The Disastrous Tenth Century Cataclysm A

ACADEMIA Letters
THE DISASTROUS TENTH CENTURY: CATACLYSM

AND COLLAPSE
Gunnar Heinsohn, Emeritus University of Bremen (Germany)
The greatest catastrophe for civilization, around 930 AD, was closest in time to us. Since it is
at the same time the least known, a few of its repercussions are presented below.
I. Reports written shortly after the Cataclysm

“Almost all the cities of Italy and Gaul were ravaged by flames of fire, and the greater part
even of the city of Rome was devoured by a conflagration. […] A most mighty famine raged
for five years throughout the Roman world, so that […] many of the people were starved to
death.”1
Rodulfus Glaber (985-1047 AD), a monk from Burgundy, dated these European calamities
seven years before the 1000th birthday of “our Lord and Saviour.” Since Glaber did not give
a year for the birth itself, one can hardly date the “conflagration” more precisely than the 10th
century AD.
A little earlier, Shaykh Mufid (948-1022 AD) formulated in form of a prophecy – by
referencing “only what is recounted in basic sources of tradition” – more or less contemporary
events in Mesopotamia:
“The land will be swallowed […], the sun will stay still. […] Fire will appear for a long
time. […] A black wind will raise […] and then an earthquake will occur. […] There will be
1
R. GLABER, Historiarum libri quinque (Five Books of Histories);
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/glaber-1000.asp; retrieved 05-08-2021.
Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

Citation: Heinsohn, G. (2021). THE DISASTROUS TENTH CENTURY: CATACLYSM AND COLLAPSE.
Academia Letters, Article 2958. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2958.
1
a loss of property, lives and harvests. […] Slaves will rebel / and kill their masters. […]. That
will come to an end / with twenty-four continuous rainstorms.”2
Written in literary form, Völuspá, the first book of Iceland’s Poetic Edda, whose earliest
oral narrative is dated to the later 10th century3 , also told of enormous calamities:
“The brood of Fenrir […] was soon to steal the sun from the sky. […] In summer soon
come mighty storms. […] Yggdrasil shakes, and […] earth sinks in the sea, the hot stars down
from heaven are whirled; fierce grows the steam till fire leaps high about heaven itself.”4
Unlike the bards of the Edda, Widukind von Corvey (925 or 935-973 AD) was a genuine
chronicler. Some experts even consider this annalist of Saxony’s King Henry the Fowler (876-
936 AD) as an outstanding historian of the 10th century.5 Without any ado he gave a cosmic
dimension to the events shortly before 936 AD:
“Comets […] made many people tremble […] before Heinrich’s passing [936 AD] . The
sun was without light. […] The mountain in which the mighty king was buried spat fire. […].
The comets were followed by a flood and the latter by a pestilence of cattle.”6
For a world-shaking event, one will rightly object, these sources appear rather meager.
This scantiness may justify that historians or archaeologists do not usually present them as
related materials. But might not the very power of the cataclysm be responsible for the fact that
there are so few sources? Did sources on political events flow abundantly when testimonies
about a disaster remained rare? Jerzy Strzelczyk has challenged such an assumption:
“The tenth century was […] the Dark Age (saeculum obscurum). […] Latin Europe be-
came retarded. […] From about 920-960 […] nothing of any great interest in the fields of
intellectual development or literature appeared.”7
Lamentations appeared that deplored “the advent of the Anti-Christ, and […] not the end
of the ‘Dark Ages’, as the modern historian assumes, but the first signs of the end of the
world.”8 Can Ancient Rome illustrate such a monstrosity? At its peak it may have reached
2
SHAYKH MUFID, Kitab al-irshad (Book of Guidance); https://www.shia-maktab.info/index.php/en/library/
books/english? format=raw&task=download&fid=93; retrieved 05-08-2021.
3
G. STEINSLAND, Norrøn religion: Myter, riter, samfunn (Norse Religion), Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2005, p. 130.
4
H. ADAMS BELLOW, transl. & ed., The Poetic Edda. Vol. I. Lays of the Gods. Voluspo; The Wise-Woman’s
Prophecy (1936); http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe03.htm; retrieved 08-08-2021.
5
H. BEUMANN, Widukind von Korvey: Untersuchungen zur Geschichtsschreibung und Ideengeschichte des
10. Jahrhunderts; Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1950.
6
Widukind von CORVEY, Rerum gestarum Saxonicarum libri tres. Liber II: XXXII. De portentis; http://www.
fh-augsburg.de/ harsch/Chronologia/Lspost10/Widukind/wid_sa2t.html; retrieved 08-08-2021.
7
J. STRZELCZYK, “The Church and Christianity about the Year 1000“, in P. URBANCZYK, ed., Europe
around the Year 1000, Warszawa: DIC, 2001, pp. 41-68 / 42 f.
8
C. BROOKE, Europe in the Central Middle Ages, 962-1154, London: Langmans, 1964, pp. 1f.

2
“half a million”9 inhabitants. For reasons never fully understood, its marble splendor lay in
ruins, and its population in the late 10th century had fallen “below 20,000.”10 Even if one
considers a human loss of 96 percent for today’s educational metropolises, it remains difficult
to imagine a scientific silence of forty years.
II. Geological evidence

What do geologists say about the possibility of worldwide destructions at the end of the Early
Middle Ages? They compare them with the Deluge:
“Many valleys display two alluvial fills of which the older dates from about 30,000-10,000
yr BP. […] The younger fill is seen in many widely separated areas to cover structures of
Roman age. […] There are two main periods of deposition, the first extending through the
late Pleistocene to the early Holocene, and a later one in Roman and medieval times.”11
Although such disasters a mere 1000 years ago may come as a surprise, paleobotanists
confirm the findings of their geological colleagues:
The “Alnus [Alder] population decline […] spann[ed] large areas of the temperate and
boreal zones in Europe. The data from Poland suggest […] strong indications for the 10th
century. […] A series of abrupt climatic shifts […] caused floods and droughts at the end of
the first millennium CE.”12
Even the largest volcanoes rarely have more than a several-year influence on the earth’s
climate. They cannot produce a global “younger fill.” However, the hurling down of the ejecta
of comets may be envisaged as a trigger for the simultaneous explosion of several volcanoes,
which in the 10th century wiped out entire civilizations.
9
G.R. STOREY, “The population of ancient Rome”, Antiquity, Vol. 71, Issue 274, December 1997, pp. 966 –
978 / 975.
10
R. KRAUTHEIMER, Rom: Schicksal einer Stadt, 312-1308, Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1987, p. 258.
11
L.B. LEOPOLD, C. Vita-Finzi, “Valley Changes in the Mediterranean and Amer-
ica and Their Effects on Humans”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
Vol. 142, No. 1, March 1998), pp. 1-17 / 11; http://eps.berkeley.edu/people/lunaleopold/
(169)%20Valley%20Changes%20in%20the%20Mediterranean%20and%20Americas%20and%20Their%20Effects%20on%20Humans.
pdf.
12
M. LATAŁOWA, “Abrupt Alnus population decline at the end of the first millennium CE in Europe – The
event ecology, possible causes and implications”, The Holocene, Vol. 29, issue: 8, 2019, pp. 1335-1349 /1335;
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0959683619846978.

3
In the 930/40s AD, Iceland’s Eldgjá, Katla, and Vatnajökull erupted.13 They spewed 220
million tons of sulphur dioxide (11 times Pinatubo of 1991) that, through reaction with water
and oxygen, covered the northern hemisphere with 450 million tons of lethal sulfuric acid.
One may ask what this catastrophe did to the Vikings, because their “old rural places of power,
commonly called central places, all met their end […] around the turn of the millennium.”14
There is a distance of more than 6,600 km (4,100 miles) as the crow flies between the
ruined Viking site Vestvågøya (Lofoten) and the Changbaishan volcano, which ejected “100
cubic kilometers of ash and pumice.”15 It is currently dated to the 940s AD, i.e. close to the
enigmatic collapse of China’s Bohei Empire around 930 AD.
More than 11,000 km (6,875 miles) southeast of Vestvågøya, Borobudur on Java, which
had the largest Buddhist complex ever, disappeared sometime after 900 AD under a “mix of
dust, human detritus, soil, crumbling masonry.” 16 Vulcanic ash was not the main culprit.
Non-volcanic agents were also behind the fall of civilizations in central mainland Southeast
Asia: “Annual rainfall […] increased in the mid-800s, fell off in the early 900s, but again rose
sharply c . 950.”17 Thus, there must have been other and much greater forces at work than
just Iceland’s and Java’s famous fire mountains.
III. Archaeological evidence

Aachen, the capital of the Franks, suffered an “exposure to fire [… and] had fallen victim to
a catastrophe [… with a] ’mud or flood layer’ […whose] upper part […] was characterized
by High Medieval sherds [after 930s AD].”18 West-Francia went into its “tenth-century social
and political collapse […with] a number of famines. […] Climate change […] was taken
13
That event has been tied to the Edda’s Völuspá. Cf. UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, “Volcanic eruption
influenced Iceland’s conversion to Christianity”, phys.org, 19-03-2018; https://phys.org/news/2018-03-volcanic-
eruption-iceland-conversion-christianity.html#jCp; retrieved 09-08-2021.
14
D. SKRE, “The Development of Urbanism in Scandinavia“, in S. BRINK, N. PRICE, eds., The Viking World,
London & New York: Routledge, 2012; pp. 3-93 / 86.
15
C. Oppenheimer et al., “Multi-proxy dating the ‘Millennium Eruption’ of Changbaishan to late 946 CE“,
Quaternary Science Reviews, 15-02-2017, pp. 164-171 / 164; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0277379116305017; retrieved 08-08-2021.
16
C. GOMEZ et al, “Borobudur, a basin under volcanic influence: 361,000 years BP to present”, Journal of
Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Vol. 196, Issues 3–4, 1 October 2010, pp. 245-264 / ch. 4.3.
17
V. LIEBERMANN, Strange Parallels: Volume 1. Integration on the Mainland: Southeast Asia in Global
Context, c.800–1830, Cambrigde: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 224.
18
W. SAGE, „Die Ausgrabungen am ‚Hof‘ 1965“, in Cüppers, H. et al., eds., Aquae Granni, Köln & Bonn:
Rheinland & Rudolf Habelt, 1982, pp. 91-100 / 93 f., 85.

4
by many contemporaries to be a sign of the impending apocalypse.”19 On the other side of
the channel, “dark earth layers sealed” 9th century Lundenwic (London area).20 Ravenna,
metropolis and main port of the Ostrogoths, ended up “approximately six miles”21 away from
the Adriatic coast soon after 900 AD.
Poles and Bohemians/Czechs in Eastern Europe did not fare any better:
“There was a rapid, sometimes catastrophic, collapse […] accompanied by the permanent
or temporary depopulation of former areas of settlement. […] The Piast state arose on new
sites, thus beginning [in 966 AD] the thousand-year history of the Polish nation.”22 / Bo-
hemian “castles of regional chieftains were destroyed.”23 / “The most recent burnt horizons
give evidence for a gigantic annihilation that is roughly datable to the time of 900 CE.”24
How fared the Abbasid trading partners of Franks and Slavs? Sometime between 900 and
945 AD, the Arab caliphs lost their power to Iranians. Samarra, abandoned in 944 AD25 at
the latest, disappeared under sand and became the largest ruins complex in the world. “In
Baghdad [2,270 km /1,410 miles away from Aachen], the first half of the tenth century had a
greater frequency of significant climate events and more intense cold than today, and probably
also than the ninth century and the second half of the tenth century.”26
The advanced Aral Basin civilization of Transoxania, 1,300 miles (2,093 km) northeast
of Bagdad, that flourished approximately between the “seventh and early ninth century CE”,
also ended abruptly due to climate change, the cause of which is “little-understood.”27
19
D.M. MILLS, “The Tenth-Century Collapse in West Francia and the Birth of Christian Holy War”, New-
castle University Postgraduate Forum E-Journal, Edition 12, 2015, pp. 24-33; https://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/
pgfnewcastle/files/2015/12/Mills-Tenth-century-collapse.pdf; retrieved 09-08-2021.
20
J. LEARY, “Facets of Tatberht’s Lundenwic: a discussion. Earliest Middle Saxon Activity“, in idem et
al., Tatberht’s Lundenwic: Archaeological Excavations in Middle Saxon London, London: Pre-Construct Ar-
chaeology Limited Monograph No. 2; 2004; http://www.pre-construct.com/Publications/Monograph-downloads/
Monograph-2-Lundenwic.pdf, pp. 141-145 / 145; retrieved 10-08-2021.
21
H. HOPWOOD-PHILIPS, The Walls of Ravenna”, 21-02-2020; https://www.byzantineambassador.com/post/
the-walls-of-ravenna; retrieved 08-08-2021.
22
A. BUKO, Archeoligia Polski., Warszawa: Wydawnictwo TRIO, 2011, p. 464.
23
P. SOMMER, “Der frühe böhmische Staat und die Christianisierung seiner Gesellschaft“, in HEINRICH-
TAMÁSKA, O. et al., eds., Christanisation of Europe: Archaeological Evidence, Regensburg: Schell & Steiner,
2012; pp. 261-273.
24
L. POLÁČEK, “Großmährisches Reich“, in Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, Berlin & New
York: Walter de Gruyter, vol. 13, 1999, p. 82.
25
R.B. LINDSEY, “Ernst Emil Herzfeld (1879–1948) in Samarra“, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, May
2016, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/herz/hd_herz.htm; retrieved 08-08-2021.
26
F. DOMÍNGUEZ-CASTRO et al., ”How useful could Arabic documentary sources be for reconstructing past
climate?”, 27 February 2012; http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.835/full; retrieved 08-08-2021.
27
T. YARLAGADDA, “Welcome to Transoxania. New analysis rewrites the story of this ancient
civilization’s demise”, Inverse, 08-04-2021; https://www.inverse.com/science/new-analysis-rewrites-ancient-

5
The reader may object that all these destructions took place in Europe and Asia. Why
should this have been due to something global or even cosmic? Indeed, so far only the younger
alluvial fill and Corvey’s comets concern global events. Let us therefore take a look at America
to round off the argument.
Already two decades ago, over 80 explanations 28 tried to shed light on the Classic Maya
Collapse that occurred between 900 and 950 AD. A drought theory now has most adherents
“The severity and briskness of this particular drought is unique. […] The presence of a large
amount of Maya clay, a colluvial deposit found on lake bottoms, was believed to have been
the result of swidden farming on steep slopes.”29
Mayan farmers supposedly didn’t notice in due time how their soil was slipping away.
However, if that slipping belonged to the younger alluvial fill, it would be necessary to search
anew for a force that could cause trans-continental earth movements. We would then be back
at the comets.30
Acknowledgments
- Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. rer. pol. emeritus Gunnar Heinsohn (*1943; Heinsohn-gunnar.eu).
-The native German author thanks Clark WHELTON/New York for editorial assistance.
civilizations-demise/amp; retrieved 08-08-2021.

28
R.B. GILL, The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life, and Death, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2000, 371.
29
K. ARMSTRONG, “The Classic Maya Collapse: The Importance of Ecological Prosperity”, Earth Common
Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2014, Pp..1-2 / 1; http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/955/the-classic-maya-collapse-
the-importance-of-ecological-prosperity; retrieved 09-08-2021.
30
A highly speculative proposal for the identification of these comets has been made by the au-
thor in 2020. [“Did Comet Heinrich-Swift-Tuttle terminate Roman and global civilization?”, in q-
mag.org [Quantavolution Magazine]; https://www.q-mag.org/did-comet-heinrich-swift-tuttle-terminate-roman-
and-global-civilization.html; 2020.] Since this letter is concerned only with evidence for the 10th century col-
lapse, discussion of its cause, while important, is out of place here. Even if the author’s comet speculation is
proven wrong, there still remain to be solved the mysteries of all the 10th century calamities.

6
Distance between Viking Vestvågøya (Norway; ruined in 10th c.) and simultaneously
collapsed civilizations of Classic Maya (Yucatan: 8393 km/5215 miles) [https://www.
distancecalculator.net/

7
Distance between Viking Vestvågøya (Norway; ruined in 10th c.) and simultane-
ously collapsed civilization of Borobudur (Java: 11064 km/6875miles) [https://www.
distancecalculator.net/


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ACADEMIA Letters

THE DISASTROUS TENTH CENTURY: CATACLYSM

I. Reports written shortly after the Cataclysm

Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

II. Geological evidence

Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

III. Archaeological evidence

Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

civilizations-demise/amp; retrieved 08-08-2021.

Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

Corresponding Author: Gunnar Heinsohn, danzigheinsohn@gmail.com

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