Advances in humanity during the Little Ice Age
Looking at paintings and other depictions of people in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century one often marvels at the amount of clothing they are wearing. Looking at them considering the context of the Little Ice Age places them in another light entirely. It was often cold year around, with summers never reaching the temperatures which are common today, in Europe and North America (the Little Ice Age did impact many other areas, including India and China, but aren’t discussed here). The global crisis was not viewed as such, it was seen as a series of local crises, with local solutions proposed.
The fastening of clothes was changed during the Little Ice Age, although the changes seem to have been born through synchronicity, rather than occurring in solely one place. Clothes which had formerly been closed about the body through the use of ties and laces became equipped with buttons and buttonholes, a more secure defense against the intrusions of unwanted chill air. The means of weaving wool in tighter patterns, creating a tighter insulating barrier were achieved, and wool clothing began to take on a more finely finished appearance.
Communities in the famine stricken areas began to use their own initiative to create emergency food stocks of grain, set aside against a recurrence of widespread crop failures, although this action was frowned upon by tax levying governments and profit driven merchants and dealers. Few of the people across Europe owned the land upon which they farmed, and most of the crops they produced belonged to the landowner, after subtracting an allowance for their own subsistence. The first of the many simmering resentments which led to the overthrow of the nobility in France began during the Little Ice Age.
Crime and punishment was changed by the economic and social changes caused by the Little Ice Age. The crime of stealing food became one subject to draconian penalties even as people were starving, or perhaps because people were starving. Until it became apparent to many that the cause of the bad harvests was witchcraft afoot, punishments for its practice had been minor. They became considerably more severe as a result of the panic and suffering surrounding the climatic changes of the Little Ice Age, which of course even the most advanced scientists of the day were incapable of comprehending.
During the renaissance period, which was overlapped by the Little Ice Age, advancements in the manufacture of musical instruments, including violins, violas, pianofortes, and harpsichords, not to mention many others, made great forward strides in quality. It has been proposed that the different conditions to which the woods used for these instruments were exposed, particularly as they were being seasoned prior to their use, altered the density of the material so that it created a tone unique to the era in which it was made.