How The Weather Shaped Medieval North America

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the most consequential eras in North American history was the Medieval Warm Period of 800-1300 CE, when the continent was shaped by climate change or – as its peoples then believed – controlled by gods of wind and water. A great religious movement swept Mesoamerica, the Southwest, and the Mississippi valley, sometimes because of worsening living conditions and sometimes by improved agricultural yields caused by global warming.

In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to archaeologist Dr. Timothy Pauketat, author of Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America. He has followed the footsteps of priests, pilgrims, traders and farmers led by the weather to migrate long distances to new lands.

This episode was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit.
0:02.6	To listen to all of our episodes, add free and watch hundreds of history documentaries
0:06.8	download the History Hit app or go to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:12.4	And if you're an Apple listener, you can subscribe for new, add free episodes within the app.
0:23.3	Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis.
0:25.8	I've been looking for something we could do on Medieval North America since Gone Medieval
0:29.8	was born.
0:30.9	And now Timothy Porkatt's new book Gods of Thunder, how climate change, travel and spirituality
0:36.5	reshaped pre-colonial America has given me the perfect chance to explore this fascinating
0:41.5	topic.
0:42.5	Tim is Professor of Anthropology and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois and
0:47.3	I'm delighted he's joining us now to talk more about this great topic.
0:50.3	Thank you for joining us Tim.
0:51.3	Thank you, I'm happy to be here.
0:53.0	So I confess that this is a period of North American history that I just know nothing about.
0:58.8	What kind of sources were you able to leverage to bring the book together?
1:03.1	What is the available material when studying this period?
1:06.3	99% of what we have is archaeological.
1:10.1	Then there are many regions in North America that are very well studied, especially during
1:15.5	the medieval warm period.
1:17.6	And so we actually know quite a lot about a lot of places.
1:20.8	For the other 1%, I draw a little bit on actual indigenous writing, the Maya for instance.
	...

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