Contemporary and historical climate change in itself takes place beyond the scale of human perception. Yet scholars can combine instrumental data, proxy information, and written sources to reconstruct these patterns. What humans could see in the past and can still perceive today are meteorological extremes: droughts, heat waves, floods, cold spells, and storms. Such extreme events, however, have generally left only indirect evidence in the material heritage of past human societies. The exhibition ‘Weathered History’ on Google Arts & Culture, a product of PAGES’s working group CRIAS supported by the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), presents this legacy to a wider public. At times surprising objects are witnesses of human memory to meteorological disasters, but they also show how skillfully historical societies adapted to past climate change.
Contemporary and historical climate change in itself takes place beyond the scale of human perception. Yet scholars can combine instrumental data, proxy information, and written sources to reconstruct these patterns. What humans could see in the past and can still perceive today are meteorological extremes: droughts, heat waves, floods, cold spells, and storms. Such extreme events, however, have generally left only indirect evidence in the material heritage of past human societies. The exhibition ‘Weathered History’ on Google Arts & Culture, a product of PAGES’s working group CRIAS supported by the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), presents this legacy to a wider public. At times surprising objects are witnesses of human memory to meteorological disasters, but they also show how skillfully historical societies adapted to past climate change.