...
Post A Reply
my profile
|
directory
login
|
register
|
search
|
faq
|
forum home
»
EgyptSearch Forums
»
Deshret
»
Europe's little known mini-ice age in history
» Post A Reply
Post A Reply
Login Name:
Password:
Message Icon:
Message:
HTML is not enabled.
UBB Code™ is enabled.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Mindovermatter: [QB] Mike and Xyman, you are kidding yourself if you think this major climatic event did not play a role in the population replacement of Black Europeans by Eurasian white migrants from Eurasia during the fall of the Roman empire: Take a look: http://www.ancientdestructions.com/greenland-once-a-viking-paradise/ [IMG]http://www.ancientdestructions.com/media/Greenland-Once-a-Viking-Paradise-300x216.jpg[/IMG] [QUOTE][b] THE “LITTLE ICE AGE” IMPACTED EUROPE WITH SUDDEN AND VICIOUS RESULTS! USING ITS WEAPONS, OF PLAGUE, FAMINE AND CONTROVERSIALLY EARTHQUAKE, IT REDUCED THE POPULATION OF EUROPE BY AROUND 30 – 50 PERCENT. THE VIRULENCE AND DEATH TOLL OF THE 1348 AD PLAGUE IS TOTALLY UNMATCHED BY MODERN EXAMPLES! FURTHER THE WORLD MEGA FAMINE OF 1315 AD, DUE TO BOTH WEATHER AND PESTILENCE, WAS CATASTROPHIC. DOCUMENTATION OF CANNIBALISM AND INFANT ABANDONMENT WERE COMMON. THE RELENTLESS TEMPERATURE DROPS COMBINED WITH ERRATIC WEATHER ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPLAIN BUT MANKIND HAD NO HAND IN ITS INCEPTION. WHAT FORCES OF NATURE CAUSED THIS CATASTROPHIC SCENARIO? GREENLAND IS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF DEATH AND ABANDONMENT. LET’S TRAVEL BACK IN TIME AND SEE WHAT HAPPENED! Although the “Little Ice Age” is a scientific reconstruction it covers a period when there was a significant and chaotic down turn in climate, compared to the present era. It is classified into four periods from around 1280 AD to 1850 AD . These erratic periods science records as the Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton weather minima. This dramatic deterioration was not only cooler, wetter and windier on average but vastly more chaotic. These are prime ingredients for famine and curiously plague. The “Little Ice Age” followed a period known as the “Medieval maximum” around 900AD – 1280 AD, which copious records reveal, was much warmer than modern times. For instance grapevines grew in the area of today’s shivering Wales! This was generally a period of prosperity for civilizations. There was a large increase in world population and an era of colonial expansion. During the years 800 AD-1200 AD, Greenland and Iceland were settled by the Vikings. The “Medieval Warm Period” allowed this great migration to flourish. Drift ice at later dates posed the greatest hazard to sailors but reports of drift ice in old records do not appear until the thirteenth century. http://www.mungoflix.com/mungoflix/2014/01/29/greenland-once-a-viking-paradise-d21/ GREENLAND WAS SETTLED WHEN ERIC ASVALDSSON WAS BANISHED FROM ICELAND FOR KILLING TWO MEN. HE CONVERTED HIS MISFORTUNE INTO THE FOUNDATION OF A NEW COLONY. THE INITIAL SETTLEMENT WAS ON A DEEP FIORD ON THE SOUTH-WESTERN COAST (NEXT TO TODAY’S ARCTIC CANADA). CONDITIONS WERE SIMILAR TO ICELAND, ITSELF THEN ENJOYING A WARM TEMPERATE CLIMATE. CHRONICLERS EVEN MENTION SWIMMING IN GREENLAND’S FJORDS! TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE TODAY. THE BONES OF CATTLE, SHEEP, PIGS AND GOATS COLLECTED FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES REVEAL THE EXISTENCE OF LARGE FARMS WITH LARGE PRODUCTIVE PASTURES IN WHAT IS NOW OFTEN SNOW COVERED WASTELAND. ERIC DREW THOUSANDS TO THESE THREE NEW AREAS. THE GREENLAND VIKINGS LIVED MOSTLY ON DAIRY PRODUCE AND MEAT, PRIMARILY FROM COWS. BEFORE 1300 AD TRADE WITH EUROPEAN COUNTRIES WAS BRISK WITH MANY SHIPS PLYING TO AND FRO TRADING TIMBER, IRON, AND SALT, CORN IN EXCHANGE FOR FURS, SKINS, BUTTER, CHEESE AND WOOL. EXPANSION WAS IN FACT PROLIFIC ENOUGH FOR THE POPE TO SEND A BISHOP TO GREENLAND. TODAY ONLY RARE EARTH EXPORTS TO CHINA ARE VIABLE! THE “MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD” PERIOD OF WARMER TIMES WITH A PREDICTABLE CLIMATE. CROPS FLOURISHED AND THE HUMAN RACE MULTIPLIED. GERMANY RECORDED VINEYARD GROWTH 700 FOOT HIGHER THAN AT PRESENT. TEMPERATURES AVERAGED 2 DEGREES CENTIGRADE WARMER THAN NOW. CHINA WAS 3 DEGREES CENTIGRADE WARMER. OUR WORLD WAS A DIFFERENT PLACE! IAN PLIMER USES EVIDENCE FROM TREE RING GROWTH, ICE CORES, SEDIMENT CORES, GLACIER RETRENCHMENT, SEA ICE REPORTS PLUS A WEALTH OF ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE! THE “LITTLE ICE AGE” DRAMATICALLY CHANGED THIS PICTURE WITH THE GROWTH OF GLACIERS DOWN MOUNTAINS IN BOTH EUROPE AND CHINA. GROWTH OF SEA ICE, SEVERE AND PROLIFIC STORMS, HIGH RAINFALL AND COLDER ERRATIC CLIMATES BECAME RELENTLESS. THICK SEA ICE, 3 MILES WIDE, SOMETIMES BORDERED THE ENGLISH CHANNEL. IT WAS A PERIOD WHEN MAJOR PLAGUES AND FAMINES RAVAGED THE WORLD. CHAOTIC WEATHER, I WILL ARGUE, ARE LARGELY DUE TO COSMIC INFLUENCES. THESE ARE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC FORCES! THIS OVERRIDING “HARMONIC” INFLUENCES SUNSPOTS, CMES, SOLAR FLARES, COMETS, PLANETS AND DRIVES THE SOLAR SYSTEM? CONSTANT CHANGE WITHIN THIS “HARMONIC”, NOT UNIFORMITY, IS THE NORM. WHAT WE SEE IN TODAY’S WORLD IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED IN OTHER ERAS. These constantly changing cosmic influences caused WESTERN EUROPE TO EXPERIENCE A GENERAL COOLING OF THE CLIMATE BETWEEN THE YEARS 1150 AD AND 1460 AD AND EVEN COLDER CLIMATE BETWEEN 1560 AD AND 1850 AD. DIRE CONSEQUENCES SHOCKED ITS PEOPLES. NOT ONLY WAS IT COLDER, WETTER AND WINDIER BUT NOTABLY ERRATIC AND OUT OF SEASON! THE COLDER WEATHER IMPACTED AGRICULTURE, HEALTH, ECONOMICS, SOCIAL STRIFE AND EMIGRATION! INCREASED GLACIATIONS, MULTIPLE SEVERE STORMS AND MAJOR FLOODS AND WINDS DEVASTATED SOCIETY! OLD SEA LOGS AND CITY RECORDS REVEAL ALL. BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE VIKINGS IN GREENLAND? BY THE YEAR 1300 AD MORE THAN 3,000 COLONISTS LIVED ON 300 FARMS SCATTERED ALONG THE WEST COAST OF GREENLAND. AROUND 1200 AD DRIFT ICE FORCED SHIPS FURTHER SOUTH TO REACH THE SETTLEMENTS! ON THE SOUTH WEST COAST ALONGSIDE CANADA. In the 1300’s Bardsson wrote: [i]“FROM SNEFELSNESS IN ICELAND, TO GREENLAND, THE SHORTEST WAY: TWO DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS. SAILING DUE WEST. IN THE SEA THERE ARE REEFS CALLED GUNBIERNERSHIER. THAT WAS THE OLD ROUTE, BUT NOW THE ICE IS COME FROM THE NORTH, SO CLOSE TO THE REEFS THAT NONE CAN SAIL BY THE OLD ROUTE WITHOUT RISKING HIS LIFE.”[/i] BY 1500 AD THE POPE COMPLAINED THAT NO BISHOP HAD BEEN ABLE TO VISIT GREENLAND FOR 80 YEARS ON ACCOUNT OF THE ICE. HIS GREENLAND CONGREGATION WAS ALREADY DEAD! THE GRAVES AND RUINS SHOW THAT THE COLD AND LACK OF NOURISHMENT TURNED THE AVERAGE GREENLANDER FROM THEIR 5’7″ TO A SEVERELY CRIPPLED, TWISTED AND DISEASED DWARF LIKE 5′ BY 1400 AD. Both the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis put on dramatic displays when there is a coronal mass ejection. IN ADDITION BOTH PARKER AND LOCKWOOD WERE ABLE TO TIE SUNSPOT MAXIMA AND MINIMA INTO SOLAR LUMINOSITY AND ISOTOPE CONCENTRATIONS! THE SOLAR FLARE AND CME WHICH ATTENDED THE ” CARRINGTON EVENT” OF 1859 IS A GLARING EXAMPLE OF A MASSIVE SOLAR INUNDATION THAT WAS ACCOMPANIED BY THE WORST STORM OF THE 19TH CENTURY. IT APPEARS THAT THE SUNSPOT ELEVEN YEAR CYCLE IS ALSO LINKED INTO THE SEVERITY OF HURRICANES AND DROUGHTS. THIS IS THE THINKING OF THE U.S NATIONAL CENTRE FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH (NCAR). BAKER FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND BELIEVES IT IS A VEHICLE TO PREDICT TIMES OF DROUGHT. HIS TRACKING OF SUNSPOTS SINCE RECORDS WERE KEPT IN 1876 AD SHOWS THAT SWITCHES IN THE SUN’S POLES AND MAGNETIC FIELD EVERY ELEVEN YEARS CONSISTENTLY EFFECT AUSTRALIA’S WEATHER. COMPILATION OF SUNSPOT RECORDS, WHICH HAVE BEEN KEPT FOR FOUR CENTURIES, FIT IN WELL WITH TIMES OF DROUGHT. AT TIMES OF PROSPERITY THE SUNSPOT ACTIVITY IS HIGH. GRAIN PRICES ARE LOW. AT LOW SUNSPOT ACTIVITY WE HAVE CROP FAILURE AND HIGH GRAIN PRICES. DROUGHT VARIES OVER A FULL TWENTY TWO YEAR CYCLE WITH AN ELEVEN YEAR MAXIMA TO MINIMA TURNAROUND TIME. THERE MUST BE A FURTHER FACTOR THAT DRIVES THE WHOLE SUNSPOT CYCLE UP AND DOWN AND THIS IS WHAT CAUSES DEEPER AND COLDER MAXIMA AND MINIMA TO CAUSE A “LITTLE ICE AGE”. It demands a cosmic cause! Historian Jean de Venette wrote a curious piece that may provide a clue to this unsolved climate mystery: THE ICELAND VIKINGS FARED LITTLE BETTER AS ITS POPULATION SHRUNK FROM 80,000 AROUND 1100 AD TO 38,000 BY 1850 AD AT THE END OF THE “LITTLE ICE AGE”! BY THE TIME COLUMBUS SET SAIL IN 1492 AD, GREENLAND WAS “DEAD” AND ICELAND WAS STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE. THE “LITTLE ICE AGE” MINIMA WAS A HARSH REALITY. BUT WHAT WERE THE CAUSES? CERTAINLY NOT HIGHER CO2 LEVELS FROM MANKIND’S PUNY EFFORTS! LET’S EXAMINE THE PART SUN SPOT MINIMA AND MAXIMA PLAY ON THE CLIMATE STAGE AS WE TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE EFFECT THESE CYCLES HAVE ON FAMINE AND PLAGUE. SUNSPOT ACTIVITY AND THEREFORE SOLAR FLUX ARE AN INGREDIENT IN CONTROLLING OUR CLIMATE. FLUX IS THE EMISSION OF VARIOUS POSITIVE IONS AND ELECTRONS EMITTED BY THE SUN THAT MEDIATE COSMIC RAYS AND THUS, AS HENRI SVENSMARK MAINTAINS, WEATHER AND PRECIPITATION. COSMIC RAYS INTERACT WITH THE EARTH’S MAGNETOSPHERE. THUS DRIER, WETTER, WINDIER AND HOTTER OR COLDER TIMES. Both the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis put on dramatic displays when there is a coronal mass ejection. In addition Both Parker and Lockwood were able to tie sunspot maxima and minima into solar luminosity and isotope concentrations! THE SOLAR FLARE AND CME WHICH ATTENDED THE ” CARRINGTON EVENT” OF 1859 IS A GLARING EXAMPLE OF A MASSIVE SOLAR INUNDATION THAT WAS ACCOMPANIED BY THE WORST STORM OF THE 19TH CENTURY. IT APPEARS THAT THE SUNSPOT ELEVEN YEAR CYCLE IS ALSO LINKED INTO THE SEVERITY OF HURRICANES AND DROUGHTS. THIS IS THE THINKING OF THE U.S NATIONAL CENTRE FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH (NCAR). BAKER FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND BELIEVES IT IS A VEHICLE TO PREDICT TIMES OF DROUGHT. HIS TRACKING OF SUNSPOTS SINCE RECORDS WERE KEPT IN 1876 AD SHOWS THAT SWITCHES IN THE SUN’S POLES AND MAGNETIC FIELD EVERY ELEVEN YEARS CONSISTENTLY EFFECT AUSTRALIA’S WEATHER. COMPILATION OF SUNSPOT RECORDS, WHICH HAVE BEEN KEPT FOR FOUR CENTURIES, FIT IN WELL WITH TIMES OF DROUGHT. AT TIMES OF PROSPERITY THE SUNSPOT ACTIVITY IS HIGH. GRAIN PRICES ARE LOW. AT LOW SUNSPOT ACTIVITY WE HAVE CROP FAILURE AND HIGH GRAIN PRICES. DROUGHT VARIES OVER A FULL TWENTY TWO YEAR CYCLE WITH AN ELEVEN YEAR MAXIMA TO MINIMA TURNAROUND TIME. THERE MUST BE A FURTHER FACTOR THAT DRIVES THE WHOLE SUNSPOT CYCLE UP AND DOWN AND THIS IS WHAT CAUSES DEEPER AND COLDER MAXIMA AND MINIMA TO CAUSE A “LITTLE ICE AGE”. IT DEMANDS A COSMIC CAUSE! Historian Jean de Venette wrote a curious piece that may provide a clue to this unsolved climate mystery: [i]“IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST, 1348 AD, AFTER VESPERS WHEN THE SUN WAS BEGINNING TO SET, A BIG AND VERY BRIGHT STAR APPEARED ABOVE PARIS, TOWARD THE WEST. IT DID NOT SEEM, AS STARS USUALLY DO, TO BE VERY HIGH ABOVE OUR HEMISPHERE BUT RATHER VERY NEAR. AS THE SUN SET AND NIGHT CAME ON, THIS STAR DID NOT SEEM TO ME OR TO MANY OTHER FRIARS WHO WERE WATCHING IT TO MOVE FROM ONE PLACE. AT LENGTH, WHEN NIGHT HAD COME, THIS BIG STAR, TO THE AMAZEMENT OF ALL OF US WHO WERE WATCHING, BROKE INTO MANY DIFFERENT RAYS AND, AS IT SHED THESE RAYS OVER PARIS TOWARD THE EAST, TOTALLY DISAPPEARED AND WAS COMPLETELY ANNIHILATED. WHETHER IT WAS A COMET OR NOT, WHETHER IT WAS COMPOSED OF AIRY EXHALATIONS AND WAS FINALLY RESOLVED INTO VAPOUR, I LEAVE TO THE DECISION OF ASTRONOMERS. IT IS, HOWEVER, POSSIBLE THAT IT WAS A PRESAGE OF THE AMAZING PESTILENCE TO COME, WHICH, IN FACT, FOLLOWED VERY SHORTLY IN PARIS AN THROUGHOUT FRANCE AND ELSEWHERE”.[/i] Comets throughout history have been portrayed as predictors of doom. Bright comets are often, historically, in conjunction with plague, famine and earthquakes. Is this mere coincidence? The dramatic electrical discharge of comet shoemaker levy 9 as it split into 23 sections and assaulted Jupiter is a landmark in modern cosmology. THE IMPACT OF SOME COMETS INTO THE SUN CAUSING INCREDIBLY LARGE CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS ( CMES) IS EQUALLY HARD TO EXPLAIN. COULD COMETS HAVE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC EFFECTS ON WEATHER, LIFE AND THE GEOLOGY OF THE EARTH. IT IS STILL A MYSTERY BUT ONE WE ARE GETTING CLOSER TO UNDERSTAND. Peter Mungo Jupp [/b][/QUOTE]HOW THE **** CAN YOU NOT CONSIDER THIS AS A MAJOR EVENT THAT PAVED THE WAY FOR POPULATION REPLACEMENT OF BLACK EUROPEANS BY ALBINO EURASIANS WHEN EVEN THE ALBINO EUROPEANS ARE WRITING STUFF LIKE THIS ABOUT THIS EVENT! THEY EVEN WRITE BOOKS LIKE THIS TO ILLUSTRATE HOW IMPORTANT AND DECISIVE THIS WAS IN THE DEMOGRAPHIC REPLACEMENT OF EUROPE WHEN THIS HAPPENED! http://www.amazon.com/Little-Ice-Age-Climate-1300-1850/dp/0465022723/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=51hdxT54NVL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR210%2C320_&refRID=0SYWHNT8JFAEGFD2QDPT [QUOTE][b] The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history, how this altered climate affected historical events, and what it means for today's global warming. Building on research that has only recently confirmed that the world endured a 500year cold snap, renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold influenced familiar events from Norse exploration to the settlement of North America to the Industrial Revolution. This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in history, climate, and how they interact.[/b][/QUOTE]Review: [QUOTE][b] "Climate change is the ignored player on the historical stage," writes archeologist Brian Fagan. But it shouldn't be, not if we know what's good for us. We can't judge what future climate change will mean unless we know something about its effects in the past: "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." And Fagan's story of the last thousand years, centered on the "Little Ice Age," reminds us of what we could end up repeating: flood, fire, and famine--acts of God exacerbated by acts of man. For all that he takes a broad--a very broad--view of European history, Fagan's writing is laced with human faces, fascinating anecdotes, and a gift for the telling detail that makes history live, very much in the style of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. When Fagan talks about the voyages of Basque fishermen to American shores (probably landing before Columbus sailed), he puts in the taste of dried cod and the terrifying suddenness of fogs on the Grand Banks. The Great Fire of London, what it was like when the Dutch dikes broke, the Irish Potato Famine, the year without a summer, ice fairs on the Thames, and volcanoes in the South Pacific--Fagan makes history a ripping yarn in which we are all actors, on a stage that has always been changing. --Mary Ellen Curtin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly The role of climatic change in human history remains open to question, due in large part to scant data. Fagan, professor of archeology at UC Santa Barbara, contributes substantively to the increasingly urgent debate. Contending with the dearth of accurate weather records from a few parts of the world, for little over a century Fagan (Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Ni?o and the Fate of Civilizations) draws discerning connections between an amazing array of disparate sources: ice cores, tree rings, archeological digs, tithing records that show dates of wine harvests, cloud types depicted in portraits and landscapes over time. He details human adaptation to meteorologic events for example, the way the Dutch, in the face of rising sea levels, engineered sea walls and thus increased their farmland by a third between the late 16th and early 19th centuries. Explanations of phenomena like the North Atlantic Oscillation (which "governs... the rain that falls on Europe") lucidly advance Fagan's conviction that, though science cannot decide if the current 150-year warming trend (with one slight interruption) is part of a normal cycle, we should err on the side of caution. His study of the potential for widespread famine further bolsters his nonpartisan argument for a serious consideration of rapid climatic shifts. But Fagan doesn't proffer a sociopolitical polemic. He notes that we lack the political will to effect change, but refrains from speculating on future environmental policy. Illus. not seen by PW. (Mar. 1) Forecast: This topical book will appeal to fans of John McPhee, as well as to science and history scholars. With publicity targeted at the coasts (author tour in L.A., San Francisco and N.Y.; a talk at N.Y.'s Museum of Natural History), a forthcoming review in Discovery magazine and Fagan's enthusiastic readership, it should sell well.[/b][/QUOTE]Reader comments: [QUOTE][b] _The Little Ice Age_ by Brian Fagan is a fascinating, very readable, and well researched book on the science and history of a particular period of climatic history, the "Little Ice Age," which lasted approximately from 1300 to 1850. Despite the name, the Little Ice Age (a term coined by glacial geologist Francois Matthes in 1939, a term he used in a very informal way and without capitalized letters) was not a time of unrelenting cold. Rather, it was an era of dramatic climatic shifts, cycles of intensely cold winters and easterly winds alternating with periods of heavy spring and early summer rains, mild winters, and frequent and often devastating Atlantic storms as well as periods of droughts, light northeasterly winds, and intense summer heat. The Little Ice Age was "an endless zigzag of climatic shifts," few lasting more than 25 years or so. Nevertheless the climate of the time proved difficult and overall was uniformly cooler, often considerably so, than the time before and afterwards. The Little Ice Age was an era when there used to be winter fairs on the frozen River Thames during the time of King Charles II, one that produced the great gales that devastated the Spanish Armada in 1588, was when George Washington's Continental Army endured a brutal winter in Valley Forge in 1777-1778, when pack ice surrounded Iceland for much of the year, when Alpine glaciers destroyed villages and advanced kilometers from their present positions, when hundreds of poor died of hypothermia regularly every winter in London late into the 19th century. It was also a time of massive rainy periods, such as the immense rains of 1315 and 1316 that helped stop the armies of French King Louis X from crushing the rebellious Flemings and produced an immense famine as crops couldn't survive the near unending rain. Piecing together the climatic history of the Little Ice Age has been a challenge, one that required a multidisciplinary approach. Fagan recounted how reliable instrument records only go back a few centuries and then primarily only for Europe and North America. Researchers have instead relied on information obtained from tree rings, ice cores, lake and marine bottom sediment cores, wine harvest records, analysis of the weather portrayed in art of the period, and anecdotal written records of country clergymen and gentleman scientists to piece together what the weather was like during the time period. Although the causes of the Little Ice Age are not completely understood, much of it had to do with the actions of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a "seesaw" of atmospheric pressure between a persistent high over the Azores and an equally prevalent low over Iceland. Using charts and maps, Fagan showed how the NAO governs the position and strength of the North Atlantic storm track and thus Europe's rainfall. The NAO index shows the constant shifts in the oscillation between these two areas, with a high NAO index indicating low pressure around Iceland and high pressure in the Azores, a condition producing westerly winds, powerful storms, more summer rains, mild winters, and dry conditions in southern Europe. A low NAO index signaled high pressure around Iceland, low pressure in the Azores, weaker westerlies, much colder winters, with cold air flowing from the north and east. The exact reasons for the shifts in the NAO result from a complex interaction between sea-surface temperatures, the Gulf Stream, distribution of sea ice, and solar energy output. Additionally, several massive volcanic eruptions had an effect on the climate of the time, notably Soufriere on Saint Vincent in the Caribbean in 1812, Mayon in the Philippines in 1814, and the titanic Tambora eruption in Indonesia in 1815 (the latter with one hundred times the ash output of Mount Saint Helens). The author noted that placing the climatic events of the Little Ice Age in a proper context in terms of human history has been subject to some debate. Many archaeologists and historians are suspicious of environmental determinism, of the notion that climate change alone was the reason for such major developments as agriculture or a particular war. However, others had felt that climate had played very little or no role in human history, and that Fagan completely rejects, primarily because throughout the Little Ice Age (even as late as the 19th century), millions of European peasants lived at the subsistence level, their survival dependent totally upon crop yields, generally what they themselves grew on land they owned or rented. was centuries before even parts of Europe (at first the Netherlands and Britain) developed modern specialized commercial agriculture (with intensive farming and growing of nitrogen-enriching plants and animal fodder on previously fallow land) and reasonably reliable transportation networks to distribute food to larger areas. During most of Europe for the Little Ice Age, cycles of good and bad harvests, of cooler and wetter springs, meant the difference between hunger and plenty. This sufficiency or insufficiency of food was a powerful motivator for human action. Fagan wrote that while environmental determinism may be "intellectually bankrupt," climate change is the "ignored player on the historical stage." Fagan recounted several times when the climate of the Little Ice Age played an important role in the historical events of the time. For instance while Flanders and the Netherlands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and England in Stuart times really began to modernize agriculture, little innovation occurred in France, with late eighteenth century French agriculture very little different from medieval agriculture, leaving millions of poor farmers and city dwellers at the edge of starvation and at the mercy of the vagaries of climate. While the decision to not modernize rested in the hands of the nobility (who were uninterested) and in the peasants (who were often deeply suspicious of change and wedded to tradition), it was the climatic events of the late eighteen century that lead to the awful harvest of 1788, the politicization of the rural poor, and the path to the French Revolution.[/b][/QUOTE] [QUOTE][b] Brian Fagan claims that "we can now track the Little Ice Age as an intricate tapestry of short-term climatic shifts that rippled through European society during times of remarkable change - seven centuries that saw Europe emerge from medieval fiefdom and pass by stages through the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Enlightenment, the French and Industrial revolutions, and the making of modern Europe." The interesting question is to what extent did these climatic shifts alter the course of European history? In some distinct cases, in my opinion, the answer is quite clear-cut. Norse settlement in Greenland, for example, became impossible because of the cooler temperatures after the 13th century. Famine in rural areas throughout the Middle Ages was also an undisputed consequence of sudden weather shifts. The damage done to the Spanish Armada in 1588 by two savage storms is patently climatic in origin, too. In most cases, however, the climate is just one - mostly minor - factor out of many that contributed to the occurrence of major historical events like the French Revolution, for example. Fagan rightly calls climatic change "a subtle catalyst." Finally, if we look at historical developments that unfolded over centuries - like the Renaissance or the making of modern Europe - the influence of the climate does not explain anything. A book like Fagan's "The Little Ice Age" is most interesting for historians who examine grass roots history, such as the daily lives of farmers and fishermen in the Middle Ages. At first I thought the climate would provide answers for economic historians, too. But as Fagan shows, the human response to deteriorating weather differs widely from region to region. The conservative French farmers stuck to growing wheat, which is notably intolerant of heavy rainfall, whereas English and Dutch farmers diversified their crop (and became much less vulnerable to bad weather). The weather alone does not explain this development. Obviously, an economic historian who is interested in the question "why are people better off in this country (or region, society, etc.) than elsewhere?" has to look to other factors than the weather when he seeks for answers. So far, the climate has been a footnote in World History. Nonetheless, this footnote can be quite interesting, as "The Little Ice Age" shows. The book is divided into four parts. Part One describes the Medieval Warm Period, roughly from 900 to 1200. Parts Two and Three describe how people reacted to the cooling weather, and how devastating climatic changes are for societies whose agriculture is at subsistence level. Part Four covers the end of the Little Ice Age and the sustained warming of modern times. All four parts make for fascinating, sometimes even disturbing reading; and for the reader new to the field Fagan offers the basic explanations of the effects of oceanic currents and air pressure on the climate in Europe. Bottom line: A good introduction to the subject aimed at the general reading public. It largely exploits earlier literature on the subject, however. And while asking very broad questions, the book bases its answers on a narrow range of data mostly pertaining to northern Europe.[/b][/QUOTE]HOW THE ****, AGAIN, CAN YOU GUYS AND PEOPLE NOT CONSIDER THIS A FOOTNOTE IN HISTORY, AS ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT ALLOWED WHITES TO TAKE OVER A BLACK+COLORED EUROPE? [/QB][/QUOTE]
Instant Graemlins
Instant UBB Code™
What is UBB Code™?
Options
Disable Graemlins in this post.
*** Click here to review this topic. ***
Contact Us
|
EgyptSearch!
(c) 2015 EgyptSearch.com
Powered by UBB.classic™ 6.7.3