Was Medieval Europe more susceptible to large scale famines then during the Roman period? I understand Europe had a warm period during the 11-12th centuries which boosted agriculture and population growth, however the biggest famine, 1315-1317 happend between the Warm period and Little Ice age. What were the structural causes for these famines?
No, these famines are just better documented.It's literally just weather. But they attributed it to the judgement of God.Medieval Europeans had better agricultural tech than the Romans did.Including irrigation and the heavy plow and horse collar, among other things like field rotation and depending on where you were plenty of watermills.The *imperial* Romans relied mostly on slave labor, by contrast.
>>18492168>The *imperial* Romans relied mostly on slave labor, by contrastCertainly but even more so slavery in north Africa where grain yields were significantly higher. Yields in Egypt were year-round and could match kind of shitty yields today nearly. Most of the inventions you listed were either made or drastically improved by the Carolingian Renaissance, where grain yields finally tripled and for the first time ever the north of Europe began to urbanize. Learning Roman methods from primary sources and making it work with significantly less slave labor and war spoils enabled us to use this very script to communicate ideas even, among other things.
>>18492137climate change, longer winters, lower average temp
>>18492197>and making it work with significantly less slave laborLet's not pretend that serfdom was meaningfully different from slavery as a means of exploiting people for agrarian labor.
>>18492168>>18492197Medievaloids only surpassed Rome in agriculture methods/tech by like 1100 AD, but they were still more susceptible to famines due to lack of the interconnected trade network that Rome had with other regions.
>>18492137Population was bigger. Also there was no central government extracting grain from Egypt and Carthage through taxes and distributing to Europe.
>>18492137the 14th-17th centuries just sucked for europe, regardless of its medievalitythe three previous centuries were far better
>>18492585The morality of it wasn't really what that post was discussing. As far as available laborers for agriculture or productive land in the middle ages there were less of these things. >>18492597Europe never surpassed the Roman empire in grain yield until like the 1600s. Rome used North Africa for grain, as I stated. In terms of European means and tech, like plows and steel during the middle ages, this all had improved drastically over anything Romans used many times over actually. But the land itself north of Italy was just not as productive for grain with ancient methods.
>>18492665G*rmans allowed mudshits to control North Africa forever.
