Tree Rings by Brian Doswell (reading like a writer TXT) 📖

in search of food and wives in either order of priority. Many came and went; many stayed to establish kingdoms of their own on the eastern coast of the fertile western isles. These raiders kept records of their travels in order that they might return again and so, in time, the chronicles began again, while their sagas that had passed from fireside to fireside became the stuff of myth and legend.

Thus, dendrochronology, a potentially exact science, is able, for just a moment, to draw aside the curtain over the dark ages to reveal, just a glimpse, of what can only be a fictional story in the gloom behind.

Sadly the 6th century AD produced no poets, no chroniclers and no works of art. Perhaps those who lived through had no time for these things in their struggle for survival. Perhaps we will never know.


Post script:

1. So great was the impact on civilisation of the eruptions of 542AD that petty kings were to continue to fight wars over territory for more than another thousand years until the cost of battle became so great that the petty, transient kings, presidents and emperors turned their attentions to fighting over ideologies.

2. The role of women as chattels in society continued, essentially unchanged, until the late 20th century.

3. The ingrained fear of death and disaster falling from the skies created an environment in which the power of divinity became so overwhelmingly strong that it enabled enormous stone churches to be built without care for cost while the people continued to live in mud huts.

4. The volcanic eruptions of 542AD will not be the last in the evolving structure of the planet earth.

5. Remember, this is just science fiction . . . .

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Publication Date: 05-05-2010

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