Description
Eighteen radiocarbon-dated aeolian and paleosol profiles (some obtained by the authors and some by others) within a 1500-km-long belt along the arid to semi-arid transition zone of north-central China (35-44°N, 100-117°E) were used to identify, respectively, mild/moist summer conditions and cold/dry winter conditions throughout the Holocene. One of the mild/moist periods was sandwiched between a cold/dry interval (the Dark Ages Cold Period) that ended about AD 810 and a cold/dry period (the Little Ice Age) that began about AD 1370. Allowing 50 years of transition at the end and start of these cold/dry periods, we have a Medieval Warm Period that ran from approximately AD 860 to AD 1320.