【原】公元536——人类史上最惨的一年

Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." 

问过中世纪历史学家迈克.麦考米克活在哪一年最惨之后，他的答案是：“536年。”

Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. 

既不是1349年，那一年里黑死病摧毁了半个欧洲人口。

Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. 

也不是1918年，那年流感害死了五千万到一亿人口，大部分都是青年人。

But 536.

而是536年。

 In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.

历史学家和考古学家麦考密克(McCormick)说，在欧洲，“如果不是最糟糕的一年，那也是最糟糕的一年之一的开始。”他是哈佛大学人类历史科学项目的负责人。

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months.

一场神秘的大雾使欧洲、中东和亚洲部分地区陷入日夜黑暗之中，持续了18个月。

 "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. 

拜占庭历史学家普罗科匹厄斯(Procopius)写道:“因为太阳像月亮一样，一整年都只发光不发热。”在536年的夏天温度下降1.5°C到2.5°C,开始了在过去的2300年里最冷的十年。

Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. 

那年夏天中国下雪了;作物歉收;人们陷入饥荒。

The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." 

爱尔兰编年史记载:“公元536年到539年期间，面包歉收。”

Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

然后，在541年，黑死病袭击了罗马港口佩鲁西姆，在埃及。后来被称为查士丁尼的瘟疫迅速蔓延，东罗马帝国三分之一到一半的人口被消灭，加速了帝国的崩溃，麦考密克说。

Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. 

历史学家早就知道，在过去被称为“黑暗时代”(dark Ages)的时期，六世纪中叶是一个黑暗的时期，但神秘云雾的来源一直是个谜。

Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit.

现在，由麦考密克和缅因州大学气候变化研究所的冰川学家保罗·梅耶夫斯基领导的研究小组对来自瑞士冰川的冰进行了超精确的分析，发现了罪魁祸首。

 At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. 

本周在哈佛大学的一个研讨会上，研究小组报告说，536年早期，冰岛一次灾难性的火山喷发将火山灰散布到了了整个北半球大气层中。

Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. 

随后在540年和547年又发生了两次大规模火山喷发。

The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.

持续不断的喷发，接着是瘟疫，使欧洲陷入了经济停滞，一直持续到640年，当另一个信号——空中铅含量的激增——标志着银矿开采的复兴，正如研究小组本周在《古物》杂志上报道的那样。

To Kyle Harper, provost and a medieval and Roman historian at The University of Oklahoma in Norman, the detailed log of natural disasters and human pollution frozen into the ice "give us a new kind of record for understanding the concatenation of human and natural causes that led to the fall of the Roman Empire—and the earliest stirrings of this new medieval economy."

在凯勒.哈珀看来，他是位于诺曼的俄克拉荷马州立大学的教务长，也是中世纪和罗马历史学家，自然灾害和人类的污染的详细记录冻结在了冰层中，“给了我们一种新的记载，去理解人与自然的联系以及导致罗马帝国陨落—以及新的中世纪经济萌芽的原因所在。”

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