While climate change may be a recent phenomenon, the history of environmental shifts has been replete with surprises and valuable lessons....
COVER STORY
Climate change has become a buzzword, from the remotest corners of the world to the highest levels of international discourse. Its impact is now felt by every inhabitant of our planet. In the past five years alone, our world has grappled with a pandemic, devastating earthquakes, extensive floods, wildfires, cyclones, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The repercussions of these events have worsened, leading to loss of life, increased poverty, the spread of diseases, and the displacement of people compelled to migrate due to harsh climate conditions. None of this is unprecedented; our ancestors throughout history have dealt with extraordinary environmental changes for centuries. While climate change may be a recent phenomenon, the history of environmental shifts has been replete with surprises and valuable lessons.
American author Eugene Linden pointed out in his book The Wind of Changes: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilisations that until the mid-19th century, climate had been viewed as static. This perception was challenged in 1997 by a paper titled ‘Holocene Climate Less Stable Than Previously Thought’, which revealed climate’s role in the fate of civilisations.
Bronze Age collapse: how climate change shook things up
The sudden decline of Late Bronze Age civilisations (1200 – 1150 BCE) has consistently puzzled historians, who have wrestled with various potential explanations for this enigmatic collapse.
Numerous studies have investigated the influence of climatic conditions on the destabilization of Bronze Age societies. In 2013, archaeologists published a research paper on the collapse of the Bronze Age, shedding light on the role of climate change. Their findings marked a groundbreaking discovery. The archaeologists performed coring and pollen analyses, this time in the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, spanning Syria, Cyprus, and Greece, and found compelling evidences of drought. Coring and pollen analyses are scientific methods used to study the Earth’s history and environmental changes. They involve extracting cylindrical samples, or cores, from the Earth’s surface, typically from ice, sediment, or soil.
Towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, a significant and abrupt shift in climate occurred, which had widespread consequences. Researcher and archaeologist Brandon L. Drake conducted research on this topic. His findings indicated that there was a notable rise in temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere – places like North America, Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa – during the Late Bronze Age. This climatic shift resulted in substantial crop failures across various regions, triggering socio-economic crises and rendering the existing way of life unsustainable. As agricultural production declined, it became increasingly difficult to support densely populated palatial centres, ultimately leading to their abandonment.
Archives at Ugarit, an ancient port city in northern Syria, reveal a letter from a private merchant with an office in inland Syria. The letter speaks of famine, with a plea for swift assistance, even mentioning the risk of death from hunger. Letters from a Hittite king to the Egyptians, who were arch-rivals during that era, requesting aid during a famine, provide environmental evidence of harsh climatic conditions during that period.
According to Eric Cline, the scholar who authored 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilisation Collapsed, from 1225 to 1175 BC, the majority of sites in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean were destroyed. The presence of numerous fault lines in this region increases the likelihood of earthquakes. A sequence of earthquakes over 59 to 60 years took place in the Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.
Regions on fault lines are like giant puzzles where Earth’s pieces don’t always fit smoothly. The puzzle pieces, or tectonic plates, sometimes get stuck. When they finally move, it causes an earthquake. Archaeological evidence and discovery of human remains back this explanation by Eric Cline.
Since bronze is a mixture of tin and copper, and civilisations used to import these metals from faraway lands, the trade routes were disrupted due to these disasters, making it challenging for civilisations to sustain.
It’s noteworthy that these civilisations were undergoing a host of problems – wars, rebellions, attacks by the Sea Peoples – and the complications heightened with the additional factor of climatic shifts.
Mother Nature and the collapse of the Indus Valley
The climatic shifts also adversely affected Early Bronze Age (3000–2100 BCE) civilisations. The decline of the Indus Valley Civilisation in 1900 BCE stemmed from a combination of natural and human factors. Environmental changes like deforestation, flooding, and droughts caused by shifting river courses led to crop failures, famine, and diseases like malaria, transmitted by mosquitoes. This upheaval disrupted urban life, affecting the economy and civic order.
Geological evidence, supported by textual sources, suggests that flooding in Indus cities could have resulted from sudden crust uplift, altering the Indus River’s course.
Climate change also played a role, with a cooling and drying trend around 1800 B.C., linked to a weakening monsoon. The vanishing Ghaggar-Hakra river system, possibly due to tectonic shifts, exacerbated the situation. The exact date of this event remains uncertain.
Simultaneously, other civilisations, like the Akkadians, Minoans, and the Yangtze valley, collapsed, possibly due to monsoon weakening or drought around 2100 B.C.
Recent findings suggest that the Harappan civilisation didn’t completely collapse but underwent de-urbanisation.
Exploring the downfall of past human civilisations, often linked to climate shifts and limited resources similar to today’s global changes, reveals potential challenges for our future due to climate change. However, it also offers insights into overcoming these challenges and building resilience. Understanding these historical examples helps us prepare for and face the potential impacts of climate change in the years and decades ahead.
536 CE: sunless year in Europe
While we have explored the ancient collapses of civilizations, the medieval age in Europe was an equally terrifying period to live in due to the colossal environmental catastrophes it had undergone. Among them is the most fearsome year of 536 CE.
The year 536 CE marked a critical moment in history with profound environmental impacts on both the planet and human societies. At the heart of this pivotal year was a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland, a natural disaster of unprecedented scale. This eruption, followed by two more massive eruptions in 540 and 547, sent colossal amounts of ash, sulphur gases, and particles soaring into the atmosphere. These materials had a chilling effect on the Earth’s climate, significantly reducing temperatures on a global scale. The Sun remained hidden behind an enduring fog for not just days, but a staggering 18 months, preventing sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. Various archival records reveal people expressing distress about the lack of daylight and warmth during the summers.
The consequences of this sudden cooling were dire. Crop failures occurred across northern Europe and beyond, leading to widespread famine and food shortages. Starvation and disease began to grip communities, and one of history’s deadliest plagues, known as the Plague of Justinian, emerged in 541 CE, coinciding with the worst of the cooling period. This catastrophic combination of cooling, crop failures, and pandemics plunged Europe into economic stagnation, a dark age that persisted for over a century.
What sets today’s climate change apart?
A question arises: if climate change has been occurring throughout history, why are we now facing an emergency? What sets the current situation apart from the past?
Throughout Earth’s incredibly long history of 4.5 billion years, the climate has changed a bunch. That’s a fact. But what’s happening now is that the Earth is warming up really fast. Normally, the kind of changes we are seeing now would take hundreds of thousands of years, but they’re happening in just a few decades.
Right now, the global temperatures are the highest they have ever been since we started keeping records. In fact, 17 out of the 18 warmest years ever recorded all occurred after 2001.
This super-fast warming is connected to the levels of carbon dioxide in the air, which have been going up since the time of the industrial revolution. When people talk about climate change today, they’re talking about something caused by humans, like when we burn coal, oil, and gas for energy in our homes and transportation. Also, cutting down trees for food production adds to this warming of Earth’s average temperature.
In 2022, the world witnessed a range of severe disasters, from floods in India, Pakistan, Brazil, and Nigeria to drought in Uganda and earthquakes in Afghanistan and Indonesia. Human activities significantly worsened the impact of these natural disasters, leading to increased casualties and damage.
Similarly, the first half of 2023 saw a surge in devastating natural events globally, including floods, tornadoes, cyclones, wildfires, and earthquakes. Notable disasters included deadly earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, a Morocco earthquake, floods in Libya, and an intense heatwave in Europe. The United States set a record for the highest number of natural disasters in a single year.
These events compounded the challenges faced by vulnerable communities already grappling with terrorism, civil wars, and various political and economic crises in their countries.
We live in South Asia, the area most susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Environmental change is expected to exacerbate Pakistan’s challenges. Prolonged droughts will become more frequent, imperilling agriculture and reducing hydroelectric power. Simultaneously, warming will intensify monsoon rains, leading to massive floods.
Pakistan faces a complex situation due to its heavy reliance on agriculture and its dependence on the Indus River as a primary source of irrigation water.
The few historical accounts that we have delved into in this article aren’t merely lessons from the past; they are valuable insights for today. We find ourselves in a similar situation, but with the benefit of knowledge, science, and technological advancement. We are now aware of the challenges our present and future hold, and we possess the ability to mitigate these dangers.
