German Historical Museum: Climate Change 1500 Years Ago Helped Cause The Roman Empire To Collapse

Another short one…

Last week my wife and I spent a few days in Berlin, and we visited the German Historical Museum.

Part of Germany’s very early history involves the Roman Empire, which never succeeded in taming the unruly tribes east of the Rhine.

Climate change during the Roman Empire days, when CO2 was below 300 ppm.

One of the exhibits there was accompanied by a piece of interesting text, which I photographed (without a flash), see above. The Roman empire collapsed in part due to climate change back then.

I thought the climate was gentle when atmospheric CO2 concentration was below 300 ppm – steady, unvariable and associated with few weather extremes. That’s what fraudster warmist climatologists tried to have us believe with an assortment a various hockey stick charts.

Someone needs to tell the German Historical Museum that.

 

11 responses to “German Historical Museum: Climate Change 1500 Years Ago Helped Cause The Roman Empire To Collapse”

  1. Pascvaks

    “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

    Hummmmm… if it’s not CO2, what could it be? Thinking is such a pain in the arse. There just must be an easier way to add 2 + 2. Ban the Bomb! Ban the Bomb! Hay man, got a joint? Love! Love! Love! Hell no, I won’t go! All we are saying is give peace a chance! Imagine! IMAGINE there’s no people, no religion too…

    Think it’s the lead in the pipes? Or the Mary Jane? PEACE Bro!

  2. DirkH

    I once talked to an Italian in Germany, mentioning that I had just visited Rome. He stems from Brindisi (deep in the South of Italy) and said “Everything north of Rome is Germany”. Northern Italy is the industrial powerhouse of Italy.

    Maybe the German tribes have left an impression.

    1. Bernd Felsche

      By coincidence, I’ve been doing some reading on the pre-history of the region over the past fortnight.

      Some of the cultural differences can be traced back to the Beaker Culture (Glockenbecherkultur) into the early bronze age, covering a large part of central and SW Europe, but excluding the Italian peninsular and everything East thereof.

      Beaker Culture “divided”, later evolving into several others including the Urnfield Culture (Urnenfelderkultur) in the area of Eastern Iberia, following the Rhine to the North and spreading along the Danube North of the Alps, covering areas from Bavaria to Saxony.

      Perhaps the deepest impression is the early iron age’s Hallstatt Culture of the Hallstatt era (ca 800 to 450 BC). Celtic people carried culture and ideas into and over the Alps (as well as over much of Western Europe including the British isles) centred around what is now Bohemia. Bohemia is named after the Celtic Boii (Boier) people of the late Hallstatt era into the 1st century BC who live(d) in the area South of the Alps on the Eastern top half of the Italian “boot”, along the Med. coast up through Bohemia into Thuringia and Silesia. Bavaria is also accused of being named after the Boii … but I cannot fathom why. 😉

      The guy from Brindisi’s assertion corresponds largely with the spread of the Boii. Though he may not be aware of the several other peoples which constitute “Germans” and thinks that they’re all Boii. 🙂

      It’s important to note that neither the times nor the regions for the various cultures were well-defined. Environmental changes probably had as much to do with the flux of cultures as did the “better ideas” that subsequent cultures brought.

      Better stop before I write a(nother) 2000-word essay. There should be enough keywords to do your own research and thinking as you require.

      1. DirkH

        Interesting; I didn’t know about the “Boier” (which sounds very much like “Bayer”, German for “Bavarian”).

      2. Ralf_G

        Unfortunately material culture is often conflated with ethnicity, but that isn’t necessarily the case. For instance, Pomerania is culturally part of Germany but the Pomeranians are (or were) Slavs. The last 2 or 3 emperors of Rome immediately before its fall at the hand of the Goths were already ethnic Germans.

        Regarding the Boii etc., I wouldn’t dispute your basic facts but I do think you’re ignoring significant population changes that occured well after 450BC. We know that even in the 2nd century BC there were mass migrations of German tribes (Cimbri, Teutones et all) who moved through and into the Alps and northern Italy, eventually as far as Spain. The horde, as it were, left pockets of settlers behind as they travelled through Europe. Climate change (ie. flooding) was the reason they gave for abandoning their lands on the Baltic/North Sea coast as the climate warmed into the Roman Optimum. Their mass was powerful enough to defeat Rome 3 times during their travels before the final remnants were eventually wiped out. Nevertheless some of the northern Italians do call themselves Cimbri. Whether there is actually any genetic connection or its just a romantic notion I don’t know. This resettlement pattern is similar to the movements of the only group in history that ever called themselves “Celts”, in the 4th century BC(??IIRC). They swept down into Greece and the Balkans, along part of the Black Sea coast and across into Anatolia. Both of these named hordes were actually composed of assorted tribes, including Gauls, Belgians and German tribes, possibly other ethnic groups as well. The last large group of Gauls from those “Celts” were the Galatians of Biblical mention. Since that time the Greeks used the name Celt for all northern barbarians, regardless of their actual ethnicity. When Julius Caesar much later asked the Gauls who the Celts were, the Gauls plainly replied that the Germans were the true Celts. Anyhow, by the 4th century AD Boiemum had long been the domain of the Marcomanni, with other German tribes as their neighbours along the Danube. From the 5th century AD onwards there were huge migrations of people as the Huns, their allies and subject peoples from the Steppes and Caucasus region pushed westward into western Europe. Other far eastern tribes followed suit through the next few centuries as the climate degraded. Can we reasonably hypothesize that centuries of optimum climate had also optimized population levels and the subsequent shift to colder temperatures seriously decreased the food supply for the nomads and their herds? As one result all of the eastern German tribes ultimately migrated west and south under this pressure; Angles and kin into Britain, Lombards and Ostrogoths into Italy, Burgunds and Franks into Gaul (France), Vandals through Italy into North Africa and Spain, Visigoths into Spain, some of the Swabians and Alans(Caucasians) (IIRC) into Portugal and so on.

        Quite an ethnic mish-mash, all told. If you’re at all interested in ancient ethnohistory, this web site is worth a look.

        http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/msr/Ethno/ethno4.html

        Their Linmap mapping program is quite interesting too, if it will run in your OS.

        1. Bernd Felsche

          It’s important to keep in mind that the various invasions and migrations of tribes were more often a process of mixing than of displacement. Of peoples and cultures. The distinction between tribe and culture is probably very difficult to discern in “pre-history”. The hypothetical distribution of peoples is based on cultural artifacts and a few writings of their (mis)behaviour.

          As I wrote above, tribes seemed to be quite adept as adopting better ideas with which they became familiar; also without displacement of the ideas that they held previously. Their culture changes. This process continues into the present.

          We can see that not all the peoples of the world are part of the “iPhone tribe” today. There are cultural differences despite common artifacts yet future clima-archeologists are likely to hypothecise a tribe of 7000million peoples; who were all suddenly incinerated by the iPhone after a firmware update. 🙂

          Only the great climate disasters have been capable of displacing populations; for decades. For the rapid cooling climate phases, folk would migrate over a number of years if they couldn’t make their land work for them. Warming takes a bit longer so the migration to greener pastures from “crowded” areas is more gradual and less likely to compete for resources with established populations.

  3. Walter Schneider

    The announcement at the museum fails to identify the direction and the nature of the climate change that contributed to the demise of the Roman Empire. The climate took a decided turn for the worse. It got much colder.

    A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events, by James A. Masurek (2010): http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.pdf (9.4 MB)

    Search that document for terms such as, Danube, Rhine, rivers, froze

    The history of the Aletch Glacier may help to pin-point the time periods of interest:

    Fluctuation of the Great Aletsch Glacier during the last 3,500 years
    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M_qAas_Ctoc/Tnz2VWOdfcI/AAAAAAAAABM/nU5MKRG6Fho/s1600/Image3.jpg

  4. DirkH

    German SPD top Marxist Sigmar Gabriel uses verbatim translation of Obama’s “You didn’t build that” speech to justify taxes on the rich. That’s really bizarre. He doesn’t even say (at least in this article) that he parrots Obama.

    I don’t expect any debate following this in Germany, though. We have neither a Fox News nor a drudge or Breitbart; the leftist media hegemony is an absolute stranglehold here.

    http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/debatte-ueber-umverteilung-spd-chef-gabriel-springt-auf-reichensteuer-zug-auf_aid_793360.html

  5. DirkH

    Desertec, the idea of producing solar electricity for Europe in the Sahara, founded by the Club Of Rome and today accompanied by the industry consortium DII, with members like Siemens, Eon and RWE, is basically dead, writes Der Stern in its print edition.

    E-on reacted defiantly, pledging their unwavering allegiance to desertec.
    http://www.welt.de/newsticker/news3/article108419446/E-on-bekennt-sich-zu-Desertec.html

    Der Stern BTW, are 100% warmist Hamburgers and pro-renewables at any price. They write that Desertec/DII applied for 1.5 bn EUR subsidies to be paid by the German electricity user so they can continue with a 600 MW solar plant in Morocco. (using some statistical tricks to make it appear as if the electricity produced down there does anything good for the German consumer. Of course it would be consumed in Morocco and Spain)

    Looks pretty bad for them.

    1. DirkH

      They have one interesting number. Even given the high insolation in Morocco, the price for a produced solar-thermal kWh would be 22 Eurocents. End consumer price in Morocco is 4 Eurocents. (“subsidized” writes Der Stern, but they don’t qualify that.)

      In shady Germany, production of one PV kWh is already cheaper than 22 Eurocents… (current FIT for new installations is max. 20.76 Eurocents).

      So it looks like the ever cheaper silicon PV panels have destroyed the economic basis of the Desertec technology.

  6. Steve

    I have to smile at you going on holiday and spotting that. Regards to your family, tell ’em that you are not really a zealot – just observant 😉

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