Archives reveal how climate memories may reset with each generation

AI Summary

Research using historical records suggests that communities’ collective memories of floods and droughts can fade over generations. As those memories recede, people may settle again in vulnerable areas or become less prepared for future climate extremes.

The collective memory of floods and droughts influences where people settle, how they build and how they prepare for the next climatic extreme. Over decades, that memory can fade, and communities may return to places that once proved dangerous. How such memory decayed over centuries is hard to observe because the climate past societies experienced is usually known only from their own records.