ABSTRACT
Another understanding used to be that, in one way or another, the climate of Europe ‘troughed out’ before the sixth century. In 1912, Otto Pettersson had placed the sixth century alongside the thirteenth and fourteenth in terms of being ‘an epoch of violent disturbance’ in the climate of continental Europe.52 In 1932, Sir Napier Shaw saw ad 400 as the point of cross-over to more warmth and less rain in the climate of the Mediterranean.53
Later on, however, data from the Alpine glaciers indicated (assuming no great changes in the precipitation regime) a cold phase from ad 300 to 700.54
