Eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano linked to period of extreme cold in ancient Rome

[Jim__]

From phys.org:

An international team of scientists and historians has found evidence connecting an unexplained period of extreme cold in ancient Rome with an unlikely source: a massive eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano, located on the opposite side of the Earth.

Around the time of Julius Caesar's death in 44 BCE, written sources describe a period of unusually cold climate, crop failures, famine, disease, and unrest in the Mediterranean Region -impacts that ultimately contributed to the downfall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Historians have long suspected a volcano to be the cause, but have been unable to pinpoint where or when such an eruption had occurred, or how severe it was.

In a new study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a research team led by Joe McConnell, Ph.D. of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev. uses an analysis of tephra (volcanic ash) found in Arctic ice cores to link the period of unexplained extreme climate in the Mediterranean with the caldera-forming eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano in 43 BCE.

"To find evidence that a volcano on other side of the earth erupted and effectively contributed to the demise of the Romans and the Egyptians and the rise of the Roman Empire is fascinating," McConnell said. "It certainly shows how interconnected the world was even 2,000 years ago."

more ...

[Loki Liesmith]

1. We should engineer some simulated eruptions.

[Warpy]

2. Oh, I don't think we need to

Stratovolcanoes seen to get to a certain size, go quiet, then blow themselves to smithereens. It's amazing how much human history can be traced to these things when they blow, and it's the human history that tends to reset things, overthrowing one system and the men it made fat, going quiet for many decades, then reinventing the whole thing in a slightly different form.

It would be just our dumb luck if we managed to engineer one and then two others blew up naturally.