RESUMO
A large scholarship currently holds that before the onset of anthropogenic global warming, natural climatic changes long provoked subsistence crises and, occasionally, civilizational collapses among human societies. This scholarship, which we term the 'history of climate and society' (HCS), is pursued by researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including archaeologists, economists, geneticists, geographers, historians, linguists and palaeoclimatologists. We argue that, despite the wide interest in HCS, the field suffers from numerous biases, and often does not account for the local effects and spatiotemporal heterogeneity of past climate changes or the challenges of interpreting historical sources. Here we propose an interdisciplinary framework for uncovering climate-society interactions that emphasizes the mechanics by which climate change has influenced human history, and the uncertainties inherent in discerning that influence across different spatiotemporal scales. Although we acknowledge that climate change has sometimes had destructive effects on past societies, the application of our framework to numerous case studies uncovers five pathways by which populations survived-and often thrived-in the face of climatic pressures.
Assuntos
Civilização , Mudança Climática/estatística & dados numéricos , Pesquisa , Mudança Social , Animais , Civilização/história , Mudança Climática/economia , Mudança Climática/história , Secas , Fontes Geradoras de Energia , História do Século XV , História do Século XVI , História do Século XVII , História do Século XVIII , História do Século XIX , História do Século XX , História do Século XXI , História Antiga , História Medieval , Migração Humana , Humanos , Política , Chuva , Pesquisa/tendências , Mudança Social/história , TemperaturaRESUMO
Levänluhta is a unique archaeological site with the remains of nearly a hundred Iron Age individuals found from a water burial in Ostrobothnia, Finland. The strongest climatic downturn of the Common Era, resembling the great Fimbulvinter in Norse mythology, hit these people during the 6th century AD. This study establishes chronological, dietary, and livelihood synthesis on this population based on stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic and radiocarbon analyses on human remains, supported by multidisciplinary evidence. Extraordinarily broad stable isotopic distribution is observed, indicating three subgroups with distinct dietary habits spanning four centuries. This emphasizes the versatile livelihoods practiced at this boundary of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems. While the impact of the prolonged cold darkness of the 6th century was devastating for European communities relying on cultivation, the broad range of livelihoods provided resilience for the Levänluhta people to overcome the abrupt climatic decline.