Late Holocene drought responsible for the collapse of Old World civilizations is recorded in an Italian cave flowstone

Drysdale, Russell N.; Zanchetta, Giovanni; Hellström, John; Maas, Roland; Fallick, Anthony E.; Pickett, Matthew; Cartwright, Ian; Piccini, Leonardo

doi:10.1130/g22103.1

Cited by 307 publications

(227 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Jones et al, 1999;Gill, 2000;Kennett, 2000, 2006;Drysdale et al, 2006;Turney et al, 2006) indicate a renewed interest in the possibility of climatic forcing of cultural change, and scholars such as Dean et al (2000) and Axtell et al (2002) have applied agent-based models in which climate forcing…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Possible impacts of early-11th-, middle-12th-, and late-13th-century droughts on western Native Americans and the Mississippian Cahokians

Benson

Berry

Jolie

et al. 2007

Quaternary Science Reviews

116

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Stahle, David W.; and Hattori, Eugene M., "Possible impacts of early-11th-, middle-12th-, and late-13th-century droughts on western Native Americans and the Mississippian Cahokians" (2007). USGS AbstractOne or more of three intense and persistent droughts impacted some Native American cultures in the early-11th, middle-12th and late13th centuries, including the Anasazi, Fremont, Lovelock, and Mississippian (Cahokian) prehistorical cultures. Tree-ring-based reconstructions of precipitation and temperature indicate that warm drought periods occurred between AD 990 and 1060, AD 1135 and 1170, and AD 1276 and 1297. These droughts occurred during minima in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and may have been associated with positive values of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Each of the Native American cultures was supported, to a greater or lesser degree, by precipitation-dependent resources. Both the Four Corners region and Cahokia were sites of intense growth between about AD 1050 and 1130, and by AD 1150, cultures in both regions were undergoing stress. By AD 1300 the Anasazi and Fremont cultures had collapsed and their residual populations had either left their homelands or withered. In the case of Fremont populations, the AD 990-1060 drought may have had the greatest impact. This drought also may have affected the Anasazi, for it was at the end of this drought that some people from Chaco migrated to the San Juan River valley and founded the Salmon Ruin great house. Detailed data do not exist on the number of Lovelock habitation sites or populations over time; however, Lovelock populations appear to have retreated from the western Great Basin to California by AD 1300 or shortly thereafter. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Possible impacts of early-11th-, middle-12th-, and late-13th-century droughts on western Native Americans and the Mississippian Cahokians

Benson

Berry

Jolie

et al. 2007

Quaternary Science Reviews

116

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“…Climatic changes-and most prominently the succession of severe natural disasters-have been recognized as an important potential driver for the collapse of complex societies (1). However, not the climatological events per se, but societal vulnerability to its consequences in conjunction with other stressors has led to societal disintegration, armed conflicts, and eventually societal collapse during historic and prehistoric times (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). Today, armed conflicts are still among the biggest threats to human societies, and the identification of underlying processes and potential drivers is an area of intense scientific research.…”

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confidence: 99%

Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

Schleußner

Donges

Donner

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

296

175

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Social and political tensions keep on fueling armed conflicts around the world. Although each conflict is the result of an individual context-specific mixture of interconnected factors, ethnicity appears to play a prominent and almost ubiquitous role in many of them. This overall state of affairs is likely to be exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change and in particular climate-related natural disasters. Ethnic divides might serve as predetermined conflict lines in case of rapidly emerging societal tensions arising from disruptive events like natural disasters. Here, we hypothesize that climate-related disaster occurrence enhances armed-conflict outbreak risk in ethnically fractionalized countries. Using event coincidence analysis, we test this hypothesis based on data on armed-conflict outbreaks and climate-related natural disasters for the period 1980-2010. Globally, we find a coincidence rate of 9% regarding armed-conflict outbreak and disaster occurrence such as heat waves or droughts. Our analysis also reveals that, during the period in question, about 23% of conflict outbreaks in ethnically highly fractionalized countries robustly coincide with climatic calamities. Although we do not report evidence that climate-related disasters act as direct triggers of armed conflicts, the disruptive nature of these events seems to play out in ethnically fractionalized societies in a particularly tragic way. This observation has important implications for future security policies as several of the world's most conflict-prone regions, including North and Central Africa as well as Central Asia, are both exceptionally vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change and characterized by deep ethnic divides.climate-related natural disasters | ethnic fractionalization | armed conflicts | event coincidence analysis

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“…( 230 Th/ 232 Th) 0 is often assumed to be controlled mainly by particulates in the seepage water and to vary within 50-100% of the bulk-earth values (Hellstrom, 2006). In reality, activity ratios as low as w0.2 (Drysdale et al, 2006) and as high as 18.7 AE 2.9 (Beck et al, 2001) 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Growth band age (AD) Edwards et al (1988) The assumption of this model that ( 230 Th/ 232 Th) 0 was constant during the entire growth of the speleothem should also be noted. This is more likely to be the case over relatively short timescales, making the model more appropriate for reconstructing chronologies extending back no more than a few centuries.…”

Section: Non-radiogenic 230 Th Correction and Its Impact On The Precimentioning

confidence: 99%

High-precision 238U–234U–230Th disequilibrium dating of the recent past: a review

Zhao

Feng

2009

Quaternary Geochronology

104

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Late Holocene drought responsible for the collapse of Old World civilizations is recorded in an Italian cave flowstone

Cited by 307 publications

References 31 publications

Possible impacts of early-11th-, middle-12th-, and late-13th-century droughts on western Native Americans and the Mississippian Cahokians

Possible impacts of early-11th-, middle-12th-, and late-13th-century droughts on western Native Americans and the Mississippian Cahokians

Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

High-precision 238U–234U–230Th disequilibrium dating of the recent past: a review

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