by Lewis Loflin
Climate change has long influenced human endeavors, often in ways that challenge survival and adaptation. As a Deist, I appreciate how scientific studies of past climates reveal the natural forces that shaped history, offering lessons for our present and future. During the Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling from roughly 1300 to 1850, Europe experienced frozen rivers and harsh winters, while the American Southeast, particularly the Carolinas and Virginia, faced severe droughts. These conditions coincided with the struggles of early English colonies at Roanoke and Jamestown, contributing to their high mortality rates and the mystery of the "Lost Colony."
The Little Ice Age brought colder temperatures and extreme weather worldwide, with significant effects in Europe from 1600 to 1720. Rivers like the Thames froze over, allowing "frost fairs" to be held on the ice, while harsh winters and wet springs disrupted agriculture, leading to famines. Across the Atlantic, the American Southeast experienced a different challenge: prolonged droughts. Paleoclimatic reconstructions, including tree-ring data, confirm that the late 16th and early 17th centuries were marked by some of the most severe droughts in 800 years in the Carolinas and Virginia. These conditions, part of the broader climatic variability of the Little Ice Age, created a harsh environment for early English settlers.
The Roanoke Colony, established on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was an ambitious attempt by Sir Walter Raleigh to create a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony. Between 1585 and 1587, several groups of colonists arrived, but each faced insurmountable challenges. The final group, arriving in 1587, disappeared after three years without supplies from England, delayed by the Anglo-Spanish War. Known as the "Lost Colony," their fate remains a mystery, with one theory suggesting they may have assimilated into local Indigenous tribes.
A study by David W. Stahle and colleagues, using tree-ring data stretching back to 1185, reveals that the Roanoke colonists arrived during the most severe growing-season drought in 800 years, spanning the late 1580s. This drought, coupled with the broader cooling of the Little Ice Age, likely strained food resources, exacerbating tensions with local tribes and contributing to the colony’s disappearance. The lack of supplies from England, preoccupied with war, left the settlers vulnerable to these harsh conditions.
The Jamestown settlement, founded in 1607 in Virginia, faced similar climate challenges. Historical records and tree-ring data document a seven-year drought from 1606 to 1612, the most severe in 800 years. Of the 104 original colonists, only 38 survived the first year, and of the 6,000 who arrived between 1608 and 1624, only 3,400 survived. Malnutrition was the primary cause of death, worsened by the drought’s impact on agriculture and food availability. The settlers’ reliance on Indigenous tribes for food, already strained by the drought, led to conflict and further hardship.
The Little Ice Age’s influence extended beyond drought. The period’s climatic variability brought hot, dry summers and cold winters to the region, making survival even more difficult for colonists unprepared for such extremes. European expectations, based on the assumption that Virginia’s climate would mirror that of lands at similar latitudes in Europe, were shattered by the reality of North America’s more variable seasons.
The last 1,000 years have been among the coldest in the past 10,000, with a notable temperature drop around 1600 marking the height of the Little Ice Age. Paleoclimatic studies, such as those examining whale fossils in the Arctic, indicate that the region was ice-free three times in the last 10,000 years, reflecting significant climate variability. Global temperatures in 2018 had not yet returned to the warmer averages of Alexander the Great’s era (around 330 B.C.E.), underscoring the long-term cooling trend that persisted into the early modern period.
Updated 2025 by Lewis Loflin. Source: National Centers for Environmental Information, The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts. For related climate studies, see Library of Climate Studies.
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me draft and refine this article. The final edits and perspective are my own.
Click to Visit!
