Drought is the great enemy of human civilization. Drought deprives us of the two things necessary to sustain life--food and water. When the rains stop and the soil dries up, cities die and civilizations collapse, as people abandon lands no longer able to supply them with the food and water they need to live. While the fall of a great empire is usually due to a complex set of causes, drought has often been identified as the primary culprit or a significant contributing factor in a surprising number of such collapses. Drought experts Justin Sheffield and Eric Wood of Princeton, in their 2011 book, Drought, identify more than ten civilizations, cultures and nations that probably collapsed, in part, because of drought. As we mark World Water Day on March 22, we should not grow overconfident that our current global civilization is immune from our old nemesis--particularly in light of the fact that a hotter climate due to global warming will make droughts more intense and impacts more severe. So, presented here is a "top ten" list of drought's great power over some of the mightiest civilizations in world history--presented chronologically.....MUCH MORE
Collapse #1. The Akkadian Empire in Syria, 2334 BC - 2193 BC. In Mesopotamia 4200 years ago, the great Akkadian Empire united all the indigenous Akkadian-speaking Semites and the Sumerian speakers, and controlled Mesopotamia, the Levant, and parts of Iran, sending military expeditions as far south as present-day Oman. In a 2000 article published in Geology, "Climate change and the collapse of the Akkadian empire: Evidence from the deep sea", a team of researchers led by Heidi Cullen studied deposits of continental dust blown into the Gulf of Oman in the late 1990s. They discovered a large increase in dust 4200 years ago that likely coincided with a 100-year drought that brought a 30% decline in precipitation to Syria. The drought, called the 4.2 kiloyear event, is thought to have been caused by cooler sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic. The 4.2 kiloyear event has also been linked to the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt (see below). The paper concluded, "Geochemical correlation of volcanic ash shards between the archeological site and marine sediment record establishes a direct temporal link between Mesopotamian aridification and social collapse, implicating a sudden shift to more arid conditions as a key factor contributing to the collapse of the Akkadian empire."
Collapse #2. The Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, 4200 years ago. The same drought that brought down the Akkadian empire in Syria severely shrank the normal floods on the Nile River in ancient Egypt. Without regular floods to fertilize the fields, poor harvests led to reduced tax income and insufficient funds to finance the pharaoh's government, hastening the collapse of Egypt's pyramid-building Old Kingdom. An inscription on the tomb of Ankhtifi during the collapse describes the pitiful state of the country when famine stalked the land: "the whole country has become like locusts going in search of food…"
Collapse #3. The Late Bronze Age (LBA) civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean. About 3200 years ago, the Eastern Mediterranean hosted some of the world’s most advanced civilizations. The Mycenaean culture was flourishing in Greece and Crete. The chariot-riding Hittites had carved out a vast empire encompassing a large part of Asia Minor and the Middle East. In Egypt, the New Kingdom was at its height. However, around 1200 BC, these Eastern Mediterranean civilizations declined or collapsed. According to a 2013 study in PLOS, studying grains of fossilized pollen shows that this collapse coincided with the onset of a 300-year drought event. This climate shift caused crop failures and famine, which "precipitated or hastened socio-economic crises and forced regional human migrations at the end of the LBA in the Eastern Mediterranean and southwest Asia." In this image, we see the fall of Troy (complete with the famed Trojan Horse), an event recounted in Greek mythology at the end of the Bronze Age, as represented by the 17th century painter Kerstiaen De Keuninck. Image credit: Wikipedia Commons.
Collapse #4. The Maya civilization of 250 - 900 AD in Mexico. Severe drought killed millions of Maya people due to famine and lack of water, and initiated a cascade of internal collapses that destroyed their civilization at the peak of their cultural development, between 750 - 900 AD. Haug, G.H. et al., in their 2003 paper in Science, "Climate and the collapse of Maya civilization," documented substantial multi-year droughts coinciding with the collapse of the Maya civilization.....
note: Example #10 on Syria's 2005 - 2008 drought links to a paper that lays the blame for Syria's civil war on human-caused climate change.
This may be in error as 1) attribution studies are tricky beasties. 2) the assumed proximal source of conflict, crop failure, was found by later research to not have occurred with anywhere near the assumed extent.
3) A factor in bringing on the civil war, at least as large as the weather, was the fact the West, led by the United States as part of the Arab Spring, decided to arm counter-Assad ISIS and other Jihadi forces to overthrow the Assad government.
