HIS230H5 Lecture Notes - Working Animal, Jousting, Dendrochronology
Document Summary
As early as 1311 to 1322, worst years 1315-1317. Climate change showed a lot about what was going on: medieval warming period helped raised population, 1300 sharp drop in temperature, called the little ice age". Can no longer group as much food as before. Several years cooler, accompanied my abnormally high rain and cold winters. Dendrochronology, study of time using tree rings, confirms these trends, about the cooling. Also know about this cooling from written reports about the cooling: later 13thc eu population putting a lot of pressure on land, using all the land they could find, the crops began to fail. A lot of soils were losing their fertility: heavy rains and cooler weather, the heavy rains washed out roads and bridges, disrupting communication, warfare in eu brought further disruptions in communication. Most people consumed mostly grain, staple crop: killed off a lot of livestock. Fewer livestock meant less animal power for farming.
