livescience: 300-Year Drought Was Downfall of Ancient Greece

[Skidmore]

An interesting read. I enjoy reading about longer arcs in history and how various systems interact to produce the changes societies undergo. Just wish we'd learn as a species.

http://www.livescience.com/38893-drought-caused-ancient-mediterranean-collapse.html

A 300-year drought may have caused the demise of several Mediterranean cultures, including ancient Greece, new research suggests.

A sharp drop in rainfall may have led to the collapse of several eastern Mediterranean civilizations, including ancient Greece, around 3,200 years ago. The resulting famine and conflict may help explain why the entire Hittite culture, chariot-riding people who ruled most of the region of Anatolia, vanished from the planet, according to a study published today (Aug. 14) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Lost golden period


Even during the heyday of Classical Greek civilization, there were hints of an earlier culture that was lost. Homer's "Iliad," written in the eighth century B.C. about a legendary war between Sparta and Troy, paints a picture of sophisticated Greek city-states, which archaeological evidence suggests once existed. [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Discoveries]

"The classical Greek folks knew from the very beginning that they were coming out of a dark age," said Brandon Lee Drake, an archaeologist at the University of New Mexico, who was not involved in the study....more

[Aerows]

1. Interesting post

I could certainly see it. It's hard to maintain an Empire when even your soldiers have empty stomachs.

[Igel]

2. This kind of thing's been adduced as the cause of the Mayan collapse.

Also, sort of in reverse (too much rain) as the cause of the Gothic advance in Central Europe, leading to the Volkswanderung, helping to create the "Dark Ages."

Similar things for the Golden Horde. Even the Bantu Expansion, IIRC.

Probably responsible for some of the redistribution of the North American peoples in pre-Columbian times. A lot of tribes were expanding far from their homes when Europeans ran into them in the 1700s, and a fair number of others further north had moved to their "ancestral lands" in the 1300s and 1400s. Makes such claims tough--some "ancestral lands" were inhabited by a given tribe centuries BC. Others are still called "ancestral lands" but were occupied a century or two before the white men arrived in the area, and after white man arrived in other parts of the Americas.

Drought might even be responsible for what looks like the remains of a fairly good civilization in the Amazon hundreds of years before Columbus. Or, possibly, increased rainfall. Hard to know.

Hadn't thought about the Sea Peoples. The Hittites just were losing every battle. A good possibility for what finally set the stage for their disappearance was the Kurds. They showed up in Hittite areas as the Hittites were at a low point and, as we can see, they kept their language and culture. The Assyrians finally defeated them militarily and the Kurds assimilated them. Voila. No more Hittites, and Indo-European's sister language vanished leaving something only ubernerds study in college.