Severe Little Ice Age drought in the midcontinental United States during the Mississippian abandonment of Cahokia

Pompeani, David P.; Bird, Broxton W.; Wilson, Jeremy J.; Gilhooly, William P.; Hillman, Aubrey L.; Finkenbinder, Matthew S.; Abbott, Mark B.

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-92900-x

Cited by 17 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…We find that during the Maunder Minimum and at the end of the Little Ice Age 40 , summer conditions across Europe were drier and multi-year drought episodes occurred frequently. This may have been due to the low solar activity at the time 41 , possibly similar to severe droughts during the Little Ice Age such as observed in the United States 42 . The observed tendency towards greater decadal SPEI variability and frequent multi-year pluvials following the end of the Little Ice Age 43 could be related to the sudden reversal in Holocene temperature records 44,45 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

European tree-ring isotopes indicate unusual recent hydroclimate

Freund

Helle

Balting

et al. 2023

Commun Earth Environ

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In recent decades, Europe has experienced more frequent flood and drought events. However, little is known about the long-term, spatiotemporal hydroclimatic changes across Europe. Here we present a climate field reconstruction spanning the entire European continent based on tree-ring stable isotopes. A pronounced seasonal consistency in climate response across Europe leads to a unique, well-verified spatial field reconstruction of European summer hydroclimate back to AD 1600. We find three distinct phases of European hydroclimate variability as possible fingerprints of solar activity (coinciding with the Maunder Minimum and the end of the Little Ice Age) and pronounced decadal variability superimposed by a long-term drying trend from the mid-20th century. We show that the recent European summer drought (2015–2018) is highly unusual in a multi-century context and unprecedented for large parts of central and western Europe. The reconstruction provides further evidence of European summer droughts potentially being influenced by anthropogenic warming and draws attention to regional differences.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

European tree-ring isotopes indicate unusual recent hydroclimate

Freund

Helle

Balting

et al. 2023

Commun Earth Environ

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“…The final centuries of the precontact period saw a marked decline in population, including wider spacing of occupied places, the dissolution of formerly strong Mississippian chiefdoms, greater group movement, and intense warfare ( 26 , 42 , 54 – 57 ). There were also prolonged droughts accompanying the transition to the Little Ice Age, although there was subregional variation in their timing and severity ( 55 , 58 – 60 ). Societal instability was attributable to a concatenation of environmental and social pressures, including climatic downturns, notably the risk of back-to-back crop failures, factional competition within societies, and conflict among spatially discrete groups of people.…”

Section: North American Midcontinentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population trends and the transition to agriculture: Global processes as seen from North America

Milner

Boldsen

2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Agriculture—specifically an intensification of the production of readily stored food and its distribution—has supported an increase in the global human population throughout the Holocene. Today, with greatly accelerated of growth during recent centuries, we have reached about 8 billion people. Human skeletal and archaeobotanical remains clarify what occurred over several millennia of profound societal and population change in small-scale societies once distributed across the North American midcontinent. Stepwise, not gradual, changes in the move toward an agriculturally based life, as indicated by plant remains, left a demographic signal reflecting age-independent ( α 2 ) mortality as estimated from skeletons. Designated the age-independent component of the Siler model, it is tracked through the juvenility index (JI), which is increasingly being used in studies of archaeological skeletons. Usually interpreted as a fertility indicator, the JI is more responsive to age-independent mortality in societies that dominated most of human existence. In the midcontinent, the JI increased as people transitioned to a more intensive form of food production that prominently featured maize. Several centuries later, the JI declined, along with a reversion to a somewhat more diverse diet and a reduction in overall population size. Changes in age-independent mortality coincided with previously recognized increases in intergroup conflict, group movement, and pathogen exposure. Similar rises and falls in JI values have been reported for other parts of the world during the emergence of agricultural systems.

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