Above is a detail from “Along the River During Qingming Festival”, a painting by Zhang Zeduan, a Chinese artist of the twelfth century. The painting depicts the daily life of people from the Song period at the capital, Bianjing, near today’s Kaifeng. (See side story.)

Medieval Colorado River Drought, A World Event
by Joe Gelt

University of Arizona researchers recently found evidence of an epic medieval drought occurring along the Colorado River. More persistent and long-lasting than any drought on record in the region, the 60-year, 12th century drought reduced Colorado River flows to 15 percent below what is now considered normal for 25 years. That the drought was described as medieval is interesting. It is not a term one often encounters applied to developments in the western hemisphere or the New World. No scribes or monks were present to record events and occurrences from the fifth to the sixteenth century. Whatever information is available about medieval times in this part of the world comes mainly from archeological, geological or scientific studies such as the tree-ring research that identified evidence of the megadrought in the twelfth century.
Fitting the twelfth-century western drought into some kind of world view perspective would serve to link the New World with the Old and might make us more comfortable with a medieval period in our part of the world. The Colorado River drought can then be better understood as a medieval occurrence along with other world events of the twelfth century. While what later became the western United States suffered drought the following events occurred in a distant part of the world.

- The Chinese build an observatory that allows them to calculate rather precisely the length of the year by measuring shadows project- ed on the ground.

- A central organization known as the Hoogheemradschappen or Main Polder Boards begins administering land drainage in the Low Countries (now known as the Netherlands).

- Houses with chimneys gradually become common, although chimneys had been in use earlier for bakers’ ovens and for smelting.

- The Moroccan-born Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi publishes his Geography. He was the first to draw a correct map of the world. His maps were used by Renaissance explorers including Christopher Columbus. A Geographical Information Systems software is named after him.

- Thomas Becket is murdered in 1170

- The magnetic compass used in navigation first reached Europe some time in the late 12th century.

- The West’s oldest known depiction of a stern-mounted rudder can be found on church carvings dating to about 1180.

- The earliest written record of a windmill is from Yorkshire, England, dated 1185.

- The Chinese painter Zhang Zeduan paints Along the River During Ching Ming Festival, a wide handscroll which depicts life in a city.