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Article: Climatology: California in the Middle Ages
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- June 20, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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During the well-known Medieval Warm Epoch - the period from the
10th to early 14th centuries when natural global warming made
Greenland green with Viking farms and when wheat fields waved in
Iceland - California was undergoing a severe drought that lasted at
least 200 years, a new study has found.
The timing of the drought, reported in the June 16 Nature,
coincides with the withering of several ancient American
civilizations, including that of the Anasazi cliff dwellers of the
U.S. Southwest. Anthropologists had long suspected drought as a
cause, and the new evidence indicates the climate shift was both
long-lasting and severe - worse than that of the Dust Bowl years
from 1928 to 1934.
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