“No harvest was reaped”: demographic and climatic factors in the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Schneider, Adam; Adalı, Selim Ferruh

doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1269-y

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In the same letter from Akkulanu to Assurbanipal, in which we found the passage about the lack of harvesting discussed by Schneider and Adalı (2014), there is also information about Cimmerians who occupied 'the land of Amurru' (i.e., the eastern part of the Assyrian Empire) during this time (Parpola 1993). The Cimmerians came to the Near East from the steppe north of the Caucasus and were first noted by the Assyrians around 716 BCE.…”

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confidence: 75%

“…archaeological evidence currently available to address this question presents a different scenario than that proposed by Schneider and Adalı (2014) from the single letter they discuss.…”

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confidence: 88%

“…However, if migrations of nomadic pastoralists are related to climatic change (cf. Fang and Liu 1992), their presence in Mesopotamia may be the result of an episode of more arid conditions suggested by paleoclimatic proxies, as discussed by Schneider and Adalı (2014). At any rate, the Cimmerians did not enter into permanent control of the land as had the Arameans five centuries earlier, and therefore they cannot be interpreted as the direct causative agent of the fall of the Assyrian Empire.…”

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confidence: 94%

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confidence: 97%

“…However, the available data are not precise enough to indicate anything more than the fact that there is no single piece of evidence suggesting climatic change contributing to the fall of Assyria, neither within the 'carrying capacity' model of Schneider and Adalı (2014), nor within the traditional 'herder invasion' model. Schneider and Adalı (2014) refer in their paper to the recent outbreak of drought in Syria and suggested that this was the cause of the civil war that has been devastating the country since 2011. However, even in this contemporary case, the direct relation between weather conditions and political history is disputed and it seems that the large-scale mismanagement of resources lasting for several decades rather than two years of drought triggered the social upheaval and rebellion against the regime (De Châtel 2014), casting even more doubt on the idea that Assyria fell due to climatic change.…”

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confidence: 97%

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Drought and the fall of Assyria: quite another story

Sołtysiak

2016

Climatic Change

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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

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confidence: 75%

“…archaeological evidence currently available to address this question presents a different scenario than that proposed by Schneider and Adalı (2014) from the single letter they discuss.…”

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confidence: 88%

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confidence: 94%

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confidence: 97%

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confidence: 97%

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