In this context, the tail end of the Little Ice Age rather than its full breadth. The conclusions are somewhat similar to what western European researchers have arrived at in earlier appraisals of climate – although that can be confused by recent climate change literature that has sought to downplay the period. That was that the period was not universally cold but included decades in which the climate was quite warm, even in winter. After all, Samuel Pepys recorded a summer heat wave in exactly the same period as this research. The likes of HH Lamb are anathema to modern climate change activists so a lot of people are unaware of any of the earlier research, especially the ship logs of Captain Cook when he entered the Arctic waters. We now have an up to date and scientific study that will be difficult to argue against. See https://phys.org/news/2026-11-historical-reveal-bitter-truth-17th.html … the weather in Transylvania between AD1645 and 1700.
The research comes from a university with a long name in Romania. They collected 937 written accounts from 68 localities in Transylvania and divided the information in them into several categories. Explicit mentions of the weather, indirect inference such as crops delayed and ripening late , frozen river reports, as well as impacts on people such as references to ruined crops and spikes in food availability. Next, they filtered out potentially incorrect information or the possibility of exaggeration, and what was left was confirmed by multiple accounts. They then compared their findings with physical evidence from cave ice. I assume that refers to speleotherms of stalagmites. You will need to download the full article from the link above – bottom of the article – to get the full information on this aspect. The results revealed that there were 55 harsh winters in the 17th century as a whole. However, some 36 of them occurred between 1645 and 1700. In contrast, there were many years in which temperatures did not plunge and warm winters did occur – and hot periods in the summer. Exactly as ascertained by HH Lamb many years ago. However, they also record a lot of wet weather – including periods of excessive rainfall. Fields with lots of puddles are not the best way to grow crops. The problem would have been crops rotting in the ground before they produced their bounty.
At https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ancient-copper-hints-iberia-played.html … ancient copper mines seem to hint that Iberia played a major role in Bronze Age trade networks. However, the date of this trade is what is more important and that information is buried in the full article rather than in the press release. In western Europe the Bronze Age is usually extended to around AD600 as iron technology was delayed by several centuries. Or not fully taken up by the farming community until they were able to do it themselves.
At https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/10/mysterious-stone-tomb-discovered-sahara/ … a mysterious stone tomb discovered in the Sahara. It contained a burial from 4000 years ago. Nearby is a huge rock art outcrop that stretches 27 km in length.
At https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/11/4000-year-old-dog-paw-print-brick-turkey/ … this is in reference to mud brick, the brick medium of the Near and Middle East. In some way a dog left a paw print in a brick. The brick must have been soft at the time. However, the paw print was preserved as it was caught up in a fire 4000 years ago. Would not the fire have hardened the brick? The answer is presumably that the paw print was introduced when the brick was being fashioned out of mud and straw – or even if the brick used clay it would have had to be soft. Firing makes clay bricks hard.