What Went On When it Got Warm?
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What Went On When it Got Warm?
Examining the
Roman Warm Period
300 BCE-300 CE
Carole L. CrumleyStockholm Resilience Centre
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Goals of IHOPE: Map the record of biophysical and human history
• Query correlations: question methods, use multiple lines of evidence• Expect multiple causation• Facilitate interdisciplinary cooperation
Understand the dynamics of linked human/Earth history• Calculate rates of change in system variables• Calibrate models against historic data• What are the emergent properties?
Examine options for the future of humanity• What “lessons” emerge? Examples:
• Path dependence, initial conditions, the multiple roles of diversity • Paleoengineering: enduring solutions to enduring problems
IHOPEIntegrated History and Future of People on Earth
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IHOPE Case Studies
• Culture and Economy of SW USA Native American polities and the Drought of the 1300s CE
• Environment And Society in the Maya region of Central America 1000 BCE to 1000 CE
• Environment and Society in Europe from 1000 BCE to 1000 CE
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Bracketing the Roman Warm Period When and Where?
• Temporal extent: The Roman Warm Period occurred between ca. 300 BCE and 300 CE; the 1000BCE – 1000CE time frame captures colder, wetter periods on either side
• Spatial extent: E-W From the Ural mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, N-S from Scandinavia to North Africa
• We have only begun to investigate its global extent; we plan to study teleconnections to adjacent regions and around the globe
Study Area
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How is the Roman Warm Period Defined?Greenland Ice Core
Estimated Temperature
• A warm, stable period lasting ca. 600 years, roughly paralleling Roman hegemony
• Camp Century shows the clearest signal, but record complicated by changes in ice sheet elevation
• More recent Greenland temperature reconstructions also show high temperatures during Roman period
• Rapid decline begins after 100 AD, falling to the Vandal Minimum, which coincides with the Migration Period (“the Dark Ages”)
Alley QSR 2000
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Climate History the Northern Hemisphere and Europe
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Land Use and Emission History
• The Bronze Age began 3300BC in the Middle East, thence to India, Europe, China, and Korea
• The Iron Age began in the Near East 1300BC, thence to India and Europe, China, Japan; sub-Saharan Africans independently invented iron technology
• Roman period industrial production was widespread (ceramics, metals, glass, etc)
• On three continents, deforestation for metallurgy, agriculture and wood products began before the Iron Age and accelerated in the Roman period
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Estimated Position of the Temperate-Subtropical Ecotone
900-500 BCE 300 BCE-300 CE 500 CE-900 CERoman Warm Period Vandal Minimum
Crumley EA 3:3, 1993
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• Hallstatt (ca. 1000-480 BCE) which offers evidence of great wealth in an elite society with long-distance contacts and influence
• La Tène (ca. 480-15 BCE) which ushers in a revolution (regime shift?) in social and political organization and settlement, with an emblematic decorative style
The European Iron Age
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At its greatest extent, the Roman Empire
• controlled the Mediterranean Sea and contiguous lands
• covered nearly six million square kilometers
• had an estimated population of sixty-five million people
• a quarter of the planet’s population was under the sway of Rome
The Power of Rome
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Roman Imperial Managementand Climate Change
• mono-cropping: many regions were forced to produce grain to feed cities
• erosion, loss of fertility: result of practices to increase short-term yields • deforestation: the need for agricultural land and for ships’ timber • erratic climate devastated harvests after ca. AD 270 • subtropical species: vulnerable in temperate regions• farmland abandoned due to high taxes, low yields and without maintenance reverted to scrub and forest
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The Migration Period
300-500 CE: Germanic peoples
500-700 CE: Slavic and Arabic peoples
700-900 CE: Magyar, Turkic, and Viking peoples
“The Vandal Event” “The Dark Ages” “Barbarian Invasions”climatologists Petrarch (14th c.) J. J. Bury
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Isotopic RecordLake Holzmaar, Western Germany
High human impact through Iron Age and Roman period disappears with transition into Migration period. Isotopic record suggests that this is a response to colder and/or wetter climatic conditions causing a retreat of people from the catchment area.
Lucke et al 2003
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Fluvial GeomorphologyLahn River, West-Central Germany
Peaks in tree trunk deposition coincide with and increased fluvial activity, climate ‘deterioration’ in the Migration period.
Urz, 2002
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Questions for Study
• What is the chronology of the Roman Warm Period in Europe? • What are the drivers of the RWP?
NAO? Other?Are there anthropogenic drivers?
• Is the RWP confined to the Mediterranean and temperate Europe? What characterizes the period on other continents? (Gulf of Mexico/Yucatan Peninsula, Eurasian steppe)
• What is the nature of transitional periods that preceded and followed the RWP?
• It appears that the beginning of the Roman Warm Period may haveoccurred in a couple human generations (Dansgaard-Oeschger?)• An inquest on collapse: κ to Ω to α in a coupled CAS
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The Roman Warm Period and Global Change Studies
• plentiful data from both qualitative and quantitative disciplines
• a period about which relatively little environmental data are available, despite abundant political, economic, and cultural data
• possibilities for scale-up to N hemisphere or global
• potential for modeling future ecological and cultural refugia in a warming world
• an enthusiastic scholarly community, representing social sciences, humanities, and biophysical sciences
• popular appeal, offering didactic opportunities