Angela, you didn't notice the last line in my comment :
The Nordic Bronze Age was initially characterized by a warm climate that began with a climate change around 2700 BC. The climate was comparable to that of present-day central Germany and northern France and permitted a relatively dense population and good opportunities for farming; for example, grapes were grown in Scandinavia at this time. A minor change in climate occurred between 850 BC and 760 BC, introducing a wetter, colder climate and a more radical climate change began around 650 BC.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Bronze_Age#Climate
you're talking about 2nd cent BC
this already started 6th cent BC, when peacefull Nordic farmers transformed into Germanic warrior tribes going southbound
5th - 6th century they started to caome down from Scandinavia into Northern Germany
but only 2nd cent BC Rome knew about this with Cimbres & Teutones
by that time many Celtic tribes were already displaced by Germanic tribes
is there any evidence that the climate change affected agriculture heavily in the Roman empire ? if it was so, it should have been mentioned in some writings
the consequences far up north were much more drastic
and don't talk to me about Germanic warfare and cruelty
Caesar surely wasn't any less cruel
and what about the useless and costly campaigns of Germanicus ?
they even weren't advantagious to the Roman empire
it was just a desperate and pittyfull attempt for personal glory
he got the admiration of all Romans who's pride was obscuring their intelligence
if Tiberius hadn't stopped him, he might have ruined the Roman Empire a few centuries earlier
it is true that German mercenairies learned a lot in the Roman armies
till 2nd cent BC Romans were fighting their wars themselves, after that they started to rely on mercenairies
Rome had over 1 million inhabitants, most of them were totally unproductive and had to be maintained with resources from elsewhere in the Empire
those were the seeds for the fall of Rome
In this sub-topic of the thread we were discussing the climate change that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, not the changes in the climate in the north in the third millennium BC. By the time the Germans entered the annals of history, they were a warrior people, if not against neighbors like Celts and peoples to their east, against each other.
" the German tribes took pride in keeping a wide strip of depopulated land around their territory. This showed that they were a warlike people and so acted as a warning to potential attackers"
"How Rome Fell", by Adrian Goldsworthy, p, 108.
Raiding into the Empire was commonplace as well, "Villagers were burned, crops destroyed, herds driven off, and the people either massacred or enslaved."
Ibid: 109.
That's the way humans have always been, I'm afraid.
The shepherds on the seven hills of Rome were relatively peaceful in the early days too. At some point they became militaristic and started trying to conquer their neighbors. It's what usually happens when any group of people find they need more grazing lands, or lands with better access to water. or access to trade routes. Expansion usually begins with a perceived scarcity of resources. I'll grant you that more scarcity leads to more violence usually, but it occurs in every culture. At some point the Germans became militaristic for similar reasons. They weren't any more "noble" than any other group of people, far from it. I would think that would be obvious.
As to food shortages, in the centuries when they came into contact with the Roman world, they in fact experienced an explosion in population because they learned from the Romans more intensive agriculture techniques. Previously, since they didn't fertilize the soil or practice crop rotation, they would exhaust their fields and then have to move on to other lands to farm their crops. An analogy might be the cotton farmers in the American south. There's a whole section on this topic in Peter Heathers' book "Empires and Barbarians". So, when they went raiding into the Empire, it was primarily for booty. The tribes along the frontier had become very fond of Roman luxury goods and this was one way of acquiring them. Another way was selling slaves caught in wars with Celts, other peoples, or even other Germanic tribes. There are no "hero" ethnicities at this period of history, if there ever are anywhere, anytime.
Things only became grimmer for them in terms of climate in the latter period of the Empire, and it was more severe the further east you went and the further from the Roman world, because their methods of agriculture were not as good, and, as I said, it was compounded by fear of the Huns, who were also moving west in search of pasture lands. It was rather like what is happening in Europe now, with swarms of hungry people trying to beat down the gates at the frontier forts.
There were food shortages all over the empire after about 200AD, including in Italy, although Rome itself and the other major cities were insulated from the worst of it until North Africa fell to the Vandals. So, in fact, it was the barbarians who brought both real famine to the southern remnants of the Empire. It's all laid out in the links I provided, including material about the repeated plagues that hit Italy, for example, brought back by soldiers returning from the wars.
Specifically as to the decline in agriculture related to climate change, you might want to read some of this...
“Finally, unnoticed until now, Egypt, the Roman Empire’s breadbasket, appears to have enjoyed exceptionally favorable conditions for cereal production during this period. Nile river levels reºect precipitation over Ethiopia and East and Central Africa. Previous study has clariªed the history of Nile ºoods down to 299 a.d., but that abundant evidence (Figure 10) has never been exploited for climate history or economic performance. Before Rome annexed Egypt, all seven of nine securely recorded Nile ºoods in the earlier years of the ªrst century b.c. were below average. For the next 329 years, from the annexation in 30 b.c. to 299 a.d., reliable documents allow an estimate of the annual ºood in 199 different years, after which the available data become scarce until 642 a.d. (see Appendix [1]). They show a subtle but signiªcant pattern: The most favorable ºoods occurred more frequently between 30 b.c. and 155 a.d., as clearly shown when contrasted with those of the following period (see below).”
“The three to ªve major volcanic eruptions that clustered from c. 235 to 285 potentially triggered commensurate episodes of rapid climate change (rcc), possibly reinforcing the solar forcing noted c. 260 (Table 1; Figure 7c). Such rapid short-term changes would have had a great capacity to disrupt food production during the most difªcult decades that the Roman Empire had faced so far; the political, military, and monetary crisis peaked between c. 250 and 290.”
“On balance, the proxy data point to a relatively stable fourth century that warmed during its second half, at least in the northwestern provinces of the Empire.”
“After 155 a.d., when the Empire struggled to face mounting political, military, and economic challenges, the best harvests became substantially more infrequent and the worse ones more common. The written records suggest that unusually favorable climate conditions for Egyptian food production prevailed throughout the ªrst two centuries of the Roman Empire, whereas the conditions underpinning food production appear to have been consistently less good from 155 to 299 a.d.”
“But the crucial development was the severe drought of the fourth century that lasted nearly forty years, one of the worst in 2000 years.” (This was in Central Asia)
“. The extent of this drought in time and space suggests that it played a critical role in driving the mobile pastoral federation that coalesced around the name of “Huns” somewhere east of the Don River, to seek pastures and predation farther to the west and south (Figures 8b and 9c). The dendrodata conªrm speculation about an environmental factor in the Hunnic invasion that goes back at least a century. Historical sources indicate that the Huns reached the Don River by the 370s and crossed it c. 375. Their attacks in the area north of the Black Sea drove the Goths to ºee into the Roman Empire and ultimately to attack it.”
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7741/d80a270e3e5869d0d950e2b5f75188283a99.pdf
So, it doesn’t seem to be so much climate change in Europe that spelled the death knell, but climate change in Central Asia.
As to your comments about the armies, there are numerous books and papers solely about that, but this response is already much too long. Suffice it to say that the depopulation from plague beginning in the 3
rd century severely impacted the recruitment of soldiers for the legions. That’s one reason the Romans started to rely on barbarian troops. The other is that the Empire was trapped in a cycle where they needed to expand for markets, but had already reached a point where further expansion couldn’t be supported financially or in terms of manpower. Even legions of 600,000 men were not sufficient. Of course, had they been as ruthless as the Eastern Romans and later on the Islamic Empires, they would have just slaughtered most of the foreign troops.
Also, Bicicleur, where did I ever say that the German warriors were "more cruel" in battle than the Roman soldiers? That was a rhetorical question, btw, I never did or would say such a nonsensical thing. War is a brutal and ugly business, then as now. I would never try to make comparisons like that, as I personally don't think there were any "good guys" in terms of warfare. Well...I might put the Huns at the bottom of the pile...I mean, mountains of tens of thousands of skulls? They de-populated huge areas that took a thousand years to recover.
