Run away from death. Seven Fascinating Ancient Disasters That Changed Our World

After Ancient Origins studies the history of our planet, you’ll realize that life on Earth has been on the verge of extinction hundreds of times – surprising that in some places humanity even managed to survive into the 20th century, writes Ancient Origins.

Chicxulub crater and mass extinction

Maybe we should start with a catastrophe that literally changed everything on Earth – the fall of an asteroid and mass extinction. Traces of this ancient catastrophe are found in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, a massive 80km wide and 20km deep Chicxulub crater that struck Earth about 66 million years ago.

Researchers believe the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and others was about 10 kilometers in diameter. If it seems to you that it’s not that big of an asteroid, think about how fast it was moving and colliding with our planet – that was with the power of more than a billion atomic bombs. Scientists believe that at that moment shock waves were felt on the entire surface of the planet.

Millions of tons of ash, gas, and debris filled the atmosphere, blocking out the sun, and winds at over 900 kilometers per hour smashed everything in its path. Scientists believe that the eruption was followed by a global cooling, meteorite fragments dispersed to Earth and caused massive forest fires because they were so hot.

As a result, 75% of all life was wiped from the face of the Earth.

North Sea Tsunami

Until about 8,000 years ago, there were islands known as Doggerland between northern Scotland, Denmark, and the Channel Islands. It became a haven for various Mesolithic tribes and has been described as the prehistoric Garden of Eden.

Research shows that about 20,000 years ago, the release of oxen from the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America caused sea levels to rise – it is believed to have jumped about 60 centimeters. As a result, Doggerland was flooded, leaving only a few separate islands from it.

People still lived on these islands, and all was well until a massive landslide occurred near modern Norway that threw nearly 3,000 cubic kilometers of land into the water. This caused a large-scale tsunami that destroyed the remnants of the islands along with all their inhabitants. Scientists believe that the scale of the tsunami at that time could be compared to the height of the wave that devastated parts of Japan in 2011.

Damgan earthquake

On December 22, 856, a powerful 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck the territory of modern Iran. Researchers believe the epicenter of the quake was below the then capital city of Damgan, and the quake itself spread to a record 320 kilometers.

The reason for this is known to be the Alpine seismic belt, an essentially geological force that once helped form the Alpine mountain range and is considered one of the world’s most seismically active regions.

Then a terrible earthquake took the lives of about 200,000 people and became the fifth largest earthquake in history. Researchers believe that this disaster badly battered not only Damgan, but also the cities of Ahevan, Astana, Tash, Bastam and Shahrud.

Scientists also discovered that the earthquake destroyed the canal and spring system, and landslides blocked the streams – as a result, those who did not die died immediately due to lack of water.

Antonine plague

Between 165 and 180 BC, the Roman Empire was struck by a terrible plague named the Antonine Plague after one of its victims, Marcus Aurelius Antony. It is also called the plague of Galen, after the Greek doctor who first documented the disease.

Researchers analyzed Galen’s work and concluded that plague was caused by a particularly dangerous strain of smallpox and measles. It is assumed that Roman soldiers brought the disease to the country when they returned home from wars in the East.

It is known that the plague spread rapidly throughout the territory of the Roman Empire and even beyond – some tribes in the north suffered. Researchers believe that the Antonine plague cost the lives of about 5 million people. For example, according to the records of the historian Dio Cassius, about 2,000 people died a day in Rome alone. Scientists have calculated that the death rate from this plague is about 25% – that is, one in four infected people died.

Vesuvius eruption

This is perhaps one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in human history. In 79 AD, Vesuvius has even been known to give “warning signs” to locals, which they sadly ignore. As a result, a deadly cloud of superheated gas was thrown into the sky, rising 33 kilometers – molten stones, pumice and hot ash fell from the sky, and hot currents rushed down, sweeping everything in their path.

Two cities lurking in the shadow of Vesuvius: Pompeii just 8 kilometers away and Herculaneum even closer. As a result, the inhabitants of these two cities were suffocated by ash, burned to death, or suffocated by debris and cooling lava. It is known that the total population of both cities is about 20 thousand people – until now, scientists do not know how many people died as a result of the eruption of Vesuvius, but the remains of about 1.5 thousand people were found in the crash. site in every city.

For centuries, Pompeii was forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1631 AD following another eruption in the area. And only in the 20th century, during excavations, scientists were able to study the scale of the eruption of Vesuvius. Because the lava moved so quickly, it literally buried the victims’ bodies, which decayed over time but left gaps. As a result, scientists filled these voids with plaster and were able to obtain gruesome statues of the victims of the eruption of Vesuvius.

Plague of Justinian

This plague struck the Eastern Roman Empire from AD 51 to 549. It was so large in scale that it spanned the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Middle East, including the Sassanid and Byzantine empires, and Constantinople was at the epicenter of the Justinian Plague.

This plague was named after the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, who was in power at that time. Historians believe that the emperor was one of the few who managed to survive after contracting this plague.

Researchers believe the plague wiped out one-fifth of the population of Constantinople, where it moved to Roman Egypt in 541 AD and persisted in Europe until 549. The exact number of deaths from the Plague of Justinian is unknown, but it is estimated that around 5,000 people died daily in Constantinople. Researchers also believe this plague was caused by the same bacterium that caused the bubonic plague in 1347-1351.

Wars of the Three Kingdoms

This historical period covers 220-280 years. AD This period is known as the Three Kingdoms – China was later divided into three dynastic states, Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. This period is believed to be one of the bloodiest periods in human history.

During this period, hostilities in the region almost did not stop, and the losses were huge:

• Qin unification wars – about 2 million people died;
• Yellow Turban Rebellion – Between 3 and 7 million people died;
• A huge war involving an army of more than 500 thousand people.

According to the census-based calculations of historians, the difference between the data at the beginning of this period and the data at the end is about 40 million people. But scientists tend to think that about 12 million people actually died during the wars. However, they explain that such a demographic decline could be due to several factors at once:

• hostilities;
• hunger;
• epidemics.

Previously Focus He wrote about 13 horrific findings uncovered by the drought – hungry rocks, dinosaur footprints and the horrors of Lake Mead in the Czech Republic.