Drought and the fall of Assyria: quite another story

Abstract

A recent Climatic Change paper suggests a relationship between climatic change in the 7th century BCE and the fall of the Assyrian Empire. However, available archaeological and textual evidence does not support the hypothesis that Assyria was overpopulated during this time and for that reason susceptible to outbreaks of drought. Besides long-term climatic variation, inter-annual variability in crops has always been very high in the dry farming areas of Upper Mesopotamia. To cope with this uncertainty, the local population developed several strategies (e.g. storage of agricultural surpluses in granaries and artificial irrigation in river valleys). Finally, slave prices, known to have declined during times of famine, were relatively stable during the entire century suggesting absence of prolonged periods of food shortage.In a recent volume of Climatic Change, Schneider and Adalı (2014) published a paper suggesting some sort of relationship between climatic change in the 7th century BCE and the fall of the Assyrian Empire. The authors hypothesize that prolonged drought decreased the volume of available crops and that the carrying capacity was exceeded in the core area of Assyria, which was overpopulated at this time. The authors use paleoclimatic proxies from distant parts of the Near East, most of which have relatively low temporal resolution, and one letter dated 15 May 657 BCE reporting on drought and the lack of harvests, as evidence for the deterioration of climatic conditions. Inferred overpopulation was deduced based on the size of Nineveh, which covered c. 750 ha during this time.The article by Schneider and Adalı (2014) is written in a very cautious manner, but the authors nonetheless seem convinced that both their model and their data are sufficient for identifying the proposed climatic change as the possible cause of the rapid collapse of the Assyrian state in the last quarter of the 7th century BCE. However, the amount of textual and Climatic Change (2016) 136:389-394

Stable isotopic evidence for land use patterns in the Middle Euphrates Valley, Syria

“…Such large‐scale and labor demanding investment is quite consistent with the policy of the Assyrian state, which sought to increase agricultural production after the social collapse in the Early Iron Age (cf. Sołtysiak, ) using human resources available through mass deportations (cf. Oded, ).…”

“…It is likely that during that time some farmers joined Aramean tribes of herders, but in general during the beginning of the Iron Age the mobile herders were perceived as a major threat by urban dwellers. In times of the Neo‐Assyrian Empire (9th–7th century BCE) the agricultural potential of northern Mesopotamia was restored and the state was powerful enough to strictly control herders (Sołtysiak, ). However, in later periods some autonomy of Aramean and Arab nomadic tribes was attested and the mobility of herdsmen was increased due to the domestication of camels (Rosen & Saidel, ).…”

Investigating hydroclimatic impacts of the 168–158 BCE volcanic quartet and their relevance to the Nile River basin and Egyptian history

“…Important work has still been possible using speleothems, sedimentary and other archives (e.g., Drake, 2012;Schneider and Adali, 2014;Knapp and Manning, 2016;Sołtysiak, 2016), but there is often little direct temporal and/or geographical overlap between these early ancient world regions of rich human documentation and proxies (e.g., tree-ring based) with precision and accuracy at annual-or-better resolutions. A major recent advance, however, has been the publication of a chronologically precise and accurate bipolar ice-core-based volcanic forcing reconstruction for the past 2,500 years (Sigl et al, 2015; https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2022-25 Preprint.…”

Irrigation and Landscape Commemoration in Northern Assyria, the Assyrian Canal and Rock Reliefs in Faida (Kurdistan Region of Iraq): Preliminary Report on the 2019 Field Season

“…4 For a discussion of further proxy data suggesting greater regional aridity during the seventh century B.C., see Schneider and Adalı 2014, who, however, rather deterministically suggest that climate change in the seventh century B.C. may be correlated with the collapse of the Assyrian Empire (for criticism, see also Sołtysiak 2016). 5 For a description of the conditions of the agricultural economy in the Khorsabad and Nineveh hinterlands and in particular in the LoNAP survey areawhich is part of the stable dry-farming zone of Upper Mesopotamia (Wilkinson 2004: 42-43) and is located well beyond the "zone of The Governorates of Duhok and Ninawa in Iraq host the uniquely highly branched and most monumental irrigation system ever built by the Assyrians in the core of their empire.…”

“… 4 For a discussion of further proxy data suggesting greater regional aridity during the seventh century B.C., see Schneider and Adalı 2014, who, however, rather deterministically suggest that climate change in the seventh century B.C. may be correlated with the collapse of the Assyrian Empire (for criticism, see also Sołtysiak 2016). …”