Major eruptions can deliver climatic ‘shocks’ often linked to famine, disease, and conflict. It is possible indeed to treat historical eruptions that induced sudden climatic changes as potential ‘revelatory crises’ that tested the resilience and vulnerability of societies, exposing political, economic and ideological tensions and fault-lines that might otherwise have remained latent or hidden to us. With advances in ice-core science improving the dating of past eruptions, which are discernible in annual layers of polar ice when elevated sulphate levels are detected, and with advanced Earth System modelling recreating post-volcanic climate effects with ever greater detail, it has become possible to identify and extract insights from previously unrecognized co-occurrences between eruptions and periods of societal stress in the first millennium BCE.
Cite this article:
Kostick, Conor, Andrew Hill, Rhonda McGovern, Selga Medenieks, Zhen Yang, and Francis Ludlow. “Vulkaanuitbarstingen in de oudheid: reacties op plotselinge klimaatschommelingen in de eerste acht eeuwen voor Christus [Volcanic Eruptions in Antiquity: Responses to Sudden Climatic Variability in the First Eight Centuries BCE].” Phoenix 69 (2023): 6-27.
