Climate Change As A Killer Of Civilizations

Video: Climate Change As A Killer Of Civilizations

Video: Climate Change As A Killer Of Civilizations
Video: Climate and the Collapse of Civilizations 2024, March
Climate Change As A Killer Of Civilizations
Climate Change As A Killer Of Civilizations
Anonim

By the beginning of the XI century BC. NS. the brilliant Mycenaean civilization ceased to exist. The cities were destroyed. The survivors returned to simple rural life. Trade has stalled. The writing was forgotten.

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Civilization returned only to the 8th century. Those whom we call Greeks adopted the Phoenician script; Athens, Sparta and other powerful city-states arose. Classical Greece far surpassed its predecessors and had a tremendous impact on the entire subsequent culture of mankind.

But back to Mycenae. What happened? Judging by the latest data, this civilization is destined to join the list of those who were killed by the vagaries of the climate.

The fact that a relatively small climate change can lead to unrest and war, and a large one - to destroy entire civilizations, became known more than a century ago, but only in the 1990s this idea received solid scientific support, when experts learned to disassemble the clues left to us nature in cores and stalactites.

One of the pioneers was Harvey Weiss of Yale University (USA), who made a connection between climate change and the collapse of the Akkad empire. While excavating in Syria, Mr. Weiss discovered dust deposits and suggested that around 2200 BC. NS. the climate in the region suddenly became dry. This led to severe famine, which is confirmed by written sources: "For the first time since the founding of cities, the earth did not give birth to grain, water did not give fish, neither molasses nor wine came from the gardens, not a drop was spilled from the sky" ("Curse of Akkad").

Weiss's work made a great impression on colleagues, but the evidence base was still weak. But in 2000, Peter Demenokal of Columbia University (USA) and his colleagues, based on archival data dating back to 1700, concluded that the Tigris-Euphrates interfluve depends on conditions in the North Atlantic: the influx of cold waters reduces precipitation in Mesopotamia. They then discovered that this was exactly what happened before the collapse of the Akkadian Empire.

It soon became clear that major climate changes coincided with the untimely demise of a number of other civilizations. For example, despite all its achievements, the great Mayan civilization fell into decay. In 2003, Gerald Haug of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, by analyzing lake sediments, showed that rainfall in Central America peaked in the mid-seventeenth century, but was followed by a period of prolonged droughts and declining rainfall. By 830, monumental construction had ceased in Mayan cities, although a number of settlements existed for several centuries.

But historians to this day are reluctant to consider climatic factors on a par with political and cultural ones. The fact is that historical science has already gone through something similar in the 18th and 19th centuries. The theory of ecological determinism argued that the structure of society and the character of a person is influenced by environmental conditions: the warm tropics indulge laziness, and the temperate climate encourages active mental work. These ideas have often been used to justify racism.

Mr. Demenokal reasonably argues that today no one is going to put climate at the forefront of the anthropological corner. The climate, according to him, only imposes certain restrictions on civilization: for example, bad soil will not give a large harvest, whatever one may say. And hungry people become more vulnerable to disease. In addition, pests come to crops, etc. No matter how developed a society is, collapse is inevitable.

Some people think this is an oversimplified picture. Karl Butzer from the University of Texas at Austin (USA) points out that climate problems only expose “institutional failures,” that is, weaknesses in the social order.

But it is very difficult to imagine how the Maya, accustomed to heavy rainfall, could cope with a 40% reduction in rainfall. This is a serious test even by today's standards. For example, today Saudi Arabia manages to fully provide itself with wheat only by pumping water from previously inaccessible depths. The Maya hardly possessed our drilling technology.

Much is still unclear about Mycenae. Usually their deaths are attributed to pressure from the barbarians and the attacks of the mysterious "Sea Peoples". But in 2010, analysis of river sediments in Syria revealed a prolonged dry period between 1200 and 850 BC. e., which almost exactly corresponds to the "dark ages" of Greek history. And in 2012, Brandon Drake from the University of New Mexico (USA) showed that it was getting colder in the Mediterranean at that time - and this led to a decrease in evaporation and, accordingly, precipitation.

Around the same time, the Hittite Empire and the New Kingdom in Egypt collapsed, which went down in history as the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations. And simultaneously with the collapse of the Maya, the Chinese Tang dynasty began to rapidly lose control over the country.

The question is, of course, a complex one, and one cannot assign all responsibility to one factor. The Hittites and Egyptians were also attacked by the Sea Peoples. The strengthening of local princes during the Tang era has obvious economic reasons, although, of course, the drought caused by the displacement of the monsoons also played a role. You can also recall the Khmer Empire, which collapsed in the 15th century, when climatic problems were added to numerous problems. Meanwhile, Gary Feynman of the Chicago Museum of Natural History. Fielda (USA) recalls that the Aztecs also faced drought and famine, but preserved their civilization.

The bottom line is that climate data are at least worth considering. A characterization study in 2005 by David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong combined Chinese history with paleoclimatic modeling data. It turned out that relatively warm periods were characterized by stability, while a drop in average temperature by at least a few tenths of a degree increased the likelihood of uprisings and civil strife. The same result was given by an analysis of the wars in Europe, Asia and North Africa from 1400 to 1900. In the 17th century, during the so-called Little Ice Age, Europe was shaken by a severe political crisis, which resulted in the Thirty Years War and other conflicts until the fall of the monarchy in England …

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