A new study of the ancient world of Anatolia—now Turkey—shows how they adapted to climate change but offers a warning for today’s climate emergency.
The efforts of ancient populations to minimize the impacts of climate change were undermined during longer climate shifts when it is combined with other events such as pandemics, earthquakes and wars—findings the lead author says offer scary parallels to the modern day.
Dr. Matthew Jacobson, an archaeology lecturer, in the Glasgow’s School of Humanities | Sgoil nan Daonnachdan, and corresponding author on the study, said: “Our results suggest it is too simple to say ‘when the climate goes bad, bad things happen to people and society declines.’ We see settlement numbers and agricultural productivity sky-rocket during the Roman period, when conditions were much drier in SW Anatolia.
“We also see people initially adapt to a significant shift to dry conditions in the 5th century but start to struggle around a century later as the climate doesn’t improve and the region is hit by the plague, as well as numerous earthquakes and wars.”…
The paper adds: “Overall, we demonstrate that simple correlations between favorable (wetter) or adverse (drier) climatic conditions with positive or negative socio-economic conditions have numerous caveats…
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