Climate change and water management in the biblical city of Dan

Kaniewski, David; Marriner, Nick; Ilan, David; Morhange, Christophe; Thareani, Yifat; Campo, Elise Van

doi:10.1126/sciadv.1700954

Cited by 33 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…4; Bar-Matthews et al, 1997Bar-Matthews and Ayalon, 2011). While it has been noted that oxygen isotope ratios in speleothems cannot be used as a simple rainfall indicator (Frumkin et al, 1999;Kolodny et al, 2005;Litt et al, 2012), a similar value was suggested for the eastern Mediterranean with a decrease in annual precipitation of ∼ 30 % ( Fig. 2; Kaniewski et al, 2013).…”

Section: Lebanonmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…4; e.g., Bookman (Ken-Tor) et al, 2004;Migowski et al, 2006;Kagan et al, 2015). A similar short wet phase is recorded at Tel Akko at ∼ 4100 BP (Kaniewski et al, 2013) and ∼ 4000 BP at Tel Dan (Kaniewski et al, 2017), suggesting that minor chronological discrepancies can result from radiocarbon dating. The pollen-based environmental reconstruction from Ze'elim Gully (Dead Sea) echoes the Dead Sea level scores and suggests that drier climate conditions prevailed at ∼ 4300 BP and ∼ 3950 BP, engendering an expansion of olive horticulture during the period ∼ 4150-3950 BP, which implies milder conditions (Neuman et al, 2007a;Langgut et al, 2014Langgut et al, , 2016.…”

Section: Lebanonmentioning

confidence: 57%

“…4) as well as at Soreq Cave (δ 18 O, Fig. 4; Bar-Matthews et al, 2003;Bar-Matthews and Ayalon, 2011) and is more or less attested in the Sea of Galilee (Langgut et al, 2013;Schiebel and Litt, 2018), at Tel Dan, and Tel Akko (Kaniewski et al, 2013(Kaniewski et al, , 2017. This W-shaped event may be a local expression of the North Atlantic Bond event 3 (Bond et al, 1997) because it has already been demonstrated that drier-wetter phases in the eastern Mediterranean were associated with cooling-warming periods in the North Atlantic during the past 55 kyr (Bartov et al, 2003).…”

Section: Lebanonmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…A pollen-based environmental reconstruction depicts drier conditions characterized by a sharp drop in surface water between ∼ 4100 and ∼ 3900 BP, with two main inflections at ∼ 4050 and ∼ 3950 BP ( Fig. 4; Kaniewski et al, 2017). Approximately 10 km from Tel Dan, cores from the Birkat Ram crater lake (northern Golan Heights; Schwab et al, 2004), also located in the foothills of Mount Hermon, were used to reconstruct climate trends during the last 6000 years (Neuman et al, 2007a).…”

Section: Lebanonmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The 4.2 ka BP event in the Levant

et al. 2018

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Abstract. The 4.2 ka BP event is defined as a phase of environmental stress characterized by severe and prolonged drought of global extent. The event is recorded from the North Atlantic through Europe to Asia and has led scientists to evoke a 300-year global mega-drought. For the Mediterranean and the Near East, this abrupt climate episode radically altered precipitation, with an estimated 30 %–50 % drop in rainfall in the eastern basin. While many studies have highlighted similar trends in the northern Mediterranean (from Spain to Turkey and the northern Levant), data from northern Africa and the central-southern Levant are more nuanced, suggesting a weaker imprint of this climate shift on the environment and/or different climate patterns. Here, we critically review environmental reconstructions for the Levant and show that, while the 4.2 ka BP event also corresponds to a drier period, a different climate pattern emerges in the central-southern Levant, with two arid phases framing a wetter period, suggesting a W-shaped event. This is particularly well expressed by records from the Dead Sea area.

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Section: Lebanonmentioning

confidence: 54%

Section: Lebanonmentioning

confidence: 57%

Section: Lebanonmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Lebanonmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The 4.2 ka BP event in the Levant

et al. 2018

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“…Interestingly, during the same RCC, the Ukraine experienced a major settlement expansion, which has been attributed to societal resilience of the (cold-adapted) Cucuteni-Tripolye cultural complex (Weninger and Harper, 2015). Finally, the end of the Bronze Age around the Aegean coincided closely with the regional RCC expression of 3.1-2.9 ka BP (e.g., Rohling et al, 2009;Kaniewski et al, 2010Kaniewski et al, , 2017Cline, 2014). It appears, therefore, that there is a strong temporal relationship between RCCs in the wider eastern Mediterranean region and major archaeological changes, although-even within the Fertile Crescent (e.g., between the N-and S-Levant)-establishing such coincidences is complicated by complex interregional differences in terms of, for example, cultural trajectories, natural biodiversity, landscapes.…”

Section: Archaeological Importancementioning

confidence: 65%

A model for archaeologically relevant Holocene climate impacts in the Aegean-Levantine region (easternmost Mediterranean)

Rohling

Marino

Grant

et al. 2019

Quaternary Science Reviews

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A repeating pattern of multi-centennial-scale Holocene climate events has been widely (globally) documented, and they were termed Rapid Climate Change (RCC) events. Non-seasalt potassium ion (K +) series in Greenland ice cores provide wellconstrained timings for the events, and a direct timing relationship has been inferred between these events and the frequency of northerly cold polar/continental air outbreaks over the eastern Mediterranean Sea through gaps in the mountain ranges along the northern margin of the basin. There also appears to be a remarkable timing agreement with major archaeological turnover events in the Aegean/Levantine region. Yet no physically consistent assessment exists for understanding the regional climatic impacts of the events around this critical region. We present a simple 2-dimensional Lagrangian model, which yields a broad suite of physically coherent simulations of the impacts of frequency changes in winter-time northerly air outbreaks over the Aegean/Levantine region. We validate this with existing reconstructions from palaeoclimate proxy data, with emphasis on well-validated sea-surface temperature reconstructions and a highly resolved cave speleothem stable oxygen isotope record from Lebanon. Given that the RCCs were clearly marked by negative sea surface temperature anomalies in the region, we find that the predominant climatic impacts of this winter-time mechanism were "cold and wet," in contrast with intercalated "warmer and more arid" conditions of non-RCC periods. More specifically, the RCCs are found to be periods of highly variable conditions, with an overall tendency toward cold and wet conditions with potential for flash flooding and for episodic snow-cover at low altitudes, at least in the lower-altitude (lower 1 to 1.5 km) regions of Crete and the Levant. The modelled winter-anomaly process cannot address underlying longer-term, astronomically forced trends, or the relatively warm and arid anomalies in between RCCs. The latter require further study, for example with respect to potential (summertime?) extension of evaporative subtropical conditions over the region. Finally, our results imply that the "amount effect" observed in Levantine cave δ 18 O (and precipitation or drip-water δ 18 O) may not reflect the conventional concept related to temperature-dependent fractionation and Rayleigh distillation. Instead, it appears to arise from a complex and somewhat counter-intuitive mixing, in shifting proportionalities, between advected (external) and evaporated (Mediterranean) moisture.

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On the geoarchaeology of Limyra (SW Anatolia)—new insights into the famous Lycian city and its environs

et al. 2020

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Geoarchives in ancient settlement sites and their environs bear valuable information about Holocene landscape evolution and human–environment interactions. During the last six millennia, sea‐level and coastline changes have had a significant impact on coastal settlements, some of which even had to be relocated. This paper reveals new insights into the spatio‐temporal development of the Lycian city of Limyra. Selected sediment cores were analyzed using a multiproxy approach, combining sedimentology, geochemistry, micropaleontology, and 14C dating. When the postglacial sea‐level rise decelerated, a coastal barrier and a deep lake, presumably a lagoon, evolved after the mid‐Holocene. The siltation history of the lake is complex: three coastal peat layers (mid‐4th millennium BC, end of 3rd/beginning of 2nd millennium BC, beginning of 1st millennium BC), indicate periods of semiterrestrial conditions. That they are sandwiched by lake sediments is consistent with new expansion phases of the lake, most likely triggered by coseismic subsidence. There is evidence of a former lakeshore, dated to between 1400 and 1100 BC, with an intentionally deposited layer of anthropogenic remains, now at 5.5 m below the surface. In the mid‐1st millennium BC, the lake silted up, river channels evolved, and people started to settle the area of the later city of Limyra.

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Climate change and water management in the biblical city of Dan

Abstract: Past climate shifts in water-stressed areas show that stagnant water could be a health threat in the context of global change.

Cited by 33 publications

References 93 publications

The 4.2 ka BP event in the Levant

The 4.2 ka BP event in the Levant

A model for archaeologically relevant Holocene climate impacts in the Aegean-Levantine region (easternmost Mediterranean)

On the geoarchaeology of Limyra (SW Anatolia)—new insights into the famous Lycian city and its environs

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