Destroyer of Civilizations
Not safe sex, as the church would have us believe, but climate change.
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Some view even this notion as too simplistic. Karl Butzer of the University of Texas at Austin, who has studied the collapse of civilisations, thinks the role of climate has been exaggerated. It is the way societies handle crises that decides their fate, he says. “Things break through institutional failure.” When it comes to the Akkadians, for instance, Butzer says not all records support the idea of a megadrought.
In the case of the Maya, though, the evidence is strong. Earlier this year, Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton, UK, used lake sediments and isotope ratios in stalactites to work out how rainfall had changed. He concluded that annual rainfall fell 40 per cent over the prolonged dry period, drying up open water sources. This would have seriously affected the Maya, he says, because the water table lay far underground and was effectively out of reach…
While many archaeologists remain unconvinced, the list of possible examples continues to grow. The Mycenaeans are the latest addition. The reason for their downfall has been the subject of much debate, with one of the most popular explanations being a series of invasions and attacks by the mysterious “Sea Peoples”. In 2010, though, a study of river deposits in Syria suggested there was a prolonged dry period between 1200 and 850 BC – right at the time of the so-called Greek Dark Ages. Earlier this year, Drake analysed several climate records and concluded that there was a cooling of the Mediterranean at this time, reducing evaporation and rainfall over a huge area.
What’s more, several other cultures around the Mediterranean, including the Hittite Empire and the “New Kingdom” of Egypt, collapsed around the same time as the Mycenaeans – a phenomenon known as the late Bronze Age collapse. Were all these civilisations unable to cope with the changing climate?
Read Climate change: The great civilisation destroyer? in New Scientist (Registration required).
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