The ABC showed a documentary at 5pm on Sunday Night, 21 November 2004.

Secrets of the Barbarians, in which Richard Rudgley goes in search of evidence for the barbarians of the dark ages.

The documentary starts in England just after the Romans left, and noted that a new peoples seemed to have arrived on the east coast of England, a people known as Saxons and Angles - barbarians.

Next we find Richard flying eastwards to Germany, to the northern coastal regions of sourthern Denmark, ancient home of the Saxons.

There we see the deserted habitations of the Saxons, large mounds of earth built above the swamps on which they built their settlements. The Saxons were a seafaring peoples, building large well constructed boats.

Next we discover the Angles, and other ancient peoples, living further north - another peoples which deserted their homelands only to settle in England.

Why?

Well according to Richard, Europe was experiencing climate change, a change so severe that the Saxons had to flee their homelands because of sea-level rise.

Indeed much happened in those times - 5-6th Centuries AD. And climate change was noted all through Europe. It was a time of mass migrations of peoples, in the far east, and elsewhere.

Something happened in the 6th Century and we can be fairly certain it wasn't the result of greenhouse gases.

And we can be certain of another thing - according to the IPCC it didn't happen, and if it did, it was extremely localised.