You could do a lot better than that. It may have been the worst year to be alive in human history. The cold, bleak times that a person lived in around the globe kept on sucking for many years to come.
It seems that it might not have been the worst thing for the Ancestral Puebloan communities. The darkness of this brief, global ice age might have heralded a bright new day for their culture.
A study conducted by a team of archeologists and anthropologists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Colorado State University in the US has found signs that the population spread across the Four Corners region not only recovered from a catastrophic climate shift in the mid 6th century.
The Byzantine historian Procopius made a note of the time in his account of the Persian Wars in order to get a sense of how hard it was to travel across the world.
"For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed."
It appears that the sun-shielding fog is the result of a series of volcanic eruptions in the Americas that caused ash to accumulate in the atmosphere and turn summer into winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
A good portion of the Roman population would fall under a plague like no other. This time in El Salvador, there was even more ash to top it all off.
Life in North America was not much better. A drop in temperature and precipitation can be seen in tree rings from northern Arizona.
Despite the challenging times, the Ancient Puebloans would go on to develop a rich, complex culture that would thrive for centuries.
To gain a better understanding of how the founding agrarian communities coped with a sudden and harsh climate shift, the researchers collected hundreds of food materials and their radiocarbon dates from all over the region.
The ages, densities, and locations of the agricultural products reflected a story already familiar to archaeologists, of a widespread population practicing farming techniques that suited their local conditions.
The land was a patchwork of foragers and farmers. Some of them were growing more substantial crops like maize and beans to supplement their diet.
Population growth began to limit the amount of farmland available by the 6th century. By the middle of the century, when opportunities presented themselves, kin groups were sitting tight and collaborating with their neighbors in more complex social groups.
The researchers argued that there was a strong link between the climate changes and the cultural mixing in their database.
The team argues that demographic and social change transformed Ancestral Pueblo societies during the late 6th and early 7th centuriesCE, but that the consequences of extreme cold at the beginning of the interval are best understood.
The hardship of the year 536CE put the mix of emerging communities across the southwest to the test. They could reorganize and develop socio- political ties. Others didn't succeed. The years from hell gave rise to cultural practices that brought people together and allowed them to share their experiences during tough times.
An ancient farming community that occupied the Cedar Mesa and Grand Gulch was known to raise turkeys. This practice was common across the southwest region, indicating a push to find new sources of food.
Good times returned after a few generations as the skies cleared once more. The Ancient Puebloans established a rich, resilient civilization that would last centuries.
It wasn't all rainbows and turkey dinners. With sedentary lifestyles and complex political systems come their own challenges and risks.
The Hopi culture has traces of their farming practices.
We might take heed of the resilience the Ancient Puebloans found in coming together to share knowledge, because of our own years of hardship. Hope we can emerge stronger in the years to come.
This research was published in a book.
