This was a very tough time for homo sapiens.
From the journal Global Security: Health, Science and Policy:
ABSTRACT
The threat of nuclear winter from a regional nuclear war is an existential hazard that must be actively addressed by policy makers to ensure the shared future of humanity. Here a cross-cultural analysis of 20 societies that experienced the Late Antique Little Ice Age (ca. 536–556CE) is performed in the hope of providing security policy makers with an empirical example of social resilience mechanisms. The climatic conditions of the Late Antique Little Ice Age are strikingly similar to those modelled as resulting from a regional nuclear war employing low-yield nuclear weapons, and thus provides a context in which mechanisms of resilience to nuclear winter might be empirically identified. It is argued that broad political participation fostering bridging ties between communities, agencies, and organisations was a key element of social resilience to the Late Antique Little Ice Age, and may indicate a means to foster resilience to nuclear winter today....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also:
"Why 536 was ‘the worst year' to be alive"
And the Moche people of South America:
The Correlation of Rainfall And Assassination In Ancient Rome (plus the Moche people go bust)Rain/no rain, very important to people:
World's Oldest Weather Report Found in Egypt: It Was Raining, People Were Crabby
*****
.....So, just a heads up for the governors of Nevada and Arizona. Maybe California too.
Something similar happened with the northern Peruvian coastal Moche civilization during 535-595, the weather related agricultural stress leads to the complete overturning of the social order, revulsion with and rebellion against the political class and the disappearance of an entire society.
Here are the Moche in our April 2008 post "Food Riot Watch: Haiti. Just Wait for the Moche Climate*":
*From Wikipedia:
...There are several theories as to what caused the demise of the Moche political structure. Some scholars have emphasised the role of environmental change. Studies of ice cores drilled from glaciers in the Andes reveal climatic events between 536 to 594 AD, possibly a super El Niño, that resulted in 30 years of intense rain and flooding followed by 30 years of drought, part of the aftermath of the climate changes of 535–536.[3] These weather events could have disrupted the Moche way of life and shattered their faith in their religion, which had promised stable weather through sacrifices.
The BBC had a show on the Moche a while back. Here's what they say happened:
...If the weather on the coast was the opposite, then it suggested a 30-year El Nino - what climatologists call a mega El Nino – starting at around 560 AD, which was followed by a mega drought lasting another 30 years. Such a huge series of climatic extremes would have been enough to kill off an civilization – even a modern one. Here, at last, was a plausible theory for the disappearance of the Moche. But could it be proved?...It turns out that the Moche adapted to the 30 years of floods and the 30 years of drought which followed.
They ended up killing themselves after surviving all that:
...Dillehay now put together a new theory. The Moche had struggled through the climatic disasters but had been fatally weakened. The leadership - which at least in part claimed authority on the basis of being able to determine the weather – had lost its authority and control over its people. Moche villages and and/or clan groups turned on each other in a battle for scare resources like food and land. The Moche replaced ritual battles and human sacrifices with civil war. Gradually they fought themselves into the grave....
