very unoriginal encyclopediac summaries of past scholarship. Part of the problem may be that the Germanic literature was later destroyed by monks; "Beowulf" is the sole long survivor of what presumably had been an extensive body of work. (Charlemagne supposedly took steps to preserve the old Frankish songs, but nothing survived of that.)

One oddity is that in Ireland, outside both the German and Roman rule, literature seems to have flourished.

What does the high value at the right of the x-axis indicate?

From what I could gather from the article, it's from the lower depths of the glaciers picking up minerals as they churned up the earth's crust, which gives an idea of how much lead is being thrown into the atmosphere in recent years that it rivals those concentrations.

Also, it looks to me like what's labeled 1800 is actually 1900. - 1800 looks like it's one tick mark to the right. the big dip after the peak ~1900 is kind of odd, but I assume it's from WWI followed by the great depression, and then it picks up with a vengeance after WWII. There's also a dip after 1800 - French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars - the Dalton Minimum?

Earlier, you can see the rise from the depths of the Dark Ages peaking around 1300 then staying flat for 100 years - presumably the black death? I'm sure I'm reading too much into it, but it's a fun little graph.

John J, I had a rotten experience early last year which you might identify with...

I was looking for a reference to a climate event mentioned in a Maronite Chronicle (Palmer, West Syrian Chronicles). I figured that something which brought snow upon Syria would have effects elsewhere, so I also dug up the Liber Pontificalis, which has entries written about that time. It mentioned floods. A-ha, I thought, I'm onto something... and there's more odd weather mentioned in the Irish annals, and a plague by Saint Bede and some Frankish saints. I went after the Liber historiae francorum while I was at it. Also there might be references in Theophilus and Jacob of Edessa, if they could be extracted from the documents which quote from them...

And then I read Palmer (and Hoyland) again... turns out that the Maronite Chronicle played deliberately loose with its chronology, in order to attack Caliph Mu`awiya as an enemy of God. It did stuff like reassign an earthquake to Mu`awiya's accession. So at least one Syrian chronicle at the time wasn't even a real chronicle; just religious / political propaganda dressed up as a chronicle. The same is true of the Liber historiae francorum - it makes a complete hash of the reigns of Clovis II and Chlothar III, not even getting their length of reign right.

It gets worse: Bede was writing a generation or two after the 660s, and the Irish annals are a complete mess - surviving from badly-copied copies scattered around the Emerald Isle and often interpolated. Besides the Irish annals mostly record a depressing litany of plague and regicide during the 600s. Even Ireland didn't get civil until the 700s, I'd say.

After a few months going nuts trying to recalibrate the Irish annals and looking for climate records in, say, Greenland - I cleared my head one day and said to myself, "screw it - these are the DARK AGES". I can no longer listen to someone who uses the term "late antiquity" without rolling my eyes. We're dealing with a time in which few honest men dared write of what they saw, unless they were in the Church, and many churchmen were the least honest of all.

yeah, 1800 is badly labeled.

I think you're shortchanging the Sassanian empire. While there were some local blips in central Asia, the Sassanians did control most of the area until ca. 600 or a little later. See the map at The Geography of Persia Through History. I wrote about their empire on my blog, with a more detailed map, in Why the Romans Always Seem to Get in First Licks and several posts under "Sassanian Stuff".

I think you also underestimate the despair of the Roman educated classes from the late 3rd-Century AD onwards. They knew that their world was ending. You can follow the shift from Roman order to Christian-Catholic identity in the letters of Bishop Sidonius Apollinaris at the time of the Gothic conquest of Gaul in the late 5th-C. This shift does mark, imo, the end of antiquity....

See the map at The Geography of Persia Through History.

is that map accurate? it shows the sassanids as far south as gujarat?!?! your map also shows them as far east as the doab in india. i don't know whether the sassanids had more or less control over transoxiana. can you think of a way to quantify it? on the one hand, the caliphate had more resources to throw at the problem. on the other hand, aside from a short period after harun al-rashid the empire was always centered far from this region.

I think you also underestimate the despair of the Roman educated classes from the late 3rd-Century AD onwards. They knew that their world was ending.

hm. well, the extensive letters of symmachus from the late 4th century suggest a pretty stable and self-satisfied order. peter heather's argument in the fall of rome is that the romans recovered in the 4th century and didn't know what hit them in the 5th (in the west).

I see what you mean about the The detailed map that I published on my site is probably the most accurate reflection of current scholarly thinking. It's taken from the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies.

I don't get the feeling that Symmachus was describing a happy or self-satisfied world in his Memorial, but rather tells of disasters in the provinces, and blames 'all the misfortunes of the Roman race' on the closing of the pagan shrines.

I wonder how much of the 4th C 'recovery' is, in fact, based on the Christians -- now recognized and in power -- writing in praise of the emperors. We don't see stability, for example, in the currency. After Diocletian's reforms, which attempted to halt the Great Inflation, the new silver-clad nummus as well as the copper coinage went on being debased during most of the 4th C.

Apoligies for poor proofreading. The first sentence should read, "I see what you mean about the maps but the detailed map that I published ....

I see what you mean about the The detailed map that I published on my site is probably the most accurate reflection of current scholarly thinking. It's taken from the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies.

well, my reading of indian history does not suggest sassanid power further than sindh or punjab.


I don't get the feeling that Symmachus was describing a happy or self-satisfied world in his Memorial, but rather tells of disasters in the provinces, and blames 'all the misfortunes of the Roman race' on the closing of the pagan shrines.

right. the memorial though is one of the few points in symmachus' correspondence where he touches on the real world. most of the rest of the extant letters suggest a typical roman aristocrat living a life of leisure, friendship, personal cultivation and public acclamation.



I wonder how much of the 4th C 'recovery' is, in fact, based on the Christians -- now recognized and in power -- writing in praise of the emperors. We don't see stability, for example, in the currency. After Diocletian's reforms, which attempted to halt the Great Inflation, the new silver-clad nummus as well as the copper coinage went on being debased during most of the 4th C.

point taken. i think bryan ward-perkins and peter ward make the case that the 4th century system was simply the 2nd century system under stress and reorganized. it might have been under qualitative decline, but the rate of change in the 6th century was simply far greater than any between 300-500. additionally, the mid 3rd century would be another period of decline.

Sorry, but I can't see the 4th C simply as a reorganized 2nd. It feels different: more fear, more poverty, and, definitely, a new kind of frozen rhetoric.

Wouldn't it be fun if we could fine tune your lead smelting index against my currency devaluation chart? Hmmmm.

David Ross, you write: "So at least one Syrian chronicle at the time wasn't even a real chronicle; just religious / political propaganda dressed up as a chronicle." This is the nature of the sources, you know; what makes people write is having a point to make. You seem here to equate attempted impartiality with civilisation, but almost all of the biographies of the Roman emperors that we have are somewhere between tabloid scuttlebutt and high political propaganda. I'm not sure when this stops the other side of the Dark ages either; could you suggest an example of a `real chronicle' which doesn't have a propaganda purpose?