{"id":26810,"date":"2026-01-29T14:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/?post_type=story&p=26810"},"modified":"2026-01-30T10:30:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T15:30:49","slug":"why-climate-ignorance-proved-deadly-in-17th-century-new-england","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2026\/01\/29\/why-climate-ignorance-proved-deadly-in-17th-century-new-england\/","title":{"rendered":"Why climate ignorance proved deadly in 17th-century New England"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

What is the price that humans might pay for today\u2019s spread of climate misinformation amid the emergence of AI, a phenomenon that the United Nations has called a global threat?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps we do not yet know. But history may provide some answers: A deep dive into 17th<\/sup>-century New England history reveals the impact on English settlers when they dismissed climate realities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Jan. 22 presentation, Nathan Braccio<\/a>, assistant professor of history<\/a>, described how the lack of climate knowledge and experience contributed to English \u201ccolonial failures,\u201d including the deaths of nearly half of the 102 Mayflower passengers during the harsh winter of 1620-21 in Plymouth, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis was ultimately not just a story of colonists suffering in an unfamiliar environment,\u201d he said in a talk sponsored by the George Perkins Marsh Institute<\/a>, part of the School of Climate, Environment, and Society<\/a>. \u201cInstead, a confluence of an English epistemology ill-suited to make sense of a new continent and an inability to learn about the landscape from Indigenous experts ensured that colonists were not prepared for the climactic challenges they faced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Believing in cosmography \u2014 a medieval, undeveloped science that mapped elements of the cosmos, heaven, and Earth \u2014 the English felt confident in encouraging settlement in what is now New England. Integrating maps and prioritizing \u201ctheorization over observation and experience,\u201d cosmography divided the world into climactic zones \u2014 the frozen north and south; the burning equator; and the temperate area that included Europe and what is now northeastern America, according to Braccio, whose book<\/a>, Creating New England, Defending the Northeast: Contested Algonquian and English Spatial Worlds<\/em>, 1500\u20131700, recently was published by University of Massachusetts Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe concept of climate was extremely important to the English. It was at the core of their understanding of the world, and they used the word frequently, although with a different meaning then it sometimes has now,\u201d he said. The English equated \u201cclimate\u201d with the quality of a place \u2014 one that was high quality had \u201chealthful, warm, and dry\u201d air and rich, black, fertile soil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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