WILL THIS CLIMATE CHANGE BE A DO-OVER?

Climate Change Doomed the Ancients

Eric H. Cline, May 27, 2014 (NY Times)

“…[C]limate change has been leading to global conflict — and even the collapse of civilizations — for more than 3,000 years…One of the most vivid examples [not human-caused like today’s climate change but indicative in its impacts] comes from around 1200 B.C. A centuries-long drought in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean regions, contributed to — if not caused — widespread famine, unrest and ultimately the destruction of many once prosperous cities…

“…It certainly created problems of national security for the great powers of the time. Correspondence between the Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and Babylonians — effectively, the Group of 8 of the Late Bronze Age — includes warnings of attacks from enemy ships in the Mediterranean. The marauders are thought to have been the Sea Peoples, possibly from the western Mediterranean, who were probably fleeing their island homes because of the drought and famine and were moving across the Mediterranean as both refugees and conquerors…The era that followed is known as the first Dark Ages, during which the thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C. suddenly ceased to exist…” click here for more

click to enlarge

Tweet