Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse
Title | Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse PDF eBook |
Author | H. Nüzhet Dalfes |
Publisher | Springer Science & Business Media |
Pages | 733 |
Release | 2013-06-29 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 3642606164 |
Around 4000 years ago the advanced urban civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and India suddenly collapsed. What happened? Did a prolonged drought cause the breakdown of social order? Recent discoveries from all over the world strongly support the suspected link of the collapse with climate. The volume presents the findings of more than 40 researchers and provides a review on the relevant information. It appears that a major shift of the precipitation pattern affected many parts of the world at approximately the same time, with disastrous effects on the nomadic populations of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. Can a similar climate shift with a serious adverse impact on society happen again? In a world facing global warming, there could be many lessons to be learned from the experiences of ancient societies.
Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse
Title | Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse PDF eBook |
Author | H. Nüzhet Dalfes |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 728 |
Release | 1996-12-13 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 9783540618928 |
Around 4000 years ago the advanced urban civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and India suddenly collapsed. What happened? Did a prolonged drought cause the breakdown of social order? Recent discoveries from all over the world strongly support the suspected link of the collapse with climate. The volume presents the findings of more than 40 researchers and provides a review on the relevant information. It appears that a major shift of the precipitation pattern affected many parts of the world at approximately the same time, with disastrous effects on the nomadic populations of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. Can a similar climate shift with a serious adverse impact on society happen again? In a world facing global warming, there could be many lessons to be learned from the experiences of ancient societies.
Megadrought and Collapse
Title | Megadrought and Collapse PDF eBook |
Author | Harvey Weiss |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 345 |
Release | 2017 |
Genre | Nature |
ISBN | 0199329192 |
Megadrought and Collapse is the first book to treat in one volume the current paleoclimatic and archaeological evidence of megadrought events coincident with major prehistoric and historical examples of societal collapse. Previous works have offered multi-causal explanations for collapse, from overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, and warfare to poor leadership and failure to adapt to environmental changes. In earlier synthetic studies of major instances of collapse, the full force of climate change has often not been considered. This volume includes nine case studies that span the globe and stretch over fourteen thousand years, from the paleolithic hunter-gatherer collapse of the 12th millennium BC to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer capital at Angkor. Together, the studies constitute a primary sourcebook in which principal investigators in archaeology and paleoclimatology present their original research. Each case study juxtaposes the latest paleoclimatic evidence of megadrought (so-called for its severity and its decades - to centuries-long duration) with available archaeological records of synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from all five archival paleoclimate proxy sources: speleothems (cave stalagmites), tree rings, and lake, marine, and glacial cores. The archaeological records in each case are the most recently retrieved. With Megadrought and Collapse, Harvey Weiss and his team of expert contributors have assembled an authoritative investigation that is certain to engage environmental history readers across disciplines in the sciences and social sciences.
Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East
Title | Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East PDF eBook |
Author | Paul Erdkamp |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Pages | 669 |
Release | 2021-11-05 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 3030811034 |
Climate change over the past thousands of years is undeniable, but debate has arisen about its impact on past human societies. This book explores the link between climate and society in ancient worlds, focusing on the ancient economies of western Eurasia and northern Africa from the fourth millennium BCE up to the end of the first millennium CE. This book contributes to the multi-disciplinary debate between scholars working on climate and society from various backgrounds. The chronological boundaries of the book are set by the emergence of complex societies in the Neolithic on the one end and the rise of early-modern states in global political and economic exchange on the other. In order to stimulate comparison across the boundaries of modern periodization, this book ends with demography and climate change in early-modern and modern Italy, a society whose empirical data allows the kind of statistical analysis that is impossible for ancient societies. The book highlights the role of human agency, and the complex interactions between the natural environment and the socio-cultural, political, demographic, and economic infrastructure of any given society. It is intended for a wide audience of scholars and students in ancient economic history, specifically Rome and Late Antiquity.
The Collapse of Complex Societies
Title | The Collapse of Complex Societies PDF eBook |
Author | Joseph Tainter |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 268 |
Release | 1988 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 9780521386739 |
Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory.
Challenging Climate Change
Title | Challenging Climate Change PDF eBook |
Author | Arne Wossink |
Publisher | Sidestone Press |
Pages | 202 |
Release | 2009 |
Genre | Agriculture |
ISBN | 9088900310 |
Throughout history, climate change has been an important driving force behind human behaviour. This archaeological study seeks to understand the complex interrelations between that behaviour and climatic fluctuations, focussing on how climate affected the social relations between neighbouring communities of occasionally differing nature. It is argued that developments in these relations will fall within a continuum between competition on one end and cooperation on the other. The adoption of a particular strategy depends on whether that strategy is advantageous to a community in terms of the maintenance of its well-being when faced with adverse climate change. This model will be applied to northern Mesopotamia between 3000 and 1600 BC. Local palaeoclimate proxy records demonstrate that aridity increased significantly during this period. Within this geographical, chronological, and climatic framework, this study looks at changes in settlement patterns as an indication of competition among sedentary agriculturalist communities, and the development of the Amorite ethnic identity as reflecting cooperation among sedentary and more mobile pastoralist communities.
The Historical Evolution of World-Systems
Title | The Historical Evolution of World-Systems PDF eBook |
Author | C. Chase-Dunn |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 228 |
Release | 2005-02-18 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1403980527 |
The rise and decline of great powers remains a fascinating topic of vigorous debate. This book brings together leading scholars to explore the historical evolution of world systems through examining the ebb and flow of great powers over time, with particular emphasis on early time periods. The book advances understanding of the regularities in the dynamics of empire and the expansion of political, social and economic interaction networks, from the Bronze Age forward. The authors analyze the expansion and contraction of cross-cultural trade networks and systems of competing and allying political groupings. In premodern times, theses ranged from small local trading networks (even the very small ones of hunting-gathering peoples) to the vast Mongol world-system. Within such systems, there is usually one, or a very few, hegemonic powers. How they achieve dominance and how transitions lead to systems change are important topics, particularly at a time when the United States' position is in flux. The chapters in this book review several recent approaches and present a wealth of new findings.