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Published online 11 March 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.665
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They really were the Dark Ages
A massive volcanic eruption brought gloom to the post-Roman world.
An enormous volcanic eruption in the sixth century seems to have triggered catastrophic global cooling, perhaps precipitating famine, cultural conflict and plague across the planet.
The theory offers an explanation for why historical records from the period make references to dimmer skies and a cooler climate.
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It interesting that a candidate volcano has not yet been located. Like meteorite impacts, the Earth covers its scars quickly. Since 2000 I have been documenting research on volcano and meteorite (microplanet) extinction events at: http://tinyurl.com/2tyoq5
This is also time when a number of Slavic tribes moved towards the Southern Europe, forced by the shortages of food. On the way they had to fight much stronger local populations of Germanic tribes, Avars and many others eventually reaching the Adriatic Sea. They were ancestors of people we know today as Serbs and Croats.
There is an episode of Secrets of the Dead aired in 2001 in the UK that discussed this theory. Called Catastrophe, the two-part doc presents this very compelling theory well - I highly recommend it. I believe they are aired on PBS. "Episode Description SECRETS OF THE DEAD Catastrophe! For many years, humans forgot their glorious past and huddled in a state of ignorance and fear. Scientists have uncovered evidence from around the world that the early Dark Ages may have been triggered by an actual event that occurred around 535 A.D. Science writer David Keys believes that the cause was a natural phenomenon of cataclysmic proportions. Determined to discover the exact nature of this natural catastrophe, and to understand its political, economic and social repercussions, he embarks on a scientific odyssey that ranges from Greenland to the Antarctica, and from the Americas to the Far East. At the center of a stunningly complex chain of events seems to be "a loud bang," according to Keys, a volcanic explosion equal to "two thousand million Hiroshima size bombs." The subsequent environmental calamity, he believes, affected human civilization from Mongolia to Constantinople, precipitating plague, famine, death, great migration, the fall of the great Mexican city of Teotihuacan, the Anglo-Saxon victory over the Celts, and may even have played a role in the rise of Islam."