Atmospheric Disruption : Archaeological Revelation

"To find evidence that a volcano on [the] other side of the Earth erupted and effectively contributed to the demise of the Romans and the Egyptians and the rise of the Roman Empire is fascinating."
"It certainly shows how interconnected the world was even 2,000 years ago."
"People have been speculating about this for many years, so it's exciting to be able to provide some answers."
"Many are of the belief that through such climate Earth modelling, we can slow down climate change by replicating volcanic eruptions."
"The sulphur emitted from the volcano creates a layer around the Earth, allowing it to cool and protect it against rapid climate change."
Joe McConnell, Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada

"The tephra match doesn't get any better."
"It was very clear that the source of the 43 BCE fallout in the ice was the Okmok 11 eruption."
Gill Plunkett, tephra specialist, Queen's University Belfast

Cicero’s death in 42 B.C.E. marks the end of the Roman Republic. Did a volcano hasten its fall?

© The Holbarn Archive/Bridgeman Images

Verification by way of a new study revealing an ancient volcanic event reaching across the planet to impact on the atmosphere over 8,000 kilometres distant from the eruption, came through the auspices of a new study led by Joe McConnell and an international team of scientists and historians whose analytical conclusion was stamped as proof-positive of what historians had suspected. A volcano had been the cause of extreme cold in the Mediterranean region coinciding with the time of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Science, revealing that Mount Okmok's eruption in Alaska in 43 BCE had been the cause of the extreme temperature plunge leading to crop failure, famine, disease, and finally, the fall of the Roman Republic and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, which in turn led to the rise of the Roman Empire.

The team of scientists discovered their evidence through analyzing volcanic ash (tephra). Last year the initial discovery was made by Dr. McConnell and Swiss researcher Michael Sigi when they happened to notice a well-preserved layer of tephra in an ice core sample at the Ice Core Laboratory of the Desert Research Institute. Ice core samples from Greenland and Russia drilled in the 1990s were analyzed and evidence found of two eruptions; one in 45 BCE the other in 43 BCE.

Ice core sample to support findings of the Roman Republic demise. Joe McConnell

It was the latter that had been responsible for widespread volcanic fallout over the course of the following two years, found in all the ice core records. Experts from Germany, the U.K., Alaska, Switzerland, the U.S. and Ireland gathered evidence along with Dr. McConnell from across the world which included climate data from tree rings in Scandinavia, the California White Mountains, Austria and a Chinese cave formation, in confirmation of the team's findings.

There were but five volcanic eruptions in the given time frame, according to researchers, and the tephra was compared to samples from all five of the volcanoes, found to best match one of the largest eruptions in the past 2,500 years: Okmok 11 in Alaska. The findings confirm reports from ancient resources, noted classical archaeologist Andrew Wilson of the University of Oxford:

"In the Mediterranean region, these wet and extremely cold conditions during the agriculturally important spring through autumn seasons probably reduced crop yields and compounded supply problems during the ongoing political upheavals of the period."

Volcanologists had studied Okmok for 70 to 80 years, explained Dr.McConnell, no one knowing it was the volcano that linked to the succession of the Roman Republic by the Roman Empire.

Detailed records of past explosive volcanic eruptions are archived in the Greenland ice sheet and accessed through deep-drilling operations. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen