The worst year for humans on Earth is surprisingly not 2018 – BGR

If you take a look at recent events, you could imagine that scientists looking for the worst year of human existence would have trouble exceeding 2018. I mean, there are shots mass every other day (and sometimes every day), fires destroying large areas. , hurricanes erase communities of the map and a planet that is slowly dying because we can not stop messing around.

And these are just the United States. Elsewhere, there is drought, famine, disease and endless conflict.

Humans are nothing but a mess at the moment, but a new study by researchers at the University of Maine and the University of Nottingham has shown that the worst year for a human being is not 2018. We are in 536.

Two studies published in the journal antiquity, paint a disastrous picture of human life from 536 AD Then a combination of events begins to shape some of the darkest days of humanity, starting with this which is called the "dust veil event" that covers a large part of the northern hemisphere. in the volcanic ash of a massive eruption. Temperatures collapsed, crops quickly disappeared and human progress hit a brick wall.

As if that were not enough, Europe was hit by an epidemic of bubonic plague that lasted several decades. During this prolonged pandemic, it is estimated that nearly a quarter of the Earth's total human population has been eliminated. The 'Black Death' has continued to awaken for centuries, taking away huge chunks of the population.

These dramatic events, combined with readings of ice samples showing that precious metal smelting had taken a century during this period, led researchers to conclude that humanity was essentially at a standstill while She was trying to reconstitute herself.

This slowdown that has lasted for many generations meant that if you were alive in the year 536, you would probably die in a world much harder than ever before. If you were born in the years immediately following these events, you had to roll the dice and there was a good chance you would not do it.

Humans as a whole, of course, have succeeded. We have survived incredible hardships and that is why we are still here today. The Earth, on the other hand, would have perhaps preferred that this is not the case.

Source of the image: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Shutterstock