Climate change caused civilisation, scientist says

[The2ndWheel]

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1867943,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704

Severe climate change was the main driver behind the birth of civilisation, a scientist said yesterday.

An increase in harsh, arid conditions across the globe around 5,000 years ago forced people to start living in stable communities around remaining water sources. The major shift in climate, caused by natural fluctuations in the Earth's orbit around the sun, weakened the monsoon systems in the northern hemisphere, where humans had previously enjoyed a fruitful hunter-gatherer existence.

"We can certainly say that the earliest civilisations arose on the backdrop of increasing aridity, which are driven by natural, global-scale changes in climate," said Nick Brooks of the University of East Anglia. "The cultural transitions track changes in environmental conditions quite closely."

[lvx35]

1. Oh wow, its totally true....Egypt, the fertile crescent...

I wonder if the early civilizations in China and Mezo-America fit the bill.

[Phredicles]

2. Climate change giveth, climate change taketh away...

Another round would do our civilization, such as it is, no favors.

[Demeter]

5. But It Might Be the Making of the Human Race

this culture is so distorted by lies and fragmented by corruption, just save the best, trash the rest.

[bhikkhu]

3. true enough, perhaps.

adversity is often considered a driving force in societal cohesion, which is considered a cause of civilization. In other words, where resources are abundant and living is easy, the idea of codes of law, stratified societies, submission to authority, etc, seem not to arise.

[Briar]

4. The other side of the coin

is that the highly stratified and complex societies which result cannot then cope with continued climate change. As we are about to find out.

[Lisa]

7. yes -- David Keys' book "Catastrophe" notes how nasty things got ...

... in Mesoamerica when the rains stopped coming. The priests ordered up more and more lavish religious ceremonies, to no avail.

[varun]

6. Climate change also ended civilizations...

Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan / India is an example.

[Igel]

8. Odd, but I don't think I buy it entirely.

The earliest ME warfare is attested not adjacent to water sources suitable for irrigation, 5-6k BC. A couple of thousand years after domestication of animals and a decent set of crops, the necessary precursor for civilization. Warfare and increasing aridity in the ME furthered civilization. The earliest civilization, in W. Kurdistan (pretty much) is gone, with no writing, leaving few ruins and no indication who they were.

[bhikkhu]

9. And on the other hand,

the effect of climate change is to create resource deficits, or stresses upon the population dependent upon those resources. On a local scale, identical effects are found where population growth exceeds the available resources.

Which is to say, the effect of climate change should be negligible where excess population may disperse into a physically larger environment.

It also would say that, given limited possibilities for expansion, climate change and a population growth beyond its territorial carrying capacity should have identical effects, and the two cannot necessarily be distinguished. I would guess (given the human capacity for child-birth) that overpopulation should have been a continual problem - every three or for generations, perhaps - with climate change only an imperceptibly gradual and rare event.