Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Climate, Weather, Agriculture, and Food

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Abstract

Climate and weather are vital factors in food production, principally through their influence on the possibilities, limits, and risks of farming and pastoralism. Nevertheless, the historical links among climate, weather, agriculture, and food are often complex and contingent. This chapter reviews the growing body of research on these links, from the first domestication of plants and animals to the modern era, with emphasis on the contributions of climate history to explaining food shortages, famines, and related disasters in Little Ice Age Europe.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Mauelshagen, 2010, 84–85.

  2. 2.

    Diamond, 2005; Barlow et al., 1997; Dugmore et al., 2012.

  3. 3.

    Pfister, 2011.

  4. 4.

    For introductions to the Mesolithic and the role of climate in the origins of agriculture, see Mithen, 2004; Rosen, 2007; Munro, 2004; Stiner et al., 1999; Smith, 2001.

  5. 5.

    Gerhart and Ward, 2010; Richerson et al., 2001; Sage, 1995.

  6. 6.

    Larson et al., 2014; Price and Bar-Yosef, 2011; Fuller et al., 2012; Larson and Fuller, 2014. For general reviews, see Barker, 2006; and Bellwood, 2004.

  7. 7.

    Weninger et al., 2009, 14–17; Nesbit, 2002; Zeder, 2011; Larson et al., 2014; Abbo et al., 2010.

  8. 8.

    Fuller et al., 2011; Crawford, 2009; Lu et al., 2009; Barton et al., 2009; Liu, 2004; Nesbit, 2002; Weninger et al., 2009; Zeder, 2011; Larson et al., 2014; Abbo et al., 2010.

  9. 9.

    Larson et al., 2014, SI, Table S1; Gross and Zhao, 2014; Fuller et al., 2011; Nicoll, 2004; Marshall and Hildebrand, 2002.

  10. 10.

    For an overview of the topic see Anderson et al., 2007; Weninger et al., 2009; Kuijt and Goring-Morris, 2002; Simmons, 2007; Liu, 2004; Hole, 1994; Butzer, 1995; essays in Anderson et al., 2007.

  11. 11.

    Original discovery in Weiss et al., 1993. Studies and discussion in response to Weiss in Dalfes et al., 1997. Subsequent review of climate and archaeological evidence in Danti, 2010.

  12. 12.

    For recent reviews of climate and the LBA crisis: Kaniewski et al., 2015, and Cline, 2014.

  13. 13.

    Overview of these and similar examples in Diamond, 2005. For further investigations see e.g., Turner and Sabloff, 2012; Benson et al., 2007; Buckley et al., 2010.

  14. 14.

    See, e.g., contributions in Iannone, 2014.

  15. 15.

    See especially Yin et al., 2015, 153–56; Zhang et al., 2010.

  16. 16.

    Fang and Liu, 1992.

  17. 17.

    Bulliett, 2009.

  18. 18.

    Pederson et al., 2014.

  19. 19.

    Newfield, 2015.

  20. 20.

    Haldon et al., 2014; Xoplaki et al., 2016.

  21. 21.

    Pfister, 2005, 33; Pfister, 2013.

  22. 22.

    Gissel et al., 1981, 69, 94, 103, 122, 142, 177–178, 240; Dybdahl, 2012; Parry, 1978; Dodgshon, 2005.

  23. 23.

    For recent studies, see e.g. Holopainen and Helama, 2009, and Lappalainen, 2014.

  24. 24.

    Lachiver, 1991; Monahan, 1993.

  25. 25.

    Pfister, 1988.

  26. 26.

    Pfister, 1984.

  27. 27.

    Pfister, 2005.

  28. 28.

    Pfister, 1988.

  29. 29.

    Champion, 1863; Pfister, 1999; Glaser, 2013.

  30. 30.

    Pfister, 1999; Glaser, 2013.

  31. 31.

    Studer, 2015. Prices measured by the amount of silver per unit volume in Zürich.

  32. 32.

    Abel, 1974; Pfister, 2015, 70–93.

  33. 33.

    Behringer, 2003.

  34. 34.

    White, 2011; White, 2014.

  35. 35.

    Pfister, 2005; Bauerenfeind and Woitek, 1999; Landsteiner, 1999.

  36. 36.

    Original study of prices in Phelps-Brown and Hopkins, 1957. General accounts of silver, population pressure, and inflation in Davis, 1973, 88–124, and Miskimin, 1977, 20–82. On height, Nikola and Joerg, 2005.

  37. 37.

    E.g., Le Roy Ladurie, 1974, 11–145 (especially 51–83); Skipp, 1978; White, 2011, 52–77, 104–122.

  38. 38.

    Appleby, 1978. See also Hoyle, 2010.

  39. 39.

    Krämer, 2015.

  40. 40.

    White, 2011; Parker, 2013.

  41. 41.

    Post, 1985.

  42. 42.

    Buckley et al., 2014.

  43. 43.

    Brook, 2010; Yin et al., 2015, 153–63.

  44. 44.

    E.g., Parker, 2013.

  45. 45.

    See Arakawa, 1955 for the original study of weather during these famines. For the wider historical context, see e.g., Totman, 1995.

  46. 46.

    Sen, 1981; Mauelshagen, 2010, 92–97.

  47. 47.

    Ó Gráda, 2009, 1–25.

  48. 48.

    Tauger, 2003.

  49. 49.

    Krämer et al., 2016.

  50. 50.

    Cunfer, 2005; Cook et al., 2014.

  51. 51.

    Glantz, 1994.

  52. 52.

    Overview of global warming impacts on food production and food security in Porter et al., 2014, 485–533.

References

  • Abbo, S. et al. “Agricultural Origins: Centers and Noncenters; A Near Eastern Reappraisal.” Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 29 (2010): 317–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Abel, Wilhelm. Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Europa: Versuch einer Synopsis. Hamburg: Parey, 1974.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, David et al. Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics: A Global Perspective on Mid-Holocene Transitions. London: Elsevier, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Appleby, Andrew. Famine in Tudor and Stuart England. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arakawa, H. “Meteorological Conditions of the Great Famines in the Last Half of the Tokugawa Period, Japan.” Papers in Meteorology and Geophysics 6 (1955): 101–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barker, Graeme. The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why Did Foragers Become Farmers? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barlow, L.K. et al. “Interdisciplinary Investigations of the End of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland.” The Holocene 7 (1997): 489–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barton, Loukas et al. “Agricultural Origins and the Isotopic Identity of Domestication in Northern China.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (2009): 5523–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bauerenfeind, Walter, and Ulrich Woitek. “The Influence of Climatic Change on Price Fluctuations in Germany during the Sixteenth Century Price Revolution.” Climatic Change 43 (1999): 303–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Behringer, W. “Die Krise von 1570. Ein Beitrag zur Krisengeschichte der Neuzeit.” In Um Himmels Willen: Religion in Krisenzeiten, edited by M. Jakubowski-Tiessen and H. Lehmann, 58–136. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bellwood, Peter. First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benson, Larry et al. “Anasazi (Pre-Columbian Native-American) Migrations during the Middle-12th and Late-13th Centuries – Were They Drought Induced?” Climatic Change 83 (2007): 187–213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brook, Timothy. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Buckley, Brendan M. et al. “Climate as a Contributing Factor in the Demise of Angkor, Cambodia.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (2010): 6748–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buckley, Brendan M. et al. “Monsoon Extremes and Society over the Past Millennium on Mainland Southeast Asia.” Quaternary Science Reviews 95 (2014): 1–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bulliett, Richard. Cotton, Climate and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butzer, Karl. “Environmental Change in the Near East and Human Impact on the Land.” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack M. Sasson et al., 123–51. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  • Champion, Maurice. Les inondations en France depuis le VIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Paris: V. Dalmont, 1863.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, Gregory. “The Long March of History: Farm Wages, Population, and Economic Growth, England 1209–1869.” The Economic History Review 60 (2007): 97–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cline, Eric H. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cook, Benjamin I. et al. “The Worst North American Drought Year of the Last Millennium: 1934.” Geophysical Research Letters 41 (2014): 7298–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crawford, G.W. “Agricultural Origins in North China Pushed Back to the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (2009): 7271–72.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cunfer, Greg. The Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dalfes, H. et al. Third Millennium B.C. Climate Change and Old World Collapse. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1997.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Danti, Michael D. “Late Middle Holocene Climate and Northern Mesopotamia: Varying Cultural Responses to the 5.2 and 4.2 Ka Aridification Events.” In Climate Crises in Human History, edited by A. Bruce Mainwaring, Robert Francis Giegengack, and Claudio Vita-Finzi, 139–72. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Ralph. The Rise of the Atlantic Economies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dodgshon, Robert A. “The Little Ice Age in the Scottish Highlands and Islands: Documenting Its Human Impact.” Scottish Geographical Journal 121 (2005): 321–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dugmore, Andrew J. et al. “Cultural Adaptation, Compounding Vulnerabilities and Conjunctures in Norse Greenland.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (2012): 3658–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dybdahl, Audun. “Climate and Demographic Crises in Norway in Medieval and Early Modern Times.” The Holocene 22 (2012): 1159–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fang, Jin-Qi, and Guo Liu. “Relationship between Climatic Change and the Nomadic Southward Migrations in Eastern Asia during Historical Times.” Climatic Change 22 (1992): 151–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fuller, Dorian et al. “The Contribution of Rice Agriculture and Livestock Pastoralism to Prehistoric Methane Levels: An Archaeological Assessment.” The Holocene 21 (2011): 743–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fuller, Dorian et al. “Cultivation as Slow Evolutionary Entanglement: Comparative Data on Rate and Sequence of Domestication.” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 21 (2012): 131–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gerhart, L.M., and J.K. Ward. “Plant Responses to Low (CO2) of the Past.” The New Phytologist 188 (2010): 674–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gissel, S. et al. Desertion and Land Colonization in the Nordic Countries c.1300–1600: Comparative Report from the Scandinavian Research Project on Deserted Farms and Villages. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1981.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glantz, Michael H., ed. Drought Follows the Plow: Cultivating Marginal Areas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glaser, Rüdiger. Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas: 1200 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen. 3rd ed. Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goring-Morris, Nigel, and Anna Belfer-Cohen. “The Articulation of Cultural Processes and Late Quaternary Environmental Changes in Cisjordan.” Paléorient 23 (1997): 71–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gross, Briana L., and Zhijun Zhao. “Archaeological and Genetic Insights into the Origins of Domesticated Rice.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (2014): 6190–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haldon, John et al. “The Climate and Environment of Byzantine Anatolia: Integrating Science, History, and Archaeology.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 45 (2014): 113–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hole, Frank. “Environmental Instabilities and Urban Origins.” In Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East: The Organizational Dynamics of Complexity, edited by Gil Stein and Mitchell S. Rothman, 121–51. Madison, WI: Prehistory Press, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holopainen, Jari, and Samuli Helama. “Little Ice Age Farming in Finland: Preindustrial Agriculture on the Edge of the Grim Reaper’s Scythe.” Human Ecology 37 (2009): 213–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoyle, R.W. “Famine as Agricultural Catastrophe: The Crisis of 1622–4 in East Lancashire.” The Economic History Review 63 (2010): 974–1002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iannone, Gyles, ed. The Great Maya Droughts in Cultural Context: Case Studies in Resilience and Vulnerability. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaniewski, David et al. “Drought and Societal Collapse 3200 Years Ago in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Review.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 6 (2015): 369–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krämer, Daniel. “Menschen grasten nun mit dem Vieh”: die letzte grosse Hungerkrise der Schweiz 1816/17. Basel: Schwabe, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krämer, Daniel et al. “Woche für Woche neue Preisaufschläge”: Nahrungsmittel-, Energie- und Ressourcenkonflikte in der Schweiz des Ersten Weltkrieges. Basel: Schwabe, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuijt, Ian, and Nigel Goring-Morris. “Foraging, Farming, and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in the Southern Levant: A Review and Synthesis.” Journal of World Prehistory 16 (2002): 361–440.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lachiver, Marcel. Les années de misère: La famine au temps du Grand Roi, 1680–1720. Paris: Fayard, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landsteiner, Erich. “The Crisis of Wine Production in Late Sixteenth-Century Central Europe: Climatic Causes and Economic Consequences.” Climatic Change 43 (1999): 323–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lappalainen, Mirkka. “Death and Disease During the Great Finnish Famine 1695–1697.” Scandinavian Journal of History 39 (2014): 425–47.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larson, Greger, and Dorian Q. Fuller. “The Evolution of Animal Domestication.” Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 45 (2014): 115–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larson, G. et al. “Current Perspectives and the Future of Domestication Studies.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111 (2014): 6139–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. The Peasants of Languedoc. Translated by J. Day. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Li. The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lu, H. et al. “Phytoliths Analysis for the Discrimination of Foxtail Millet (Setaria Italica) and Common Millet.” PLoS One 4 (2009): e4448.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, Fiona, and Elisabeth Hildebrand. “Cattle before Crops: The Beginnings of Food Production in Africa.” Journal of World Prehistory 16 (2002): 99–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mauelshagen, Franz Matthias. Klimageschichte der Neuzeit, 1500–1900. Darmstadt: Darmstadt Wiss. Buchges, 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miskimin, H.A. The Economy of Later Renaissance Europe, 1460–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mithen, S.J. After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Monahan, W. Gregory. Year of Sorrows: The Great Famine of 1709 in Lyon. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • Munro, Natalie. “Zooarchaeological Measures of Hunting Pressure and Occupation Intensity in the Natufian.” Current Anthropology 45 (2004): S5–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nesbit, M. “When and Where Did Domesticated Cereals First Occur in Southwest Asia.” In The Dawn of Farming in the Near East, edited by R.T.J. Cappers and S. Bottema, 113–32. Berlin: Ex Oriente, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newfield, Timothy P. “Domesticates, Disease and Climate in Early Post-Classical Europe: The Cattle Plague of c.940 and Its Environmental Context.” Post-Classical Archaeologies 5 (2015): 95–126.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicoll, K. “Recent Environmental Change and Prehistoric Human Activity in Egypt and Northern Sudan.” Quaternary Science Reviews 23 (2004): 561–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikola, K., and B. Joerg. “The Biological Standard of Living in Europe during the Last Two Millennia.” European Review of Economic History 9 (2005): 61–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ó Gráda, Cormac. Famine: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker, Geoffrey. Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parry, M.L. Climate Change, Agriculture and Settlement. Folkstone: Dawson, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pederson, Neil et al. “Pluvials, Droughts, the Mongol Empire, and Modern Mongolia.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (2014): 4375–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, Christian. Das Klima der Schweiz von 1525–1860 und seine Bedeutung in der Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Landwirtschaft. Bern: Paul Haupt, 1984.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, Christian. “Fluctuations climatiques et prix céréaliers en Europe du XVIe au XXe siècle.” Annales (1988): 25–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, Christian. Wetternachhersage: 500 Jahre Klimavariationen und Naturkatastrophen (1496–1995). Bern: Paul Haupt, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, Christian. “Weeping in the Snow: The Second Period of Little Ice Age-Type Impacts, 1570–1630.” In Kulturelle Konsequenzen der Kleine Eiszeit, edited by Wolfgang Behringer, Hartmut Lehmann, and Christian Pfister, 31–86. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, Christian. “The Monster Swallows You”: Disaster Memory and Risk Culture in Western Europe, 1500–2000. Rachel Carson Center Perspectives 2011/1. Munich: Rachel Carson Center, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, Christian. “Renward Cysat – Ein ‘interdisziplinärer’ Pionier der Klimaforschung im Alpenraum.” Der Geschichtsfreund 166 (2013): 187–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, Christian. “Weather, Climate and the Environment.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350–1750, edited by S. Hamish. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phelps-Brown, E.H., and S.V. Hopkins. “Wage-Rates and Prices: Evidence for Population Pressure in the Sixteenth Century.” Economica 24 (1957): 289–306.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Piperno, D.R. “The Origins of Plant Cultivation and Domestication in the New World Tropics: Patterns, Process, and New Developments.” Current Anthropology 52 (2011): S453–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Porter, John R. et al. “Food Security and Food Production Systems.” In Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by Pramod Aggarwal, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Post, John. Food Shortage, Climatic Variability, and Epidemic Disease in Preindustrial Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  • Price, T.D., and O. Bar-Yosef. “The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas: An Introduction to Supplement 4.” Current Anthropology 52 (2011): S163–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richerson, Peter J. et al. “Was Agriculture Impossible during the Pleistocene but Mandatory during the Holocene? A Climate Change Hypothesis.” American Antiquity 66 (2001): 387–411.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosen, Arlene Miller. Civilizing Climate: Social Responses to Climate Change in the Ancient Near East. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenwig, R.M. “A Mosaic of Adaptation: The Archaeological Record for Mesoamerica’s Archaic Period.” Journal of Archaeological Research 23 (2015): 115–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sage, Rowan. “Was Low Atmospheric CO2 during the Pleistocene a Limiting Factor for the Origins of Agriculture?” Global Change Biology 1 (1995): 93–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya Kumar. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmons, Alan. The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East: Transforming the Human Landscape. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skipp, V.H.T. Crisis and Development: An Ecological Case Study of the Forest of Arden, 1570–1674. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Bruce. “Low-Level Food Production.” Journal of Archaeological Research 9 (2001): 1–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stiner, Mary et al. “Paleolithic Population Growth Pulses Evidenced by Small Animal Exploitation.” Science 283 (1999): 190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Studer, R. The Great Divergence Reconsidered: Europe, India, and the Rise to Global Economic Power. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tauger, Mark. “Entitlement, Shortage and the 1943 Bengal Famine: Another Look.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 31 (2003): 45–72.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Totman, Conrad. Early Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, B.L., and Jeremy A. Sabloff. “Classic Period Collapse of the Central Maya Lowlands: Insights about Human–Environment Relationships for Sustainability.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (2012): 13908–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weiss, Harvey et al. “The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization.” Science 261 (1993): 995–1004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weninger, Bernhard et al. “The Impact of Rapid Climate Change on Prehistoric Societies during the Holocene in the Eastern Mediterranean.” Documenta Praehistorica 36 (2009): 7–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, Sam. The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • White, Sam. “Animals, Climate, and History.” Environmental History 19 (2014): 319–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xoplaki, Elena et al. “The Medieval Climate Anomaly and Byzantium: A Review of the Evidence on Climatic Fluctuations, Economic Performance and Societal Change.” Quaternary Science Reviews 136 (2016): 229–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yin, Jun et al. “Relationships between Temperature Change and Grain Harvest Fluctuations in China from 210 BC to 1910 AD.” Quaternary International 355 (2015): 153–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeder, Melinda. “The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East.” Current Anthropology 52 (2011): S221–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, Zhibin et al. “Periodic Climate Cooling Enhanced Natural Disasters and Wars in China during AD 10–1900.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 277 (2010): 3745–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White & John Brooke

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

Authors
  1. Sam White
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. John Brooke
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Christian Pfister
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  3. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

White, S., Brooke, J., Pfister, C. (2018). Climate, Weather, Agriculture, and Food. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_27

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_27

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-43019-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-43020-5

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation