TIMES OF ISRAEL
Seeds from 1,500-year-old Negev trash pits show a world on the brink of collapse
by Amanda Borschel-Dan
July 27, 2020
Pandemic, climate change, and international socioeconomic depression are all leading factors in the crash and burn of Negev viticulture — a millennium and a half ago. A new archaeological study of Byzantine-era trash dumps in the Negev Highlands offers an eerily relevant analysis of how the strong Byzantine empire of the mid-6th century began to crumble while international markets were tanked by a butterfly-effect list of causes. Contributing factors to the doomsday atmosphere included the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA), a bizarre widespread climate anomaly that began with a series of massive volcanic eruptions in the 530s and 540s CE, and the Justinian Plague of 541-549 CE. READ MORE
