Strange Skies and Disasters
Other traditions: Strange skies
Strange Skies and Disasters pages that draw on Other traditions, each with the sources shown. Start with Bronze Age collapse, Supernova of 1006, The 774 CE red cross and radiation spike, The year without a sun (536 CE).
Events · Other traditionsBronze Age collapseAround 1200 BCE, within a few decades, the great kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean fell: cities burned, a Hittite capital was abandoned and writing vanished from Greece. A clay tablet from Ugarit records the king saying enemy ships had come while his own fleet was away. What brought down a whole connected world?Events · Other traditionsSupernova of 1006In 1006 CE a new star blazed in the sky, brighter than Venus, bright enough to cast shadows at night and be seen in daylight. Observers in Egypt, China, Japan, Iraq and a Swiss abbey wrote it down. Astronomers have since found its remains. What exactly did people think they were seeing?Events · Other traditionsThe 774 CE red cross and radiation spikeTree rings around the world carry a sharp spike of carbon-14 from the year 774 or 775, a burst of cosmic radiation from space. That same year an English chronicle reports a red crucifix in the sky after sunset. The link is unproven. What caused the spike, and how did it later date a Viking site?Events · Other traditionsThe year without a sun (536 CE)In 536 CE, writers from Constantinople to Italy to China described a sun that looked dim and bluish, with summer frost and failing crops. Procopius said it shone all year like the moon. The cause was long a mystery. What do tree rings and ice cores now say, and what came right after?Events · Other traditionsThe Younger Dryas freezeAbout 12,900 years ago, the warming world suddenly plunged back toward Ice Age cold for around 1,200 years, then snapped back within decades. Plato's date for sinking Atlantis falls near its end. Most scientists call that a coincidence, and a comet explanation remains a minority view. So what did cause the freeze?Events · Other traditionsTunguska eventIn 1908 something exploded over Siberia and flattened about 80 million trees, yet the first expedition in 1927 found no crater. For nights afterward, skies over Europe were bright enough to read a newspaper at midnight. Most scientists point to an airburst. What actually blew up, and why did it leave nothing behind?Places · Other traditionsVitrified fortsSome Iron Age hillforts in Scotland and Europe have walls melted into glass, which takes fires of roughly 850 to 1100 degrees Celsius. Strangely, vitrifying makes a wall weaker, not stronger, so someone may have wanted them destroyed. A 1937 test wall burned with ordinary timber and made glass. So who set the fires?
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