Professor Mike Baillie of the Palaeoecology Centre, The Queen's University of Belfast, will look at links between the weather and calamitous social events during the fifth and sixth centuries AD. Irish oaks first gave a clue that there had been a severe global climate event around AD 540. In trying to find out what caused this global environmental downturn, with associated famines and plague it became clear just how thin the historical record is around that time. This led to wondering just why we know so little about Saint Patrick. Everything about the fifth century, that is, Patrick's century, was written down sometime after 540; apparently there are no contemporary Irish records. So, did the 540 event wipe out the earlier records?
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Last Revised: 2010 February 22nd |