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FROST FAIRS WERE HELD
ON THE RIVER THAMES
WHEN IT FROZE SOLID
DURING ENGLAND’S COLDEST
WINTERS. 18TH-CENTURY
ENGRAVING, JAMES STOW
RKIVE/ALAMY
RETREATING ICE
A 2019 aerial view of the Yup’ik village
of Quinhagak, Alaska, reveals thawing
permafrost and thinning ice. Scientists say
Alaska is warming faster than any other
U.S. state.
MARK RALSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
COLDER CLIMATES Archaeologists unearthed the remains of
someone, likely a woman, who appears to have
succumbed to smoke inhalation as she tried to
LASTING FOR CENTURIES, the so-called Little Ice
dig an escape tunnel under a wall. Skeletons of
Age was a period of colder temperatures, mainly
experienced in the Northern Hemisphere. It began women, children, and elders were found togeth-
in the 1300s when temperatures around the world er, face down in the mud, suggesting that they
dropped, and glaciers grew. The initial changes were captured and killed.
were gradual, with a steep decline following in the Knecht sees a link between the destruction at
late 1500s. Climates cooled by more than three the site and the old tales that modern Yup’iks
degrees Fahrenheit (roughly two degrees Celsius). remember. Oral tradition preserves memories of
Major bodies of water, including the Baltic Sea a time historians call the Bow and Arrow Wars
and London’s River Thames, repeatedly froze over. Days, when Yup’ik communities fought one an-
From Europe to North America to Asia, growing other in bloody battles some time before Russian
seasons were disrupted, leading to food shortages explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1700s. Nunal-
exacerbated by the colder weather. Archaeologists leq offers the first archaeological evidence, and
believe that the violence at the Nunalleq site was a the first firm date, for this frightful period, which
result of tensions caused by the climate change. affected several generations of Yup’ik.
