Giuseppe
Emeritus
Middle Age lessons for the modern struggle against climate change
Martin Wainwright - guardian.co.uk, Tuesday July 8, 2008
They were smelly, short on science and heavily superstitious, but the Middle Ages may have fundamental lessons for the modern world's struggle to deal with climate change.
Although terrified of pestilence and a Biblical apocalypse, the medieval world had a commonsense attitude to freak weather and natural disasters, according to the world's biggest gathering of specialists on the centuries between 600 and 1500AD.
Skilful flood management and far closer links with nature than the 21st century are among the advantages highlighted by the 14th International Medieval Congress which has brought 1,500 scholars from across the world to a rain-soaked Leeds.
"They did not think of climate change in the sense that we do, but they were extraordinarily well-tuned into unusual weather," said Dr Richard Morris of Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies, which organises the annual gathering. "They kept records and they had long memories.
"The Anglo Saxon Chronicle has an account of all the birds dying in the eighth century. Medieval bird flu? A very harsh winter? They didn't know, but they wrote it all down, so the later medieval world was able to take such things in its stride."
The cast of mind led to practical measures rather than speculative forecasting, according to some 350 papers on the conference schedule.
These include detailed studies of early clean air laws in medieval cities, flood defences in Hungary and Florence and a study of medieval poetry by the Russian specialist Vladislava Lukasik entititled The end of the world will not take place.
Dr Axel Muller, the organiser of the conference, said: "You do not have to be an academic medievalalist to get the point. Look at our recent floods.
The Cistercian abbey at Rievaulx was untouched but the modern visitor centre, built near the river, was flooded.
"Tewkesbury is the same. The abbey and the old town are on the hill and people there did not get their feet wet. It was the rest of the town which did."
The congress's related health agenda also includes an entire session on passing wind, including a paper from the University of Texas called "I frete, I fart, I fesyl fowle" - passing gas on the mediaeval stage, and another from Manchester on "The Fart in Misericords, Manuscripts and Prints".
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/08/climatechange.flooding
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Martin Wainwright - guardian.co.uk, Tuesday July 8, 2008
They were smelly, short on science and heavily superstitious, but the Middle Ages may have fundamental lessons for the modern world's struggle to deal with climate change.
Although terrified of pestilence and a Biblical apocalypse, the medieval world had a commonsense attitude to freak weather and natural disasters, according to the world's biggest gathering of specialists on the centuries between 600 and 1500AD.
Skilful flood management and far closer links with nature than the 21st century are among the advantages highlighted by the 14th International Medieval Congress which has brought 1,500 scholars from across the world to a rain-soaked Leeds.
"They did not think of climate change in the sense that we do, but they were extraordinarily well-tuned into unusual weather," said Dr Richard Morris of Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies, which organises the annual gathering. "They kept records and they had long memories.
"The Anglo Saxon Chronicle has an account of all the birds dying in the eighth century. Medieval bird flu? A very harsh winter? They didn't know, but they wrote it all down, so the later medieval world was able to take such things in its stride."
The cast of mind led to practical measures rather than speculative forecasting, according to some 350 papers on the conference schedule.
These include detailed studies of early clean air laws in medieval cities, flood defences in Hungary and Florence and a study of medieval poetry by the Russian specialist Vladislava Lukasik entititled The end of the world will not take place.
Dr Axel Muller, the organiser of the conference, said: "You do not have to be an academic medievalalist to get the point. Look at our recent floods.
The Cistercian abbey at Rievaulx was untouched but the modern visitor centre, built near the river, was flooded.
"Tewkesbury is the same. The abbey and the old town are on the hill and people there did not get their feet wet. It was the rest of the town which did."
The congress's related health agenda also includes an entire session on passing wind, including a paper from the University of Texas called "I frete, I fart, I fesyl fowle" - passing gas on the mediaeval stage, and another from Manchester on "The Fart in Misericords, Manuscripts and Prints".
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/08/climatechange.flooding
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