What is the Role of Climate in History?
Curious how the Earth’s climate has shaped the lives of individuals and influenced entire societies across the centuries? Read our short guide to find out more!
It is clear today that weather and natural disasters can have major affects on the lives of particular individuals who are unlucky enough to be caught up in them. Things like hurricanes, forest fires, and flooding can have the potential to impact individuals, communities, and (if severe enough) entire countries. While these events might be becoming more extreme, the impact of natural disasters is nothing new: in the Roman Empire, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, for instance, had catastrophic consequences for residents of its nearby cities like Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were utterly destroyed.
But for historians, it is becoming increasingly clear that climate itself has also been a driver of history. Across the centuries, long-term changes to the climates of regions or even the entire planet have also shaped the opportunities and obstacles for people around the world. These events are harder to study—they don’t show up in archival records as a single dramatic moment, but they remain important for shaping history on a wide scale.
For instance, in the case of Europe, scientists believe that have been periods that were relatively warm across the board, as compared to other eras of history. The Roman Warm Period (roughly from 250 BCE to 400 CE) and the Medieval Warm Period (roughly from 950 to 1250) are two such examples. According to primary sources and environmental evidence, it seems that, at least in Europe and perhaps in the North Atlantic, temperatures were relatively higher than average during these centuries.
It seems like these moments of warming might have had effects on history: for instance, scholars are debating whether or not this relatively warm period encouraged Viking explorers to travel across the Atlantic. The seas would have been calmer and would have less ice, some scholars claim, making it easier to cross the ocean from Europe to Greenland during these years. Indeed, early Norse settlements seem to coincide with this period of warming, but it is ultimately still unclear what factors motivated this era of transatlantic exploration.
In the case of the Medieval Warm Period, it seems that its effects might have had consequences that reverberated further than the north Atlantic. In the Yucatan Peninsula, the classical period of the Maya Civilization, which had lasted for some 6oo years, ended around the year 1000, coinciding with the timeframe of the Medieval Warm Period. Historians have speculated that a possible cause for the end of the classical Maya was a period of extended draught. Perhaps this draught stemmed from the higher temperatures across the North Atlantic and Europe during these same centuries.
On the flip side, there have also been historical eras that were on average well below usual temperatures. The most recent and perhaps best example since the prehistoric period is the Little Ice Age. This climate anomaly took place roughly between 1300 and 1850. Its effects were astonishing: rivers and lakes froze solid over the winter months, there was considerable snowfall in places like Portugal that see little snow today, and the encroachment of glaciers throughout the Alps ruined farmland throughout central Europe. The Little Ice Age resulted in a series of famines across Europe; in some instances, up to ten percent of the population perished.
Thinking about the climate is important for the study of history. On a basic level, the climate dictates much of human life. It makes certain regions livable or unlivable. It allows for particular agriculture to be grown in certain regions and for travel to be possible between specific places. Without thinking about this wider context in which societies have existed, historians miss the most fundamental options available to particular civilizations.
Furthermore, thinking about climate helps expand the way that we think about the past. Historians typically rely on a limited corpus of primary sources, but thinking about the climate challenges historians to adopt non-textual evidence, in addition to evidence that spans the entire globe. Thinking more holistically can help historians better study the past.
Finally, thinking about the ways in which the global climate has affected human societies can help us better reflect on the issues of the present: the actions that have led to our own moment of climate change, how to deal with its consequences, and how to best tackle the problems facing us.
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