Climate Change in Central Eurasia and the Golden Horde »

Abstract

This essay offers an original interpretation of the climate history of the Golden Horde. Following an overview of the ecological zones of the territory of the Golden Horde, it contextualizes the climate of the 13th–14th centuries against the larger picture of the 9th–19th centuries, since the period of the Golden Horde coincides with the transition from the “Medieval Warm Period” to the beginning of the “Little Ice Age”. The essay offers an overview of the kind of data available for a discussion of climate change and how they provide indirect evidence. It then turns to an examination of the data for temperature, precipitation, dendro­chronology and climate change. It argues that while vegetation zones did not change, there was apparently an end to the warm and wet period in the southern zones of the Golden Horde in the 1280s, the beginning of the transition to the Little Ice Age, which could have affected agriculture in the Golden Horde, possibly resulting in grain production shifting to the north.

Keywords

• climate change
• precipation
• temperature
• dendrochronology
• Medieval Warm Period
• Little Ice Age.