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Sacha Dobler AbruptEarthChanges.com Black Death and Abrupt Earth Changes in the 14th century 1290-1350: Abrupt Earth changes, astronomical, tectonic and meteorological events leading up to and culminating at the Black Death period at 1348 By Sacha Dobler 2017 © abruptearthchanges.com Fig. 1 14th Century engraving of the Black Death, depicting extreme lightning? Or fire from the sky devastating a town, a victim of plague? with spots distributed over the entire body. Image: http://www.historytoday.com 1 - (In the years before the Black Death in Europe), ”between Cathay and Persia there rained a vast rain of fire, falling in flakes like snow and burning up mountains and plains and other lands, with men and women; and then arose vast masses of smoke; and whoever beheld this died within the space of half an hour; and likewise any man or woman who looked upon those who had seen this(..)”.1 --Philip Ziegler writing about the years before the out break of the Black Death “The middle of the fourteenth century was a period of extraordinary terror and disaster to Europe. Numerous portents, which sadly frightened the people, were followed by a pestilence which threatened to turn the continent into an unpeopled wilderness. For year after year there were signs in the sky, on the earth, in the air, all indicative, as men thought, of some terrible coming event. In 1337 a great comet appeared in the heavens, its far- extending tail sowing deep dread in the minds of the ignorant masses. During the three succeeding years the land was visited by enormous flying armies of locusts, which descended in myriads upon the fields, and left the shadow of famine in their track. In 1348 came an earthquake of such frightful violence that many men deemed the end of the world to be presaged. Its devastations were widely spread. Cyprus, Greece, and Italy were terribly visited, and it extended through the Alpine valleys as far as Basle. Mountains sank into the earth. In Carinthia thirty villages and the tower of Villach were ruined. The air grew thick and stifling. There were dense and frightful fogs. Wine fermented in the casks. Fiery meteors appeared in the skies. A gigantic pillar of flame was seen by hundreds descending upon the roof of the pope’s palace at Avignon. In 1356 came another earthquake, which destroyed almost the whole of Basle. What with famine, flood, fog, locust swarms, earthquakes, and the like, it is not surprising that many men deemed the cup of the world’s sins to be full, and the end of the kingdom of man to be at hand.” 2 --Morris, C,1893: Historical Table Index: Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4 1 1300- 1350, the decades preceding the Black Death ....................................................... 7 1.1.1 The onset of the Little Ice Age ......................................................................................... 7 1.1.2 End of the Medieval Climate Optimum ........................................................................... 8 1.2 The Great Famine 1315-1320 ............................................................................................ 8 1.2.1 Death toll of the 1300-1350 crisis ................................................................................... 9 1.2.2 Two comets, famine and deluge ................................................................................... 10 1.2.3 1315 wars ...................................................................................................................... 11 1.2.4 Arrows ........................................................................................................................... 13 2 Culminating Earth changes in the 1340s ........................................................................ 14 2.1.1 Flaws in the germ theory: .............................................................................................. 20 2.1.2 Comets in the 1340s ...................................................................................................... 21 3 Climate havoc and War ................................................................................................... 24 3.1.1 Beginning of the Hundred Years' War (1337–1360) ...................................................... 24 3.1.2 Climate variability from 1342 – 1347 and the expansion of Alpine Glacier. ................. 27 1 Ziegler, Philip, 1998: The Black Death, Faber Finds 2 Morris, C,1893: Historical Table: The Romance of Reality; Lippincott p. 162f 2 Black Death and abrupt Earth Changes in the 14th Century 4 Earthquakes in diverse places ........................................................................................ 28 4.1.1 The earthquake of Friuli, 25th of January 1348 (also Villach Earthquake) ..................... 28 4.1.2 Nepal Earthquake of 1344 ............................................................................................. 30 4.2 Lightning and plague ...................................................................................................... 30 4.2.1 Poisonous odors and fires ............................................................................................. 33 4.2.2 Hecker on poisonous odors after earthquakes ............................................................. 34 4.2.3 Renewal of life? ............................................................................................................. 34 4.2.4 Philip Ziegler and natural disasters before the plague .................................................. 36 4.2.5 Meteors/ comet activity and volcanoes? ...................................................................... 38 4.2.6 Konrad von Megenberg on ‘miracles’ during the earthquake and Black Death ............ 38 5 Geological and physical evidence of extreme Earth changes ......................................... 39 5.1.1 Extreme summer temperature- and precipitation-conditions ...................................... 39 5.1.2 Tree rings and environmental disruption ...................................................................... 40 5.1.3 Bio mass burning ........................................................................................................... 41 5.1.4 Freeze cores in the southern German Maars. ............................................................... 41 5.1.5 A spike in atmospheric CO2 concentration in the preceding century ........................... 44 5.1.6 Low sun spot activity, Wolf Minimum ........................................................................... 45 5.1.7 Volcanic sulfate aerosols during the late 13th century .................................................. 47 5.1.8 Summary of Chapter 6 ................................................................................................... 49 5.1.9 More meteors in low solar activity ................................................................................ 50 6 Foul odors ....................................................................................................................... 52 6.1.1 Jews accused of poisoning the wells ............................................................................. 52 6.2 Contemporary analyses .................................................................................................. 55 6.2.1 Toxins in the air? ........................................................................................................... 56 6.2.2 Konrad von Megenberg about foul air .......................................................................... 57 6.2.3 Toxins from the ground: A comparison to Africa 1986 ................................................. 62 6.2.4 Comets and foul odor .................................................................................................... 63 6.3 Problems with transmission models For an inFectious agent. .......................................... 63 6.3.1 Descriptions of symptoms of the 1348 crisis ................................................................. 64 6.3.2 Nitric acid and nitrates (MINO3) ................................................................................... 68 6.3.3 A comparison: Peru meteorite and toxins ..................................................................... 69 7 Earth changes around the world ..................................................................................... 70 7.1.1 Americas ........................................................................................................................ 70 8 After 1350 ........................................................................................................................ 72 8.1.1 Increase in sea storminess beginning around 1400 ...................................................... 73 8.1.2 Rapid mummification .................................................................................................... 74 9 Abrupt Earth changes and human behavior (madness, cruelty…) ................................. 76 9.1 Cannons and Fire From the sky. ....................................................................................... 76 9.2 Madness, misery and energetic environment ................................................................. 81 9.2.1 Natural changes affecting human behavior .................................................................. 85 9.2.2 Aurorae .........................................................................................................................