An apocalypse is a “very serious event resulting in great destruction and change” (Cambridge Dictionary). Biblically: an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroyed the ruling powers of evil.
Notes and sources
An apocalypse is a “very serious event resulting in great destruction and change” (according to the Cambridge Dictionary)
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/apocalypse
A super volcano event possibly resulted in a human population decline of up to 90%, although a group of African early-modern humans nearly 9000kms away managed to thrive in this period, putting the whole thesis into contention.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/03/these-early-humans-prospered-during-what-should-have-been-a-devastating-volcanic-winter/
According to Yuval Harari in his book Homo Sapiens, there were six species of humans 100,000 years ago.
An article by Luke Kemp on the BBC demonstrated a complication of factors contributed to the death of ancient civilisations, including climate change and socio-economic inequity. Kemp defined collapse as a “rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity,” although a few of the civilisations in his study recovered and/or transformed.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse
Commentaries on the war in Gaul byJulius Caesar, quoted in A History of Rome by Cary and Scullard (The Macmillan Press Ltd, 3rd Edition 1975), page 262.
Pompeii research: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101102/pompeii-mount-vesuvius-science-died-instantly-heat-bodies/
Survival: historical apocalypses
An apocalypse is a “very serious event resulting in great destruction and change” (according to the Cambridge Dictionary). Biblically, apocalypse was an expectation of an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroyed the ruling powers of evil. This could hardly have been expected to be a ‘surgical strike’, since all evil people are capable of good and good people of evil: any Biblical apocalypse was always going to be messy; you could have faith in that.
But why are we so worried about ‘the’ apocalypse? Because we, as a species, have already been through plenty of cataclysmic events. In the very distant past, our forebears, comprising just a very few individuals compared to the teeming masses of humans now, must have been on the brink of being wiped out many times from starvation, disease, predatory animals and natural disasters like drought, storm and flood. Humans roved the terrain in small family and social groupings, having to contend with each other, with other groups and with wild animals.
Hard evidence for really ancient apocalyptic events is scant, but the Toba super-volcanic eruption, 74,000 years ago, was the most powerful in the past two million years. It hurtled thousands upon thousands of tonnes of ash and other materials into Earth’s atmosphere. Temperatures around the Earth plummeted and it’s assumed that the ‘volcanic winter’ this caused lasted somewhere between six to ten years. This possibly induced a cooling period that lasted nearly a thousand years thanks to all the debris in the atmosphere. The Toba event threatened entire species – not just us – with extinction. It’s possible this resulted in a human population decline of up to 90%, although a group of African early-modern humans nearly 9000kms away managed to thrive in this period, putting the whole thesis into contention. If anything, though, the event underlines how resilient human populations could be.
From the precarious first bands of Homo Sapiens, every human now on Earth descends, albeit with a tiny admixture of Neanderthal and Denisovan hominids, plus perhaps a little from another yet-to-be-identified ancient human lineage. According to Yuval Harari in Homo Sapiens 100,000 years ago there were six species of humans.
Early bands of humans survived constant threats of cataclysms that might seem insignificant to us now. Aided by determination, cooperation, luck, brains, agriculture, animal husbandry and technology, the billions of Homo Sapiens who now populate the planet developed over tens of thousands of generations over many hundreds of years as nomads.
But our ancestors weren’t roaming around for fun. Almost every step was taken in the incessant quest for food – and for daily food, there was considerably more gathering of it than hunting. This fact has huge ramifications for a time after global food production and distribution has collapsed.
Competition
Most of the ancient conflicts came directly from competition over living space, food sources and resources like fresh water supplies. Often, however, despite historical tales of conflict that may have become more violent as stories were retold, waves of people arrived and intermingled with the existing populations. But gradually, and unfortunately, people started killing each other for something only developed brains could manufacture: differing beliefs.
Throughout more recent ‘historic’ (ie, recorded) times, devastation to human populations has been well recorded. As humans banded together in ever bigger towns, ‘civilisations’ started to rise, but things were still precarious. The fall of the Harappan/Indus Valley civilisation seems to have been a combination of climate change and possibly geological upheaval causing a major river to reroute, but archaeologists have also discovered signs of warfare.
The remnants of a city have been discovered on the seabed in the Bay of Cambay – this was is apparently pre-Harappan, and must once have been above sea level. The First Testament of the Bible is full of stories of plague, catastrophe and conflict across the region of the so-called ‘Cradle of Civilisation’.
Out of interest, an article by Luke Kemp on the BBC demonstrates a complication of factors contributed to the death of ancient civilisations, including climate change and socio-economic inequity (my italics). Kemp defines collapse as a “rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity,” although a few of the civilisations in his study recovered and/or transformed.
Once collapse starts, it can take an empire that has been running hundreds of years (the average, in his study, is 336 years) just a few to collapse almost utterly. Kemp, a researcher based at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, uses the analogy that a typical civilisation is like a poorly-built ladder you climb. Once it breaks, the fall is swift and calamitous.
Romans
The Romans had a multinational empire, and that took some controlling. Not renowned for their mercy, losing a battle against the Romans, or even trying to call a truce, could have dire consequences. In one of many such instances over Rome’s long history, Julius Caesar, with eight Roman legions plus attached cavalry, put two Germanic tribes, the Tencteri and Usipetes, to the sword in 55 BCE after a battle in what is now the modern-day Netherlands. Caesar described this himself in his Commentaries on the war in Gaul. His orders led to the killing of perhaps as many as 150,000 people, at least according to his records, which were probably exaggerated for propaganda purposes. Still, there undoubtedly took place an ordered massacre against largely undefended people.
Archaeologists from the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam found evidence (in 2015) of weapons and skeletal remains that suggest the site was near where the Waal and Maas (aka Meuse) rivers meet. Caesar ordered his forces to destroy the tribes ‘violently’, taking the opportunity to “hunt down the entire horde to the last woman and child”.
Such instances were not common, but neither were they uncommon. Sometimes what took place was more of a ‘gendercide’, with adult males killed but the children (and particularly girls) and women spared, to be incorporated into the conquering group, often as slaves.
But 150,000 victims sounds a staggeringly high number for the time and for the-then population densities for the region. Indeed, as a testament, perhaps, to the survivability of defeated people or to the inaccuracy of Caesar’s propaganda, both ‘massacred’ tribes appear again in the Roman annals 36 years later.
The Roman Empire, by the way, lasted 525 years. In 390CE, this empire covered 4.4 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles). Five years later, it had plummeted to 2 million sq km (770,000 sq miles) and, by 476, just 86 years later, the Roman Empire was gone.
Pompeii and Herculaneum
In Roman times it wasn’t just warring peoples killing each other. The volcano of Mount Vesuvius, about ten kilometres (six miles) from the town of Pompeii (population: about 15,000), produced six waves of pyroclastic surges when it erupted in 79CE. These fast-moving, ground-hugging waves of hot, toxic gases and ash killed most residents in the fourth surge, recent research has revealed (the preceding three did not reach all the way to Pompeii). The fourth wave carried little ash and was not even powerful enough to collapse buildings, but its intense heat of 300°C killed hundreds in a faction of a second.
It’s thought that around 22,000 people lived in the larger area, but many of these had had time to flee since the surges came hours after the eruption began. Of those who stayed, around 2000 are thought to have perished – that’s just 9% of the inhabitants.
Herculaneum, a wealthier town closer to Vesuvius and on the coast, had a smaller population of around 5000. It suffered a higher-temperature surge of 500°C, but most residents had been more thoroughly evacuated than from Pompeii itself since Pliny the Elder’s rescue boats had reached it. Even so, over 400 skeletons (8% of the supposed 5000 inhabitants) have been found there, but excavations are continuing that may reveal a higher mortality.
Pompeii’s catastrophe wasn’t the first Mediterranean cataclysm brought on by volcanic activity – the massive eruption of the Mediterranean island of Santorini in around 1550 BCE has been blamed for the collapse, indirectly at least, of Minoan civilisation.
The Mongol Hordes (Genghis Khan and Tamerlane)
The Romans set a standard that seemingly begged surpassing. In the 13th century the Mongol armies under Genghis Khan were genocidal killers, known to have eradicated whole nations. Genghis (born Temujin) ordered the extermination of the Tata Mongols, and of all Kankalis males in Bukhara ‘taller than a wheel’ (another gendercide).
In the end, half of the Mongol tribes of the era were apparently exterminated by Genghis Khan, but with this achieved, Temujin’s reach expanded further. Large areas of Islamic Central Asia and northeastern Iran were seriously depopulated after every city or town that resisted the Mongols was subjected to destruction. It has been calculated that approximately 5% of the world’s population was killed during the Turco-Mongol invasions or in their immediate aftermath. For the populations of the areas Genghis actually attacked, of course, the destructive ratio was much higher.
Before the Mongol invasion, Chinese dynasties reportedly had perhaps 120 million inhabitants; after the conquest was completed in 1279, the 1300 census reported roughly 60 million people (50% mortality).
According to Iranian historian Rashid al-Din (1247–1318), the Mongols killed more than 700,000 people in the region of Merv and perhaps as many as 1.7 million in Nishapur, where Genghis ordered the entire town put to the sword: women, children, babies and even dogs and cats were tracked down and murdered, then beheaded and their skulls piled into pyramids. The total population of Persia may have dropped from 2,500,000 to 250,000 as a result of mass extermination and the famine that followed (90% mortality). A ‘conservative’ view of Genghis’ wars and genocides puts total mortality at 37.5 million. The population of China decreased from 123 million in 1200 to 65 million in 1393 (over 47% mortality) thanks to the Mongol invasions plus famine and plague that followed, partly due the destruction of infrastructure and farming communities.
But once again, people thereafter rebuilt their lives and societies.
The next century, the Turko-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane was known for his extreme brutality and his conquests were likewise accompanied by genocidal massacres. In Assyria (1393-4) Tamerlane had killed every Christian he could find, including everyone in the city of Tikrit (then a Christian town). This action virtually destroyed the Assyrian Church of the East, changing religious beliefs in the area irrevocably. Tamerlane also slaughtered Jews, Shi’ite Muslims and heathens and conducted large-scale massacres of Georgian and Armenian Christians, as well as of Arabs, Persians and Turks. His actions changed the demographics of peoples, societies and religions across the region with profound and lasting impacts.