Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The period 1000 to 1600 AD
Chronicles, archives of old towns, and the history profile of glaciers tell us that
the years 1176-1200 and 1226-1250 belong to the very warm periods in Europe.
The summers of 1473 and of the years during 1536-1540 were the warmest ever.
During these summers, tropical heat lasted nine months! The year 1540 was called
the Great Sun Year. Crops desiccated. The air was thick with ash, dust and smoke
from burning fields, woods, and many villages. Rivers dried up. In Paris people
crossed the Seine without wetting their feet. The water became polluted,
undrinkable. Water mills stopped and there was no bread. Insects could not find
food and attacked the people in towns, who suffered from hunger, dysentery, heart
attack and sun stroke. In 1562, the famous painter Pieter Breughel was probably
inspired by this hazard when painting the background of his Triumph of Death (Fig
1.4). The Dutch peat lands dried, rotted and oxidised, and the wetlands subsided.
Figure 1.4 Pieter Breughel, Triumph of Death
The Dutch population increased steadily and new land was needed. Landowners
saw their property and wealth increase. In the 15
th
century contractor's companies
came into being, which executed both private and public works on commercial
basis. Swamps and peat lands were reclaimed en masse, and new land was taken
from the sea step by step, e.g. the present island Goeree (Fig 1.5), originally a small
sandbank, grew by steadily reclaiming the sea mud planes. Nature steered the
process. Due to consequent subsidence and diminishment of water storage capacity
more water troubles occurred. Injudicious measures and insubordinate dike
building caused large floods (1421 Saint Elisabeth flood, 1530 Saint-Felix flood,
1570 All-Hallows flood), which took hundreds of drowned and large devastations.
Complete villages disappeared with all hands. Waterboards were installed and the
need for technology, control systems and cooperation rose. Commerce (Hanze)
made Holland rich and farmers organised themselves in free and powerful
communities. Heavy defence works fortified cities and harbours and the
construction of many churches started in this period where often the tower in
Search WWH ::
Custom Search