Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Man, why did you breathe? Welcome to welcome to tilling. What's what's up? Oh, not much. I was just wondering. Have you uh, have you ever heard of five thirty six a d? Five Thirties six a d? Yeah, like the restaurant, yes, really does, selling a restaurant where they just serve food and they're it's like a caveman themed yeah, because they don't understand when Caveman's existing. I was thinking five BC still still wouldn't be caveman. How many restaurants, how many restaurant tours do you know that are just like, you know, historically accurate people. I mean, have you been to a dinosaur themed restaurant? No, those things are not historically accurate. It's pretty accurate to me. Did get to you, I guess the form to the right, like I could do your job if it was fast and air conditioning. Okay, that's my mentality for anything. Do you think we would still do our podcast the world isn't Ingham and son didn't come out anymore? Is that your nose at the plague? Throw up with the river. You're not gonna see the sub ten years, Bro Years. Things I learned last night anybody works at rainforest cafe knows what a rainforest looks like. They could have a point one on a map because they've seen the rainforest cafe. Five thirty six a d what happened in that specific year? Oh, Um, a bunch of scientists think it was the worst year to be alive. Oh, I don't know. You know, we've, we've, we've been alive the last couple on. Let's the last couple of ones. Let's well, I mean, if you want to, let's take a deep dive. Let's take a look here, could we? I wonder if we could put a chart up on the screen here. Yeah, what do they call it back then? What they call it in like year twelve? They're like it's twelve. I actually don't know that. It's happy year. You know, it's it's you. Yeah, how are they doing it? Yeah, it's just a two and a zero. Yeah, yeah, that'd be rough. No, so the year five, D uh, it was. There's a few things going on. Okay, we'll start. We'll start from the top. It was an interesting era for Rome because about a hundred years before that, uh, the capital of Rome, Rome was sacked. The Rome capital was Rome, Rome, Rome Rome, Rom. Welcome to Rome Room. It's like New York, New York. That's where New York got the idea from. From Rome Rome did it? Like we're New York, New York, like Rome, Rome, Rome, Rome. Actually, I'm not certain that the capital was Rome, but I'm we're going with it. Rome Rome. Neither is the restaurant tour who owns five. Welcome to roam Rome. That's what they call the little robot surfer they've got that goes around. That's Rome Rome. Yeah, you don't notice he's got Rome built on his back. It's a Roomba, ro Ro, rolling around the room. And this is my son, Roman Rome. Okay, I died of this, so don't good. Um, somebody stacked Rome. Uh. And then, uh, Constantine happened. You know, Jesus into Noble, all that story. If you don't know it, it's in the Bible. She's not in the Bible. Don't try to look it up. Um. And they slowly bounced back and it became the Byzantine Empire. They were like it's not room anymore. Name is something very different, um, but it's still wrong. And then so the realm's like, we're still alive. We're crawling back for life, but it's really fractured. There's shirts to say Rome will rise again. You know, they can't take us out, they can't. They can't take us down. They can sack room Rome, but they'll never sat constantinoa. Somebody pronounces roam. Yeah, this is that Um, but it was fractured. So the businestine empire was a bunch of like little almost city states that were like, we're Rome and everyone's like, but that guy's not room Um. You know, this is starting to feel really familiar. I was track. And so they're in a rough political climate. Um, and then the year five thirty six happens and some interesting things happened. Uh, and it's been a long road to get here, for us to understand what's going on. Um. Yeah, I mean years there was a lot of uh, there was a lot of writings and archaeological finds, but up until the nineties nobody paid much attention to how they connected the story. Like nineties, yes, sorry, the five nineties. No one. No one paid attention to how they connected the story. Yeah, because so there's a bunch of fractured archaeological evidence that pointed to the story of five and why it was the way it was up until the nineteen nineties. It was so disjointed that no one connected those dots of all this evidence year. Yeah, this is all one year. And so in the nineties, uh, things started to come together because there was a group doing core samples of the ice in the Arctic and they pulled out this core sample and it looked like this and they're like that's weird. Um. Why? Why is it so pixelated? It is very pixelated. Weird. Um. No, if you're listening, basically they took this giant core sample of ice that goes down like a hundred feet and it's just a bunch of normal ice and then all of a sudden, Um, it's just this really dark dirty ice and then like some dim, dim, dark dirty ice, very dark dirty ice, and then some dim dirty ice and then like a little ring, yeah, of of just black, yeah, of ice. It was bad ice. It was the Ice Goth era, Um, and uh, the scientists were like, well, that's peculiar that that would happen. So then they started digging more of these cores all around the Arctic and they kept seeing the same results. So it wasn't like a localized the ice just got really dirty there for a little bit. Um, there was something pretty widespread. So it wasn't happened in the art and artic. Yeah, but they didn't have an explanation for this, and so all these theories started to abound, like comets and volcanoes and tidal waves and Um, vacuum cleaner that. Yeah, you know, the normal scientific theories when they find something weird. Um. Meanwhile, at the same time there was this dude at Harvard who really likes trees. Why? That was so funny to be and I gotta hold on. Am I am I right? Oh, I did realize in the Oregon episode that I said the F D A was the federal department agriculture. It's not. It's the Food and Drug Administration. Yeah, I'll let you have it. Yeah, I was dumb. I realized that later, like almost immediately after he recorded. I was like, Oh, stupid. Anyway, Um, uh, he's really into trees. Is that? Oh Gosh, is that harbor? Are Wrists? Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Okay, Arbor is Arbor, and Arbor at Harvard trying to say Harvard Arbor, Harvard Arbor. The Harvard Arbor was telling his barb the Harvard ar the Harvard Arbor was telling his barber. Yeah, there you go, we just meane. Okay. So, uh, he was looking at a bunch of tree rings. Um. I literally was about to make a tree ring joke when I saw that ring of the dirt and I was like yeah, well, he was looking at tree rings and he found Um, there was this period uh, dating back to the same time as those ice rings, where the trees, uh, we're really upset. That's how he said it, that's the words he used. The trees were really upset, Um, and so he studied all of this conversation so far sounds like something I would see on twitter in someone was just like the trees are sad. If everyone could just like get it together, the trees are like depressed, so sad. There were no happy little trees. Only. Why did you desert your dog? First of all, I didn't desert my dog. Okay, I tied it around that tree because that tree needed it as a support, because the tree was sad. Support the trees. Yeah, same thing where I did with my firstborn kid, labradoodles for trees. Wait, what? The tree was sad and I was like you know, what you need is a child's son. Yeah, I've read the book. Are you the giving tree? Are you the giving tree? Here's a child, here's this child, here's this okay. So he noticed that the trees were sad and so he started taking a hole batch of trees and looking to see if all the trees were sad. And what he realized was it wasn't just in Europe, it wasn't just in Greenland, it was worldwide. Wherever he found a tree, um, whenever he stumbled across, just planted limb. He just walked around with his axe. I'm sure that contribute to their sadness at all. He said, this tree I cut down was sad like years ago and also now. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you liked it, would really help us out if you leave a review or a comment on Youtube, if that's what you're watching on, and if you want to check out another episode, I recommend Julianne Kopki. That was an episode all about a woman who survived a ten thousand footfall from a plane without a parachute, landed in the Amazon. Absolutely bonkers story, uh, and it was pretty fun. We had a lot of fun jared and I in that episode. Uh. So you should check it out. It's one of my favorites right now. But thanks so much for being here. Well, what he was doing was he was looking at Um, because here was one thing I thought, Um was, where is he finding all these trees that lived years ago, like still, that are still alive, because trees, you don't know how old trees are. Yeah, trees aren't years old. Some are, some are. Yeah. So I looked at that. So, UH, most trees don't live past a hundred but there are. Most species of trees can have the potential to live a thousand plus years. YEA, most of them. Most of them don't. Most of them don't, but they can't. But there's some people, some freaking freaks out there. I mean I'm really old, I'm very old, um, but some this. So he was cutting down pretty big trees. Then to figure that out, he had to be cutting redwoods and stuff. Yeah, this is Bristle colmb pines. They can exceed three thousand years. Yeah, that I was saying. Like I went to the like, we went out to uh, General Sherman, like the largest living tree on earth in California, and you think it's like when you're driving up there, you're like this thing is not gonna be worth it because you're wined and round around. It's pretty stinken worth it really, oh dude, to stand in front of this ridiculous creature that is I mean the base of it is wider than our whole back wall. Really, Oh gosh dude, it's bonkers. This is saying that. Well, I don't know how old that thing is. How old was that thing? Like over two thousand years old? Thing to look at it and go this thing, it was like this tall when Jesus was here. How does it feel to be so little? What Jesus was rare? Um, this thing is saying that, you know. Oh, yeah, like, what's this one called? Uh, that's in California too. Yeah, this one is the oldest confirmed age. Yeah, and it says it's years old. Yeah, it's old, Dude. That's like older than Egypt. Yeah, and it looks like it. It looks older. This looks like an art installation. Yea, if that tree could talk, it would go so healing. I don't want to please, please, just chop me down. I was five. I'm a SAGURY. Please take me out. Chop me down. This harvard armor is going around cutting up trees and realizing they're all really sad california anymore. They sticking limps, limps thee. What if the tree keeps up with politics? Years Old freaking boomer the trees? I don't know. So I think a year old person would sound like. Would sound great. Probably Fair. Fair. What do you think that year old? Hundred, forty eight year old hundred trees. That's different. Do you think you could kill that? One Tree or trees? Okay, this anyway. He's chopping down trees. He's finding out a different thing too. He's bringing his own hatchet everywhere. He's just chopping down trees. Yeah, like, what do you do? But he he got a lot of data together, got thousands of little trees and say they're all sad and all the trees. was like, we gotta Trust You, I guess. And so, uh, this group of Harvard Arborists and Uh Ivy League ice diggers. I was trying to find a way to do that. When it was tougher, Ivy, the Ivy sers Um, they got together, they joined leagues and they figured out, Hey, I think this is connected, because it's you know the same time. You got dirty ice. Yeah, you got dirty ice, we got dirty trees, trees, trees, dirty ice. What else can be? Fine, so they started. They called the archaeologists and they're like, Hey, what happened in five thirty six? You got any evidence? They guess you would have to look in the caves. Why? Because that's the next oldest thing I could think is, like that would be there would be evidence in caves, right, because caves are obviously been around forever. Yeah, but five six, it's not like people were living in caves then. No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not saying for evidence of people, I'm saying like for other confirmation of nature of damage. Yeah, yeah, Um, so they yeah, they said. They said, how are we going to figure out what happened here? Um, and then so they called the archaeologists. They said you see anything, uh, in find six a D and they're like yeah, not only was the ice dirty and the trees sad, but the people were dead. Um what they were like, yeah, that so here's what happened. So they found some letters. There was a historian who was even D and uh, a few years after the fact he was writing about that. His experience at D and here's a direct quote. He said the sun gave, gave forth its light without brightness. It was like the moon during the whole year. Um. And then there was another quote that said that the sun was like a light blue shade in the sky. Um. And then there was another one, another letter somewhere where, that said that it was it was noonday and we we couldn't see our shadows and we marveled at the fact that we couldn't see our shadows. And it was like this for over a year. It was just dark. Yeah, it was. It was remember that eclipse that we had. It did that, but it stopped. It just froze. It was like a disc. That was so are they are they suggesting that the something blocked out the sun for a year, essentially, and so this, this really stumped scientists because they were like what, what happened? Yeah, what's going on? And so a lot of theories started to come up, everything from volcanoes to comic strikes to tidal waves. I think I mentioned all these earlier. To See people, to see people's Um. What they ended up landing on was there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland and it was so severe that it spewed so much action to the sky that it literally blacked out the sun for eighteen months, um. And worldwide, worldwide, there was a fog around the whole planet because this, this was so severe and it's evidenced by Um. Worldwide, the rings on the trees and the ice sheets on both Poles were covered in like this layer, layer of what. Okay, it's just dirty Um. And then then everybody in these like the archaeologists, they had these writings, but they never thought much of it because they didn't connect the dots. Like they it was, oh hey, this person studying round found this letter about it was really dark months, someone running in China who was like yeah, this guy talked about it being really dark months. And then they connected them all together and like Oh, this was all the same time, um. And so what they think happened was obviously like that eruption happened and it created this fog that made it dim. But as a result the temperature in the summers dipped by thirty six degrees. Fair Knight. So Uh wow. Needless to say, crops struggled, everything struggled because they didn't have so the trees weren't the only thing that was sad. Yeah, the corn was sad. Gets Sad, little corns. Um. Yeah, that's when baby corn was invented. It was invented. Yeah, they were like, Hey, we could just make it small. So I just want to confirmed that. You think that people were like we should just make small corn. Yeah, well, they were growing cords, normal corns, corns that year they couldn't grow all the way because it was too cold. So they just grew little baby corns and they're like, you could still eat them, and they're like, Hey, that's not half bad. Let's make those again next year when it's a warm again. Only it wasn't warm again for another like fifteen years, but years. Yeah, so there was so here was it was exasperated because it wasn't because of all their cars. There's so much of missions. Uh. Yes, this, this guy, has exasperated because there was that eruption right overnight. Overnight it stopped. It never ended, the nights didn't there's no more day. Uh. And then the fog was worldwide. Dipped the temperatures and then it took a long time for things to spipe back. Even as the fog began to clear, well, what they discovered is that years later, umve forty four years later, there was another volcanic eruption in Europe. Kids break, and then a bunch of fog close to as severe as the other one, and then seven there was another volcanic eruption in Europe, I believed, and because of that it just kind of left the climate in this what do you think I would do to us today? It would be pretty cold. Well, I mean like yeah, but I mean like, do you think we've got the equipment technology to like purify air or like, because people not clear away. But I'm saying that people had couldn't live in that. People just live with it being yeah, they did. They just let they just lived in volcanic ash and they's breathed it in. Yeah, I know what I'm saying, but I was surely that killed them. I mean, yeah, surely a lot of them? Yeah, for sure. Um, some people who are just tough like just make it through. But yeah, I mean it, we did out the week ones, for sure. What are you talking about? Like, I don't know. Do we have any writing about the people living there? I mean a lot of people have survived it. I guess maybe they wear masks. I don't know, like I don't know. I haven't thought about that. Hey, thank you again for listening to this episode. Making sure that you don't miss one in the future. Go ahead and subscribe to this podcast, whether that be on apple podcast, spotify youtube. You'll get an alert when we drop a new episode. And if you want more, if you want something a week early, you want to be part of our discord, more access to us as creators, you can support this show on patreon. It helps us go a long way. Nothing that we're doing is possible without our patreon supporters. If you want more information about that, please text tilling to six six eight, six six. Thank you so much for being here. I mean, we've probably all wear masks. Do you think we would still do our podcast if the world was ending in the sun didn't come out anymore? I mean we would have to China light in the darkness. What is this? Is My flashlight. I thought you were going to give me nuxt and so I know what happened to me the other day and I was really mad about where was I? Oh, I did a show. Afterward, went to go shape the guy's hand as he's coming up to the stage and he just didn't do it. So, in front of everybody, I got snubbed. Did He? Did he see it? I think so. I think he saw it and went. I just kept going, you know, and I was like all right, man slashes tires from the parking on that. Before I left. I was like, I'm not gonna let you treat me like that in front, in front of everybody, in front of over, in front of everybody. Come, I filled his car with volcano ash. You're not gonna see the sun from ten years. Broy is this volcanic ash? Where did you get this? Oh, there's an Amazon seller who sells it at the five gallon bucket. Yeah, I mean I think it'd be pretty severe today still. Yeah, I would think so. So there was obviously the crop failure problem. So people were hungry, people were starving and I'm sure you're probably right, there's probably a lot of people who were dying of like respiratory stuff, respiratory stuff. Yeah, there was also a war that was going on in the middle of this. That continued. Um, so that was pretty bad. Um, so this this whole season, was a war happening. Yeah, there was a war. was just one of the sides of the war being like we're gonna make this really inconvenient. The other side it was like the United States Army. Yeah, like we figured out how to make volcanoes erupped. Yeah, we didn't figure out how to make it just affect you, though. So it's gonna be all of us, sorry to the fog of warry trees. That's why they were sad. They felt betrayed. They're like this was our own, our own army. Um, and so the volcano has made it a pretty bad situation. Um. There was obviously yes, Um, and then yeah, so then it was the first bubonic plague. happened. Um, it was a plague, volcano, war going on, a war going on, and I don't know if you remember learning about the bubonic plague. It was serious. I'm so serious. They named it after the emperor Um Justinian. Um, so that's a good thing to be remembered for. Um, they're called the justinian plague, uh, and the estimate is that a third to half of the population died in this plague. Um, and it was pretty peculiar because the way it always earth. Yeah, and it's peculiar because the way it started is you would get like this lesion on your palm in your hand, and then within a few days you'd be covered in them and then you die. Um, and so it's like very severe, highly contagious, and they didn't understand germs yet, and so everyone was just carrying around all these plagued bodies after they died and like throwing them into like the rivers and stuff. It was like get rid of them, and then they go drink that water and then go hang out shake hands with people after their sets. I bet that's why he didn't do it. Which one of us do you think has the plague? Do you think he thought I had it, or do you think he knows he's got it? He saw your palm and he's like that Palm Looks Pretty Babonic. That guy's got a bubonic palm. Got A plaguey palm. If you're plague palm away for me. Um, and it spread super fast. And so it was. It was as if the situation wasn't bad enough already. Well, I mean like you couldn't tell if someone had sores on the dark outside. That's why we got that's why it spread so fast. Is that a bump on your palm? Oh shoot, is that your nose at the plague? Throw him in the river. Okay, uh. And so then, I mean, when you have a situation where a third to half the population dies in a short period of time, um, that's not good for the economy. Won't somebody think of the economy? It's hard to do business in the dark. It's already hard enough. Yeah, I can't hold it, can't sign a contract from my hand hurts from all these sores. I can't get the trees to do anything the time. You know how hard it is to be around with his passive, aggressive trees, like there's creating oxygen and they're just like you're like, oh my gosh, dude, it's like having a teenager in the backseat who's like the trees are just begging you to ask what's wrong. They just want you to listen. Yeah, they just want you to listen, and they're like that's the lesson for today. If you're a walk maybe just go why don't you go listen to a tree today? What are you doing, man? Yeah, just listening to how are you feeling? You know, it's really m are you being a tree right now? Both people. I tried. I'm I'm a passer. You chopped down the tree to put it out of its misery? Yeah, do you? What do you do? You Chop it down, or do you water it? I don't know, like, how do you help a treat I don't know. We're not arborists inside this bit. So much so the trees are said. There's a war going on, the sky is dark and the people are dying from the plague and the economy and shample and the economy, because you got you got bad crops, you gotta go, you got a war, you got the plague, a death rate. Yeah, what's your UN employment? Of just of just the people who definite play, but you've got people who, I'm sure you're right, I'm sure there's people who were having respiratory problems. I'm sure there was people who are dying in the war. Um, and so it was. And then I'm sure there's people are dying in starvation. And so then you have all these people dying, which meant there was less people to crop stuffs. People. Look, there's people to farm, less people to build, less people to do everything. There's people to food, we're talking about, and so so so the economy completely installed. Um and a lot of historians say that this was the shift from, UH, the era of antiquity to the medieval era and maybe the dark ages, because all of a sudden pretty much every major dark ages. Ah, this sounds so. They the historians, say this was the end of the world for a little bit, at the end of the known world there. Yeah, at that time, because every major society had historians who talked about how the cops failed, the economy has failed, the government's failed and uh, then it almost went into this kind of tribalistic mentality, just like you would expect. Um. Honestly, I feel like this is probably a very similar to the situation to what we talked about a few weeks ago in the Bronze Age collapse, where there was this kind of series of factors that in a relatively short amount of time, kind of destroyed everything. Yeah, because what happens is you build a system and you're like this system works, but you don't design the system to work when, like, it relies too heavily on itself and then with minor disruptions, all of a sudden the whole thing falls apart. You know, like the same thing with the supply chain issue. We've had the past couple of years which all of a sudden these supply chain issues are crippling certain sectors of our economy. Yeah, exactly. And you had, um, they started finding, especially in Europe, there would be in these like River deltas, on the little island portion in the river in the Delta, there would be these forts that people built and they would build these wood spikes sticking out of the sides of the forts and they'd have like a camp that they put in that fort because all these people, um, we're so used to relying on farming, when farming didn't exist, they couldn't figure out how to get through the winter, and so what they found was there was a lot of bodies that they suspect were buried during winter seasons because people were starving in the winters. Um, because they were able to grow a little bit during the spring, in the summer, but once they went to the winter, they were relied almost completely on hunting and they didn't know what they were doing and they couldn't keep up with it, and so they would build these little fortresses, Um, and it seems like the reason why that happened is because people were out there see people in Um, and and and and. Uh, it seems like that gave birth to that medieval era. Um, was that society worldwide? Um also. I mean, yeah, people build strongholds and then they, you know, because you gotta, you find a place to crop. Then you build walls around that croppage. We were really stretching the word crop today. Yeah, well, you know, and then, uh, you know, and then you build a little bridge over your you know, you build your little crop top, right, and so it goes over that and then, uh, speaking of crops, remember. Yeah, what, what could possibly bring up for you? Yesterday, where at the office and the Youtube that we use for tilling. Oh Yeah, did you play that farming game? I haven't yet. Okay, UH, yeah, for it recommended some farming game and so Jaran pulls it up to kind of make fun of it, and I was like look how stupid this is. Tim was like, well, let's watch it, though. It's just a it's just a farming simulator. It looks pretty fun. You're literally driving combine back and forth. Yeah, it looks pretty good. Uh, don't you have a yard when that's so not fun, like doing in real life. Yeah, it's hot and slow okay, farming citulator. It's pretty fast and it's in the air conditioning. So like, I could do your job if it was fast and air conditioned. Okay, that's my mentality for anything. So people were just dying because they couldn't figure out how to store crops from the spring and summer in Laska. Winter. Yeah, more than that, it was just they couldn't even grow enough because it was thirty five degrees colder in the summer. I mean your average summer is like eighty something throughout the majority of the world and now it's fifties like that's that's a supery. That's a severe dip. And so the crops and the trees and plants and the animals all sad and it made everybody else starve Um. So you can't hunt when the animals are sad. It just feels that feels, you know. You just see a deer out there, just just mop it through the ones and you're like empathizing with the deer, like I can't. I can't kill a sad deer. Can't. Does even taste as good. Yeah, everybody knows sad deer tastes bade. That's why you've got to kill the ones with families. You know, the happier than happier deer, the meat. That's I mean, that's why, you know, that's why you always ask like did this cow have a good life? That's why at bass pro shops they sell dear lottery tickets, so you can go give the deer a lottery ticket, an extra large check. You can hand the deal. My favorite dear decoy is the one where the deers on one knee proposing right and so like this female deer is having it's like what killed it? Yeah, that's gonna be a good yeah, they call it the dear dear. You know it's good. You can buy the bass pro. That's a dark joke. I hate that a lot. So Um, yeah, so, anyways, uh, most historians say probably the worst time in history to be alive, and then definitely opened up one of the worst, one of the most prolonged seasons of just because too many factors made it almost impossible to like you can't form a society in there. And it was still in a spot too, where, for the most part, Rome was the only real superpower of the day and they had just gone through upheaval and been put into a pretty rough situation, and so this really sped up the actual complete collapse of Rome. But because of this, there wasn't really Um, any nation on earth that was very strong and stable Um, and so because of that, without the any stability, they couldn't weather. And we got all that from a ring in the ice. Yeah, these guys found just some dirt in the ice and then they were like, what happened? We know how terrible the world was back then. He's some dirt in the ice. You're like, Whoa, what happened that year? Yeah, so basically, here's where we're at. We have to decide what look like five what's worse? What's where? If we get a volcano in the next couple of years, might beat it. Yeah, we're on a we're on a hot street right now. We're coming in. If you're listening in the middle of Your River bunker right somehow you're still getting podcasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're you know, uh, sorry that we predicted that. I'm sorry we spoke that in the world. Apologize to the trees for me. Yeah, tell the trees we're sorry. Yeah, why don't you lean into a tree? Would you lean right up there? And they just whispered to it off. Please just love me remember things on them last night. is a production of space tim media, produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alas Garnett, video by Connor Bets. Social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg, our host, or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please all US on social media at tilling podcast. THAT'S T I ll in podcast. Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to things on the last night. m