Long-term association between climate change and agriculturalists’ migration in historical China

Abstract

Based on 1686 records of agriculturalists' migration and 4417 events of social crisis (wars, famines, and epidemics) together with various statistical methods, we constructed a conceptual model that includes both climatic and social factors to explain the long-term dynamics of agriculturalists' migration in historical China over the last two millennia. Also, we framed our research under the paradigm of environmental humanities to help reinterpret the influence of long-term climate change on human migration. Our statistical results quantitatively analyzed and evidenced the reluctance of agriculturalists toward migration as a general feature of history in China. Yet, at the long-term and large spatial scale, climate change can exert indirect effects on agriculturalists' migration by contributing to social crisis, which is a more direct trigger. Based on our statistical results and existing literature, the attitude toward migration of agriculturalists and pastoralists in historical China was compared in a quantitative perspective. Finally, a traditional notion 'Mandate of Heaven' in relation to agriculturalists' migration was revisited. Our findings may have an important implication in comprehending the cultural barriers of human adaption to climate change in Chinese history.

Climate Change and the Pattern of the Hot Spots of War in Ancient China

“…In the "Spatial Autocorrelation" tool of ArcMap, the Global Moran's I statistic, based on feature locations and attribute values [36], was adopted to measure the degree of global spatial autocorrelation (or, roughly speaking, to decide whether there was a spatial cluster effect) for War data were gathered from the Tabulation of Wars in Ancient China, an appendix that belongs to the Military History of China, which was summarized by the Editorial Committee of Chinese Military History [34] and has been extensively employed in previous research [1][2][3][4][5][8][9][10][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. In this study, battle was considered the basic unit of war.…”

“…Hence, three precipitation cycles were determined, and over the study period, the lengths of all wet and dry periods lasted for 826 and 1085 years, respectively ( Figure 1b and Table 1). [34] and has been extensively employed in previous research [1][2][3][4][5][8][9][10][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. In this study, battle was considered the basic unit of war.…”

“…The climate-war nexus in historical China has been widely addressed by academic communities over the past decade [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. Scientists have mostly focused on this nexus from a temporal or time-series angle, whereas the spatiality of war and its connection with climate change has rarely been investigated.…”

Pollen and non-pollen palynomorph analyses of Upper Holocene sediments from Dianshan, Yangtze coastal lowlands, China: Hydrology, vegetation history and human activity

“…corresponds to the Lower Yangtze cultural periods of the Eastern Zhou (from 771 BC), the dynasties of , and Han (206 BC-AD 220), the , the Jin Dynasty (AD 280-420), the 'Southern Dynasties' (AD 420-581), the dynasties of Sui (AD 581-618) and Tang (AD 618-906), the Wuyue kingdom and the Song Dynasty (AD 978-1279). Although cultural and social factors were very important (Lu, 2007), the collapse of dynasties, including the Han, Tang and Song, are associated with periods of low temperature and drought (Gao, 1997), which may well have caused crop failures and social conflict, and prompted migration (Ge et al, 1997;Zhang et al, 2005b;Pei et al, 2014Pei et al, , 2018.…”

“…There will have been considerable spatial differences in land use across the Taihu lowlands during the last two millennia, based on hydrology and also on local population levels, as the area saw natural population rise and considerable immigration from northern China at intervals during this period (Qu and Li, 1992;Duan et al, 1998;Pei et al, 2018), prompted by climatic deterioration and drought (Zhang, 2005;Zhang et al, 2015;Yin et al, 2016). Populations did not start to rise to very high levels, however, until about 350 cal.…”