Impact of the little optimum

By 1300, or even a little before, this phase of European expansion was at an end. Lamb has suggested that the beginning of the end of the little optimum may have been responsible for the emergence of the Mongol hordes out of Asia because of an invasion of cold Arctic air into the heart of Asia. However, there is no direct proof that climatic change was an underlying cause of the outburst of the Mongol hordes. While there is good evidence that at the end of the little optimum cold spread gradually westward from China to Europe, and set backe the growth of western European civilization in the fourteenth century.