Climate History
Published: October 14, 2014
Updated: April 2, 2023
Author: C. Michael Hogan
Editor:
Human History and Earth Temperature
Looking back 10,000 years, it is clear that all three eras where temperatures were higher than today were periods of great crop productivity, low disease rates and great cultural advance. Conversely the two intervening cold periods of the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age presented epochs of crop failure, high disease rate and cultural pause.
Prehistory
We lived in caves and were overwhelmed by an icy glacial ridden environment for most of our species' existence. Only in the most recent 10,000 years did natural causes begin to melt the ice enough where agricultural and village existence replaced the harsh cold hunter/gatherer culture of mankind. The chief benefits of this natural warming were elongation of the growing season, and more time available for building and farming, with less time needed for wood gathering and keeping warm from stoking our firepits.
Ancient History
There was a spike in Earth warming approximately five to eight thousand years before present, which, of course, was entirely due to natural factors such as Earth orbital, Earth axis tilt and solar intensity fluctuations. This was the era of the first complex farming and city building, as typified by the Indus River Valley in India. This period was decidedly warmer than present, and was accompanied by an epiphany of wheat production and architectural flourishing, unlike any prior era. This warm period was within the Neolithic Age, and brought the first widespread art, pottery jewelry and writing awakening to human civilization, notably leaving extant artifacts found in China, India, Egypt, Crete, Peru, and the Orkney Islands.
The next remarkable warming occurred between 300 BC and 500 AD. In Western Civilization, important documents and artifacts are broadly evident for the rise of the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. In China, the Han Dynasty appeared, credited with the invention of paper, the rudder and an explosion of magnificent sculpture. In the Americas, the Mayan Empire emerged, bringing exceptional architecture, astronomy, extant inscripted stellae and exquisite fashion. Each of these incredible civilizations had subsided as the next cooling period arrived bringing the Dark Ages. This transition point was also marked by an amazing shift in the location of the Earth’s magnetic North Pole, which had moved all the way to Japan.(Mulholland, 2021)
The Dark Ages are most well known for their decline in art, literature, science and order. However, the chief calamity of that period was the decline in agricultural productivity and the inception of the Justinianic Plague, the first pandemic plague in recorded world history; this contagious disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The disease afflicted the entire Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Near East, severely affecting the Sasanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire and its capital, Constantinople.(Arrizabalaga, 2010) The plague is named for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (reigned 527–565 AD) who, according to the historian Procopius, contracted the disease at the height of the pandemic which killed about a twenty percent of the population in the imperial capital. The contagion arrived in Roman Egypt in 541 AD, spread around the Mediterranean Sea and persisted throughout Northern Europe and the Arabian Peninsula, until 549 AD. The Mayan Empire went extinct in this era to echo the Americas response to the cold. The Dark Ages were also punctuated with considerable extended droughts.
This was also a period of architectural decay, when grand Roman palaces and splendid Iron Age forts of Western Europe (built during the Roman Warming Period) went into decay, in a period of pronounced disease (notably the Justinian Plague ( Harper, 2017)), reduced crops and considerable tribal warfare.
Then, from totally natural causes, the Medieval Warm Period rescued humanity. The warmer climate and elongated growing season produced plentiful crops, causing hunger and malnutrition of the Dark Ages to subside. The architectural renaissance gave us an extent of art and sculpture never seen before.Amazing engineering and architectural advances allowed perfection of barrel vaulted ceilings, refinements of arches, fireplaces and chimneys. Warfare was lessened and architecture reached monumental achievements.
The Little Ice Age
Circa 1350 AD the Earth entered a very cold five century long era. Much like the Dark Ages, massive crop failures led to a spike in mortality from famine and malnutrition.(Post, 1984) Moreover, The Black Death exceeded deaths in the Dark Ages. At least 200 million people died from this plague. Scientists confirmed that the cause of the Black Death was Yersinia pestis, the same cause as the Justinianic Plague. Incessant regional wars occurred, such as the protracted conflicts between the English and the Scots.
See Also
References
- Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome (2017) Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, xiii + 417 pp, ISBN: 978-0-691-16683-4.
- Bernard Mulholland (2021) ‘’Can archaeology inform the climate change debate?’’ Academia Letters https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4385
- John D. Post (1984). "Climatic Variability and the European Mortality Wave of the Early 1740s". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 15 (1): 1–30. doi:10.2307/203592. JSTOR 203592. PMID 11617361.
Citation
C. Michael Hogan (2014) Climate History Encyclopedia of Earth. national Council for Science and Environment. Washington DC
