Approximately 700 years ago, something happened to the Earth's climate. The world started to cool down.

It wasn't dramatic enough to cause another ice age and cause ice caps to cover the poles of the Earth,

but it did result in significant changes. In fact, the human history. Learn more about the Little Ice Age and how it changed humanity

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. History can be looked at in many different ways. You can look at some great leader in history and say that this person did such and such and change the course of history.

You can look at a technology and say that some tool revolutionized

how we do something and that changed the course of history. And you can look at

events and say that this battle or this decision was a pivotal moment that changed the course of history.

And all these perspectives are correct. People, technologies, and events all shape history,

but they all work at different levels. The outcome of a battle will be determined by the people taking part.

A great leader will be constrained by the technology of their era.

I've done previous episodes on all of these things, events, people, and technology, and I've

outlined how they all have changed history.

However, some things influence history, which are at a level even beyond these.

One of these high-level macro influences is climate. Climate

is something we don't usually think about because climate only tends to change over the course of centuries.

However, we have been able to detect historical climatic

events and knowing what happened, it's possible to view history through this lens.

One example of a climatic event that shaped history is known as the Roman climatic optimum.

This was a period from about 250 BC to the year 400,

when the climate around the Mediterranean was warmer than average.

This small warming resulted in longer

growing seasons for crops and greater agricultural abundance. And it also just so happened to

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