SECTION 8: THE WEATHER IN CONTEXT
WHEN YOU’RE WONDERING if the rain will hold off for your barbecue, or whether your flowers will benefit from a downpour before they wilt away, or when you’re pondering whether you’re wearing enough layers to keep off the cold – have you ever stopped to consider the bigger picture? That weather and climate just may have a greater influence on our lives than we think, and that sometimes they have even turned the tide of human history?
… and I’ll blow your house down. The Three Little Pigs knew they had to build shelters to guard themselves from the Big Bad Wolf. In the same way, we humans have come up with ingenious methods of shelter to protect us from the elements. Be it mud hut, hide yurt, skin tepee, snow igloo, log cabin, frescoed Italian palazzo, turreted French château, Scottish island castle or modernist house, the fundamental purpose of all human buildings is the same: to keep their inhabitants comfortable and safe from the vagaries of the weather. If it weren’t for wind, rain, hot sun and the freezing cold – along with a strong exhibitionist streak – would we have the Palace of Versailles?
With little body hair to keep us warm, we ‘naked apes’ – as the naturalist Desmond Morris dubbed us – need extra help to cope with the great outdoors. The answer? Clothes! What began as skins and furs have, over the centuries, become ‘fashion’. And we have also come up with some pretty inventive items to beat the weather:
Macintosh A waterproof raincoat (also spelt mackintosh), named after Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh (1766–1843), who invented a rubberized fabric. The first went on sale in 1824 – no more getting soaked when caught in the rain!
Umbrella That reliable, portable canopy, which helps keep off the rain or the sun (when it is sometimes called a parasol). Derived from the Latin word umbra, meaning ‘shade’, it is of great antiquity, used in the ancient Middle East, in Egypt, ancient Greece, India and the Far East. Traditional Japanese paper parasols trace their history back to the silk ones of China. Shipwrecked on his desert island, Daniel Defoe’s fictional hero Robinson Crusoe fashions his own sun umbrella from skins so he can ‘walk out in the hottest of weather’.
Wellington boots Waterproof footwear based on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hessian boots (from Hesse in Germany), worn by the military and aristocracy and popularized by the Duke of Wellington, after whom they are named. They are also known as gumboots.
During the last Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago, much of the water that covered the Earth’s surface was frozen in the form of glaciers, so that sea levels were approximately 100 metres (330 feet) lower than they are today. Land that would otherwise be covered by water was exposed and ‘land bridges’ joined different parts of the world; for example, Great Britain and France were linked, as were Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea. Before the ice retreated and water flooded in to fill what is now the Bering Straits, people crossed the land bridge that joined Asia to Alaska and became – it is believed – the first human inhabitants of North America.
The Sumerians had Utnapishtim and his wife, the ancient Greeks had Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, the ancient Hebrews had Noah and his wife Naamah – all survivors of a great flood which drowned the known world and in which the rest of humanity perished. From the Middle East to the Amerindian cultures of Central and South America, people around the globe tell their own story of a cataclysmic deluge.
So widespread are these tales that it is tantalizing to speculate whether they are ancient race memories of an actual event, passed down through the generations, that morphed into myth along the way. In the case of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern versions, this may well be true. Although the world had been warming up and glaciers had been melting after the last ice age, 6200 BC or thereabouts saw a temporary return to freezing conditions. In this mini-ice age, sea levels dropped again, exposing once-covered land. The level of the Black Sea fell by about 100 metres (328 feet) and people settled around it. Then, in about 5600 BC the global warm-up resumed and sea levels rose once more. The Mediterranean spilled beyond its shores and poured into the Black Sea, and it may be this that inspired the famous Old Testament story.
Another suggestion is that the Biblical flood recalls a memory of a cloudburst in the mountains of Armenia in about 3200 BC which, it is said, caused the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to flood, covering 103,600 square kilometres (40,000 square miles) of ancient Sumerian villages and land with an 2.4 metre (8 feet) layer of mud and rubble. In the Genesis account, it was the flood to end all floods:
‘And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights… And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.’
Think about it…
• Without the wind to fill his sails, would Columbus have reached America, or Cortés Mexico or Pizarro Peru? And if the conquistadors had not made it to the New World in their sailing ships, spurred by the smell of gold, would the native peoples have been subjugated and most of South America now be speaking Spanish?
• Without the wind to fill their sails, would Portuguese explorers have rounded the Cape of Good Hope in their search for a trade route to the lucrative spice reserves of the East? Without the wind to fill their sails, would the Dutch and English have followed, and begun the colonisation of southern Africa?
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Traditional saying
In 1588, Philip II of Spain sent his Armada – a fleet of armed vessels that represented the might of Spain – to attack England, then ruled by Elizabeth I. Having reached the English Channel, the Armada engaged in running battles with the English fleet, which finally dispersed it with a fireship attack. It was then that the Spanish had their first skirmish with a far more fearsome enemy: the weather. Strong winds blew them northwards into the North Sea and, with their original plan of attack scuppered, they decided to sail home. But worse was to come. The latter part of the sixteenth century was characterized by exceptionally strong North Atlantic storms and, as the Armada rounded Scotland and sailed into the rough seas between it and Ireland, fierce gales relentlessly pounded the Spanish ships: only about half of the Armada survived. When Philip heard what had happened, he is said to have declared: ‘I sent the Armada against men, not God’s winds and waves.’
Cold snap Beginning approximately in the thirteenth century and ending in the mid-nineteenth, the Little Ice Age ushered in a period of severe winters – and had some far-reaching effects on human behaviour, including …
Witch hunts Witches were thought capable of controlling the weather so, as weather worsened, the number of witch trials rose. In his research of European prosecutions, historian Wolfgang Behringer has found a link between particularly icy weather and a rise in witch trials in the years 1560–74, 1583–89, 1623–30 and 1678–98.
On thin ice? Rivers and other waterways that do not freeze today used to turn into highways of ice. People were able to skate on them and even held ‘frost fairs’ on them. The first such fair on London’s river Thames was in 1607.
Ice bridge In 1658 the strait known as the Great Belt between the Danish islands of Zealand and Fyn froze over. This was good news for the Swedish army because they were then able to march across the ice to invade Copenhagen.
Walking on water In the winter of 1780, the water of New York harbour froze, enabling the inhabitants of the city to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island.
Weather has even played a role in fomenting revolution. When anticyclonic conditions hit France in the spring and early summer of 1788, a severe drought ensued, resulting in a greatly reduced grain harvest. This pushed up the price of bread, the staple food of the workers, and made a bad situation worse: the cost of this staple had long been a focus of popular discontent and there had already been numerous bread riots.
The harsh winter that followed brought more suffering: fuel prices increased and flour mills could not operate because the water that turned their wheels was frozen. In July 1789 the cost of bread rocketed and anger over starvation, taxation and royal control erupted into mass violence. On 14 July, a mob stormed the Bastille, a fortress used as a state prison in Paris. They beheaded the Marquis de Launay, the prison commander and some of his officers, and paraded their heads around the streets. With what became known as Bastille Day, the French Revolution had begun.