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This is the twentieth Q&A for History of Mankind. Paying subscribers received an email asking for questions; and those are right below the paywall.
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Long-time readers may have noted that I’m particularly interested on the impact of the climate on history. In particular, I’m fascinated by the effects of global cooling, frequently correlated with societal and demographic collapse. This new paper in PLOS One, “Demographic dynamics between 5500 and 3500 calBP (3550–1550 BCE) in selected study regions of Central Europe and the role of regional climate influences,” (PLOS One, 25.10.2023) by Ralph Grossmann et al, is a great addition to the huge corpus of evidence about this.
In “Iron (Age) Men,” well over a year ago, I discussed the disruptions that destroyed the great Bronze Era civilizations, notably the Hittite Empire and the Mycenaean Greek kingdoms. One frequently hears that the Sea Peoples migrations that attacked and defeated these organized states were the result of climate change. This is what I wrote at the time:
A cooling climate, which made life in southern regions much more appealing than in the ever-colder steppes and Balkans[12], probably contributed to large-scale migrations that were nothing if not extremely violent: by 1250 BC, towns and strongholds across central Greece were burned to the ground, while others like Tiryns, Midea and Athens expanded their defenses with larger walls[13].
Given this situation, it's not striking that the first pitched battle known in European history was fought some 100 kilometers north of modern Berlin – in cold northern Germany, 2,000 kilometers away from Athens as the crow flies – right around this time. In the Tollense Valley, at least 4,000 warriors came together to settle their differences in a day of frenzied fighting that left well over 1,000 dead[14].
What is striking that no fighters carried iron implements or weapons, a clear sign that the iron-wielding raiders were a particularly central-southern European phenomenon, and that iron technology was developed right there. This squares perfectly with all the available evidence showing that iron weapons were first used en masse on the richer, warmer kingdoms of the Mediterranean basin.
Grossman and his co-authors in the PLOS One paper reinforce this picture: a consistently cooling climate in the European areas studied (in central/southern Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic) led to population decreases among those who stayed, as well as a spike in social inequality as the most powerful grabbed scarce resources.
Thus, we got the stupidly large battle at the Tollense Valley, a fight to the death over valuables lands, animals or goods, at a time when local tribes were living on the edge, hand to mouth. And we got the Sea Peoples moving south in search of plunder and warmer lands. Like I wrote in a footnote to that post, what came later fits perfectly with that:
In fact, it's likely that a particularly cold snap occurred around the turn of the 13th-12th centuries BC, leading to particularly low rainfall in Africa and unusually weak flooding in Egypt, which contributed to troubles there. In “Severe multi-year drought coincident with Hittite collapse around 1198–1196 BC” (Nature, 8.2.2023) Sturt W. Manning et al examined the width tree rings and stable isotope records in central Anatolia and concluded that a severely dry period spanned between 1198 BC and 1196 BC, just as the Hittite state was hit hardest by the Sea Peoples.
Cold sucks, take it from somebody who grew up on European mountains and lived for years in lovely, tropical Singapore. Unchecked global warming is a real threat, but unchecked global cooling would be even more dangerous. Now for the questions sent by paying subscribers:
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