Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World (47 page)

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Authors: David Keys

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BOOK: Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World
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CHAPTER 17
 
  1. From
    The History of the Franks,
    by Gregory of Tours, translated by Lewis Thorpe and published by Penguin, 1974.
  2. See Chapter 2.
  3. See Chapters 13 and 19, respectively.
 
CHAPTER 18
 
  1. The Romans had long referred to the Iberian Peninsula as a whole as Hispania, but that had been a purely geographical term. This is the first time that a name derived from it is given to a Roman political unit.
  2. The Suevic kingdom had been Arian for some eighty years, having converted to that heresy from Catholicism in the 470s.
  3. Reccopolis, now just ruins, is located near the village of Zorita de Los Canes, thirty miles southeast of Guadalajara.
  4. Victoriacum has never been located by archaeologists, but it was situated in northern Spain near the border with the Basque country.
  5. Often referred to as Hispano-Romans.
  6. An alternative account of Hermenegild’s career maintains that he converted to Catholicism only after he had revolted against his father, and that his reason for converting was to more easily obtain Roman imperial military backing. Whichever sequence of events is correct, the conversion illustrates the catalytic impact of the Roman conquest of Spain’s far south.
  7. Quoted in
    The Goths in Spain,
    by E. A. Thompson, Oxford University Press, 1969.
  8. It is known from historical sources that Spain was hit by the plague at least three times—in 542/543 (according to the
    Chronicle of Saragossa
    ) and in 580 and 588 (according to
    The History of the Franks,
    by Gregory of Tours).
 
CHAPTER 19
 
  1. The
    Bei shi
    actually says that the edict was issued in the “third month” of the Chinese calendar for the year 535, which in Western terms corresponded to 18 April to 17 May.
  2. From the
    Bei shi.
  3. The Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty.
  4. There had been peasant revolts before, but with the climatic chaos and famines of the mid–sixth century, the frequency and scale of them seems to have increased.
  5. From
    The Lament for the South
    by Yu Xin, translated by William T. Graham and published by Cambridge University Press, 1980.
  6. Emperor Jianwen, which translated means, literally, “the frugal and cultured one.”
  7. Undoubtedly both north and south China suffered terribly from the climatic problems of the mid–sixth century. But politically, the disaster harmed the south much more than the north. In 534 (the year before the climatic chaos started), the north Chinese state (united for the previous ninety-four years) split into rival western and eastern halves. In keeping with previous northern tradition, both northern states (northwest and northeast) developed highly centralized administrative systems despite the climatic problems. This was much easier to achieve in the north than in the south for two reasons. First, the northern economy and social system was much less complex than its southern counterpart and could be centralized more easily. And second, the northern ruling dynasties were non-Chinese—Mongolian—in origin and derived their political power from soldiers drawn from a military caste (of Mongolian origin) that was not dependent on agriculture or tax-derived pay. By contrast, the southern state had to depend on mercenary troops who had a comparatively lowly social status and who had to be paid out of tax-derived revenues. In the north, centralized government was developed by introducing innovations in famine relief, tax collection, land reform, and the securing of military loyalty. Then, in 577, the northwest Chinese state conquered its northeast rival, thus forming a united northern Chinese empire that was soon to invade and conquer the south, whose more complex economy and society had been much more vulnerable to dislocation during the climatic chaos of the mid–sixth century.
 
CHAPTER 20
 
  1. Condensed adaptation of the lengthy, twenty-point letter of accusation written by the emperor of northern China to his southern opposite number.
  2. The details of the military campaign are from the Sui Dynasty annals, the
    Sui shu.
  3. Lake Tai.
  4. The
    Sui shu.
  5. Quoted in
    The Sui Dynasty,
    by Arthur Wright, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1978.
 
CHAPTER 21
 
  1. The
    Samguk sagi,
    or
    The Histories of the Three Kingdoms,
    compiled in the mid–twelfth century
    A
    .
    D
    . and based on now mainly lost sources.
  2. For more detail on Japan, see Chapter 22.
  3. 535 is the date proposed by the prominent Korean historian Ki-Baik Lee in his
    New History of Korea,
    page 59.
 
CHAPTER 22
 
  1. From page 34 of the
    Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to
    A
    .
    D
    .
    697,
    translated into English by W. G. Aston, and published by Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont.
  2. Also sometimes called the
    Nihongi.
    The
    Nihon shoki
    was compiled in the eighth century, based on records that are now-lost and which even then were probably incomplete. The words may be being put into the mouth of the king by the eighth-century compilers, or they may be “borrowed” from now-lost Chinese texts referring to events in China, or they may be a genuine approximation of what was said. However, because of the date, the adjacent events, and the virtual certainty that Japan was hit by drought and famine along with China, Korea, and other regions in the mid-530s, the 536
    Nihon
    shoki
    entry should be seen, at the very least, as reflecting an all-too-real event in Japan at that time in which nothing could “cure hunger” and where people really were “starving of cold.” The
    Nihon shoki
    for this early period is often regarded as being of doubtful historical value, but the apparent accuracy of the 536 “starving of cold” entry increases, by implication, the historical credibility of the other mid-sixth-century entries.
  3. The year 538 is the most likely date for the mission and the resultant introduction of Buddhism to Japan. It is the date given in three key sources:
    Hoo
    teisets
    ; a temple manuscript called
    The Daianji Shinjo Daitoku ki,
    written in the first half of the eighth century; and an early-ninth-century memorial document. The only source that disagrees is the
    Nihon shoki,
    which gives a date of 552—possibly because, in the Japanese and Chinese sexagenary cycle, 552 was the 1,500th “anniversary” of the Parinirvana of the Buddha, an anniversary that people believed would usher in a new Buddhist era. It would therefore have been appropriate and propitious from a Buddhist religious perspective for the early-eighth-century authors of the
    Nihon shoki
    to choose 552 as the date for the arrival of Buddhism in Japan. The best analysis of this dating issue—a study that indeed supports the 538 date and to which I am indebted—is by Stanley Weinstein, Yale University Seminar Paper 2, Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion, 1991.
  4. Buddhism was a key issue—but it was probably symbolic of a much wider area of disagreement and conflict, including perhaps access to trade, resources, and power, and the preservation of tradition.
  5. Major smallpox epidemics often occur every thirty to fifty years with smaller outbreaks in between, as the size of an outbreak depends on the percentage of the population that has not experienced it before.
  6. From the
    Nihon shoki.
  7. This murder is described in the
    Nihon shoki,
    volume 2, xxi, 5 and 6.
  8. This was in fact a very rare event, for women seldom sat on the Japanese throne.
 
CHAPTER 23
 
  1. Much of the survey data was published in
    The Basin of Mexico,
    by W. Sanders, J. Parsons, and R. Santley, Academic Press, 1979.
  2. There is some academic debate as to whether Quetzalcoatl was a full-fledged deity or simply a divine symbol of fertility, immortality, wealth, and power.
  3. Quoted on page 90 of
    Mexico,
    by Michael Coe, Thames and Hudson, 1962.
  4. Article by Curtis et al. in the journal
    Quaternary Research,
    volume 46, pages 37–47.
  5. Article by Hodell et al. in
    Nature,
    volume 375, 1995, pages 391–394.
  6. The new Rio-Cisne data has been gathered over the past two years by the tree-ring laboratory in Mendoza, Argentina. The Lenca material was published by A. Lara and R. Villalba in an article on pages 1104–1106 of volume 260 of
    Science.
  7. Now renamed the Byrd Polar Research Center.
  8. Bulletin of the Gold Museum,
    Bogotá, 1988, article by Plazas et al.
  9. Erdkunde,
    volume 46, 1992, pages 252–256, article by T. Van der Hamman and A. M. Cleef.
  10. Academics have redated the end of Teotihuacan as a result of recent ceramic studies, supported by some radiocarbon dates (usually plus or minus 50 years or so), and to a much lesser extent by some dates produced by an even less exact system known as obsidian hydration dating. The evidence for the carbon 14 and obsidian hydration dates is published in the journal
    Ancient
    Mesoamerica
    (number 7, autumn, 1996) in an article by Linda Manzanilla, Claudia Lopez, and AnnCorinne Freter titled “Dating Results from Excavations in Quarry Tunnels behind the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan.” An American pre-Columbianist, George Cowgill, published data that suggests that the fall of Teotihuacan took place around 600, give or take several decades. The key information is in a chronological chart in an article in
    The Annual Review of Anthropology,
    1997.
  11. Several dozen different hieroglyphic symbols have been discovered so far at Teotihuacan, but up till now, none of these have ever been found strung together to make sentences. Three is the maximum that have been discovered in a group. The glyphs are always related to religious matters and very briefly describe the qualities of deities or the nature of a particular ritual.
  12. The data obtained from these 150 skeletons is published in Rebecca Storey’s
    Life and Death in the Ancient City of Teotihuacan,
    published by the University of Alabama Press, 1992.
  13. This was first proposed by Rene Millon in “The Last Years of Teotihuacan,” a chapter in
    The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilisations,
    edited by Norman Yoffe and George Cowgill, 1988. It has by far the best description (to which I am indebted) of the violent end of Teotihuacan. However, although the fall of Teotihuacan was a predominantly drought- and famine-driven internal affair, other peoples in climatically vulnerable parts of Mesoamerica were of course also affected by the drought. Among these other peoples was almost certainly a group of nomads referred to by archaeologists as the Coyatlatelco. They lived in the region 50–100 miles to the north of Teotihuacan and migrated toward the great city, probably as a result of the drought. Although they were not responsible for the fall of Teotihuacan, their presence in the Teotihuacan area no doubt complicated the political and cultural situation and helped in destabilizing the status quo.
  14. The excavations were carried out in 1980–82 by the Mexican archaeologists Anna Maria Jaraquin and Enrique Martinez.
  15. At Coatlinchan, near the city of Texcoco.
  16. The idol now stands in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
 
CHAPTER 24
 
  1. Sky Witness is the name given to the ruler of Calakmul by modern scholars, because his name features the Maya glyphs for “sky” and “eye.” Back in the sixth century he may well therefore have been called something like “Sky Eye” or “Watcher of the Sky.” Animal Skull is the name given by modern scholars to the puppet ruler Sky Witness put on the throne in Tikal. The hieroglyphic signs making up his name have been only partially translated. One translates as “Great Sun,” while the other consists of the head of a reptile. His real name may well therefore have been something like “Great Sun Reptile Head.”
  2. Double Bird is the name awarded this ruler by modern scholars. Much of his real name is unknown, because the glyph comprising its second part is damaged. However, his name appears to have begun with the words “Great Sun.”
  3. For guidance regarding Maya dates in this chapter, I am indebted to the British Maya epigrapher Simon Martin.
 
CHAPTER 26
 
  1. These dates have been deduced by archaeologists by surveying surface pottery types and frequencies, making iconographic comparisons, and utilizing several scientific dating techniques.
  2. An idea proposed by the British pre-Columbianist David Browne.
  3. David Browne.
  4. Described in
    Nueva Cronica y Buen Gobierno,
    written in c. 1600 by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and published in 1987 in Madrid in
    Historia 16, Cronicas de America,
    volume 29.
  5. Including David Browne’s expedition, 1989.
  6. Directed by David Browne.
  7. Carried out by the U.S. anthropologist John Verano.
 
CHAPTER 27
 
  1. Carried out by Steve Bourget, University of East Anglia, England.
  2. This “flood-to-sand-dunes” mechanism to explain aspects of Moche decline was first proposed by archaeologist Michael Mosley and is outlined in his book
    The Incas and Their Ancestors,
    published by Thames and Hudson, 1992.
  3. Traditionally, the coastal-plain economy had long been based on irrigation, agriculture, and fishing—and had involved the construction of urban centers with monumental architecture. This contrasted with the mountainous interior with its predominantly agro-pastoral alpaca- and llama-herding economy.
  4. The political fragmentation of the Moche civilization seems to have occurred as a result of the sixth-century climatic crisis. Some time—perhaps many decades—after that fragmentation had started, highland peoples, especially the Huari, seem to have taken advantage of the situation to increase their influence on the coastal plain, thus completing the process of geopolitical change.
  5. At some late provincial Moche sites (but not at Moche itself) ceramic art ultimately changed and became far more color-oriented. The iconography changed, too, and began to include a deity holding a staff and wearing a rayed headdress. Settlement patterns shifted and burial practices altered dramatically (from extended to highly flexed, fetal-style positions for corpses). Certainly the more multicolored style of ceramic decoration and the introduction of the staffed deity suggest influence from an Andean highland state called Huari. The burial practice change may also have betrayed Huari influence, or may merely indicate that traditional Moche burial customs were disappearing and being replaced with a tradition that had already been common elsewhere in Peru (including Huari) for many centuries.
  6. Galindo and Pampa Grande both appear to have been established during the great sixth-century drought—and their construction was probably the response to it. They were both built on sites with easy access to good water supplies, a fact that suggests that populations were being forced by the drought to move to such locations.

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