Chapter Two: Climate and History

Abstract

Climate change has been a key factor in the rise and fall of societies and states from prehistory to the recent fighting in the Sudanese state of Darfur. It drives instability, conflict and collapse, but also expansion and reorganisation. The ways in which cultures have met the climate challenge provide object lessons for how the modern world can handle the new security threats posed by unprecedented global warming.

Combining historical precedents with current thinking on state stability, internal conflict and state failure suggests that overcoming cultural, social, political and economic barriers to successful adaptation to a changing climate is the most important factor in avoiding instability in a warming world. The countries which will face increased risk are not necessarily the most fragile, nor those which will suffer the greatest physical effects of climate change.

The global security threat posed by fragile and failing states is well known. It is in the interest of the world's more affluent countries to take measures both to reduce the degree of global warming and climate change and to cushion the impact in those parts of the world where climate change will increase that threat. Neither course of action will be cheap, but inaction will be costlier. Providing the right kind of assistance to the people and places it is most needed is one way of reducing the cost, and understanding how and why different societies respond to climate change is one way of making that possible.

Notes

See Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel and McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, both discussed in Chapter One; see also Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 276–81.

Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, pp. 46–7.

For a general survey see Brian Fagan, The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (London: Granta, 2004), pp. 68–78.

See ibid., pp. 57, 79–96; Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 188–92.

See Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 107–10; Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 57–63, 218–20; Laura Spinney, ‘In Search of the Missing Stone Age Tribes’, New Scientist, 8 November 2008, pp. 40–3.

See Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 111–15; Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 220–2. Burroughs presents the more balanced discussion of the somewhat controversial evidence for the Euxine flood.

Paul A. Mayewski et al., ‘Holocene Climate Variability’, Quarternary Research, vol. 62, 2004, pp. 243–56. Mayewski and colleagues draw on around 50 different climate proxies from around the world. Because of regional climate differences and sensitivity of the proxies, not every rapid climate-change event is reflected in every record. The ‘hockey-stick controversy’ discussed in Chapter One demonstrates some of the difficulties of reconstructing past temperatures, but it is past climates that are important in this context, and the proxies used to reconstruct temperatures are direct indicators of climate. Variation in global mean temperature, as a driver of climate change more broadly, is important when making future projections or predictions, but less so for analysis of the historical interaction between climate and culture.

4AR WG1, p. 435; see also pp. 459–65.

Heinz Wanner et al., ‘Mid- to Late Holocene Climate Change: An Overview’, Quarternary Science Reviews, vol. 27, 2008, pp. 1,791–828, using a smaller set of 18 proxy series, fail to find evidence of any rapid climatechange events on a global scale over the last 6,000 years.

See David G. Anderson et al., ‘Climate and Culture Change: Exploring Holocene Transitions’, in Anderson et al. (eds), Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics: A Global Perspective on Mid-Holocene Transitions (London: Academic Press, 2007), pp. 12–18; the various other essays in that volume; Raven Garvey et al., ‘Middle Holocene Behavioural Strategies in the Americas’, Before Farming, no. 2, 2008, article 1, http://www.waspjournals.com/journals/beforefarming/journal_20082/abstracts/index.php; Gustavo Neme and Adolfo Gil, ‘Human Occupation and Increasing Mid-Holocene Aridity’, Current Anthropology, vol. 50, no. 1, February 2009, pp. 149–63; Nick Brooks, ‘Cultural Responses to Aridity in the Middle Holocene and Increased Social Complexity’, Quarternary International, vol. 151, 2006, pp. 29–49.

For the most recent and detailed reconstruction of mean global temperatures over the last 2,000 years see Mann et al., ‘Proxy-based Reconstructions of Hemispheric and Global Surface Temperature Variations over the Past Two Millennia’.

Unless otherwise indicated, details of Easter Island's history, society and ecology follow Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 79–119.

Mayewski et al., ‘Holocene Climate Variability’, p. 251–2

Diamond, Collapse, pp. 115–18.

Mayweski et al., ‘Holocene Climate Variability’, p. 250.

Brooks, ‘Beyond Collapse: The Role of Climatic Dessication in the Emergence of Complex Societies in the Middle Holocene’, in S. Leroy and P. Costa (eds), Environmental Catastrophes in Mauritania, the Desert and the Coast, Abstract Volume and Field Guide, First Joint Meeting of ICSU Dark Nature and IGCP490, 4–18 January 2004, Mauritania, pp. 26–30, available at http://www.nickbrooks.org/publications/Brooks-BeyondCollapseabs.pdf; Brooks, ‘Cultural Responses to Aridity in the Middle Holocene and Increased Social Complexity’; Anderson et al., Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics and other essays contained in that volume.

See Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 128–45; Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 240–55.

Harvey Weiss et al., ‘The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization’, Science, vol. 261, no. 5,124, 20 August 1993, pp. 995–1,004; Weiss, ‘Beyond the Younger Dryas: Collapse as Adaptation to Abrupt Climate Change in Ancient West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean’, in Garth Bawden and Richard Martin Reycraft (eds), Environmental Disaster and the Archaeology of Human Response, Anthropological Papers no. 7 (Albuquerque, NM: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 2000), pp. 75–98; Richard A. Kerr, ‘Sea-Floor Dust Shows Drought Felled Akkadian Empire’, Science, vol. 279, no. 5,349, 16 January 1998, pp. 325–6; H.M. Cullen et al., ‘Climate Change and the Collapse of the Akkadian Empire: Evidence from the Deep Sea’, Geology, vol. 28, no. 4, April 2000, pp. 379–82; Peter B. deMenocal, ‘Cultural Responses to Climate Change During the Late Holocene’, Science, vol. 292, no. 5,517, 27 April 2001, p. 669; L. Ristvet, ‘Agriculture, Settlement, and Abrupt Climate Change: The 4.2ka BP Event in Northern Mesopotamia’, Eos, vol. 89, no. 53, 2003, Fall Meeting Supplement, Abstract, PP22C-02, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003AGUFMPP22C.02R.

N. Catto and G. Catto, ‘Climate Change, Communities, and Civilizations: Driving Force, Supporting Player, or Background Noise?’, Quarternary International, vol. 123–5, 2004, pp. 7–10.

For a view that rapid climate change and its social impacts at this time were limited to southwest Asia and Egypt, see Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 254–5.

Mayewski et al., ‘Holocene Climate Variability’.

Catto and Catto, ‘Climate Change, Communities, and Civilizations: Driving Force, Supporting Player, or Background Noise?’; M. Staubwasser et al., ‘Climate Change at the 4.2 ka BP Termination of the Indus Valley Civilization and Holocene South Asian Monsoon Variability’, Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 30, no. 8, 2003.

Marco Madella and Dorian Q. Fuller, ‘Paleoecology and the Harappan Civilisation of South Asia: A Reconsideration’, Quarternary Science Reviews, vol. 25, 2006, pp. 1,283–1,301.

Wu Wenxiang and Liu Tungsheng, ‘Possible Role of the “Holocene Event 3” on the Collapse of Neolithic Cultures around the Central Plain of China’, Quaternary International, vol. 117, no. 1, 2004, pp. 153–66; Gao Huazhong et al., ‘Environmental Change and Cultural Response around 4200 cal. yr BP in the Yishu River Basin, Shandong’, Journal of Geographical Sciences, vol. 17, no. 3, July 2007, pp. 285–92.

Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 256–8; Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 178–88.

Carole L. Crumley, ‘Analyzing Historic Ecotonal Shifts’, Ecological Applications, vol. 3, no. 3, 1993, pp. 377–84.

Eelco J. Rohling et al., ‘Holocene Climate Variability in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the End of the Bronze Age’, in C. Bachhuber and G. Roberts (eds), Forces of Transformation: The End of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009), preprint available at http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/soes/staff/ejr/Rohlingpapers/2008-Rohling et al Oxbow chapter FINAL.pdf.

See Joseph A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 148–50.

Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 200–7.

Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, p. 151.

Burroughs, Does the Weather Really Matter? The Social Implications of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 20.

4AR WG1, pp. 468–9; Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 211–12; Burroughs, Does the Weather Really Matter?, pp. 107–9; Mann et al., ‘Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly’, Science, vol. 326. no. 5,957, 27 November 2009, pp. 1,256–60.

Herlihy, ‘Ecological Conditions and Demographic Change’.

Burroughs, Does the Weather Really Matter?, pp. 34–42, 109–12; Christian Pfister, ‘Climatic Extremes, Recurrent Crises and Witch Hunts: Strategies of European Societies in Coping with Exogenous Shocks in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, Medieval History Journal, vol. 10, nos 1–2, 2007, pp. 33–73; Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 248–50; Wolfgang Behringer, A Cultural History of Climate (London: Polity, 2010); Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Pingzhong Zhang et al., ‘A Test of Climate, Sun, and Culture Relationships from an 1810-Year Chinese Cave Record’, Science, vol. 322, no. 5,903, 7 November 2008, pp. 940–42.

Harry F. Lee et al., ‘Climatic Change and Chinese Population Growth Dynamics over the Last Millenium’, Climatic Change, vol. 88, 2008, pp. 131–56.

David D. Zhang et al., ‘Climate Change and War Frequency in Eastern China over the Last Millenium’, Human Ecology, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 403–14

Victor J. Polyak and Yemane Asmerom, ‘Late Holocene Climate and Cultural Changes in the Southwestern United States’, Science, vol. 294, no. 5,540, 5 October 2001, pp. 148–51; Mark Brenner et al., ‘Abrupt Climate Change and Pre- Columbian Cultural Collapse’, in Vera Markgraff (ed.), Interhemispheric Climate Linkages (London: Academic Press, 2001), pp. 87–102; deMenocal, ‘Cultural Responses to Climate Change During the Late Holocene’; Terry L. Jones and Al Schwitalla, ‘Archaeological Perspectives on the Effects of Medieval Drought in Prehistoric California’, Quarternary International, vol. 188, no. 1, September 2008, pp. 41–58; Michael W. Binford et al., ‘Climate Variation and the Rise and Fall of an Andean Civilisation’, Quarternary Research, vol. 47, no. 2, March 1997, pp. 235–48; Diamond, Collapse, pp. 136–56; Henry F. Diaz and David W. Stahle, ‘Climate and Cultural History in the Americas: An Overview’, Climatic Change, vol. 83, no. 1, July 2007, pp. 1–8.

See Diamond, Collapse, pp. 157–77; Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 229–38, esp. p. 236; deMenocal, ‘Cultural Responses to Climate Change During the Late Holocene’.

Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, esp. pp. 344–60.

McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, pp. 188–90; Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, pp. 210–12. McNeill's estimate of 100m for the total New World population is now generally considered too high.

R.J. Nevle and D.K. Bird, ‘Effects of Syn-pandemic Fire Reduction and Reforestation in the Tropical Americas on Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide During European Conquest’, Eos, vol. 89, no. 53, Fall Meeting Supplement, abstract U31A-0004; Stanford University News Service, ‘Post-pandemic Reforestation in New World Helped Trigger Little Ice Age, Stanford Researchers Say’, press release, 18 December 2008, http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-manvleaf-010709.html.

Thomas B. van Hoof et al., ‘Forest Re-growth on Medieval Farmland after the Black Death Pandemic: Implications for Atmospheric CO2 Levels’, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, vol. 237, nos. 2–4, August 2006, pp. 396–409.

Burroughs, Does the Weather Really Matter?, pp. 45–50; US National Drought Mitigation Center, ‘Drought in the Dust Bowl Years’, 2006, http://drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm.

DeMenocal, ‘Cultural Responses to Climate Change During the Late Holocene’; Richard Seager et al., ‘The Characteristics and Likely Causes of the Medieval Megadroughts in North America’, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Research Paper, 2007, http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/medieval.shtml; K.R. Laird et al., ‘Greater Drought Intensity and Frequency before AD 1200 in the Northern Great Plains, USA’, Nature, vol. 384, pp. 552–4; Siegfried D. Schubert et al., ‘On the Cause of the 1930s Dust Bowl’, Science, vol. 303, no. 5,665, 19 March 2004, pp. 1855–9; Benjamin I. Cook et al., ‘Amplification of the North American “Dust Bowl” Drought through Human-induced Land Degradation’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 106, no. 13, 31 March 2009, pp. 4,997–5,001.

Robert Strayer, Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse: Understanding Historical Change (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1988).

Diamond, Collapse, p. 11.

Ibid., pp. 311–28; quotation at p. 313.

Ibid., pp. 329–57.

Ibid., pp. 154–5.

Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 270–4.

Brooks, ‘Beyond Collapse: The Role of Climatic Dessication in the Emergence of Complex Societies in the Middle Holocene’; Fagan, The Long Summer; Brooks, ‘Cultural Responses to Aridity in the Middle Holocene and Increased Social Complexity’, p. 45.

Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, p. 274.

Anderson et al., ‘Climate and Culture Change’, p. 12.

Brooks, ‘Beyond Collapse’; Brooks, ‘Cultural Responses to Aridity in the Middle Holocene and Increased Social Complexity’.

Ibid., p. 38.

Weiss, ‘Beyond the Younger Dryas’.

Fagan, The Long Summer, p. 87.

Madella and Fuller, ‘Paleoecology and the Harappan Civilisation of South Asia’.

Charles Keith Maisels, Early Civilisations of the Old World (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 252–5.

See Diamond, Collapse, pp. 136–56; Fagan, The Long Summer, pp. 211, 226–8; Seager et al., ‘The Characteristics and Likely Causes of the Medieval Megadroughts in North America’.

See Ole Waever, ‘Security Implications of Climate Change’, in Katherine Richardson et al., Synthesis Report from Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions, Copenhagen 2009, 10–12 March (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2009), p. 17.

For a detailed discussion see Diamond, Collapse, pp. 427–31.

See ibid., p. 433.

See ibid., pp. 434–6.

Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 47–9.

Alistair Moffat, Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), pp. 170, 177.

Thorvaldur Thordarson and Stephen Self, ‘Atmospheric and Environmental Effects of the 1783–1784 Laki Eruption: A Review and Reassessment’, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 108, no. D1, 4011, doi: 10.1029.2001JD002042, 2003; Stephen Sparks et al., Super-eruptions: Global Effects and Future Threats, Report of a Geological Society of London Working Group, 2nd (print) ed., 2005, p. 11.

Helgi Skuli Kjartansson, ‘The Onset of Emigration from Iceland’, American Studies in Scandinavia, vol. 10, no. 1, 1977, pp. 87–93.

See Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, pp. 54–72.

See, for example, Benny Peiser, ‘Climate Change and Civilisation Collapse’, in Kendra Okonski (ed.), Adapt or Die: The Science, Politics and Economics of Climate Change (London: Profile, 2003), pp. 191–204.

Zhang et al., ‘Climate Change and War Frequency in Eastern China over the Last Millenium’.

Chen Fahu et al., ‘Humid Little Ice Age in Arid Central Asia Documented by Bosten Lake, Xinjinag, China’, Science in China Series D: Earth Sciences, vol. 49, no. 12, 2006, pp. 1,280–90.

David D. Zhang et al., ‘Global Climate Change, War, and Population Decline in Recent Human History’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 49, 4 December 2007, pp. 19,214–19.

Richard S.J. Tol and Sebastian Wagner, ‘Climate Change and Violent Conflict in Europe over the Last Millennium’, Climatic Change, published online 30 September 2009, doi: 10.1007/s10584- 009-9659-2.