The rise and fall of civilizations over the past two millennia was set against a backdrop of climate change. High-resolution climate records evince a link between societal change and a period of cooling in the sixth and seventh centuries.
References
Büntgen, U. et al. Science 331, 578–582 (2011).
Huntington, E. Civilization and Climate (Yale Univ. Press, 1915).
Büntgen, U. et al. Nature Geosci. 8, 231–236 (2016).
Rogers, J. D., Nichols, T., Emmerich, T., Latek, M. & Cioffi-Revilla, C. Ecol. Model. 241, 5–14 (2012).
McMichael, A. J. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 4730–4737 (2012).
Rosen, A. M. & Rosen, S. A. in Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and Neighbouring Lands in Memory of Douglas L. Esse (ed. Wolfe, S. R.) 535–549 (The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2001).
Young, N. E., Schweinsberg, A. D., Briner, J. P. & Schaefer, J. M. Science Adv. 1, e1500806 (2015).
Tainter, J. A. & Crumley, C. L. in Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (eds Costanza, R., Graumlich, L. J. & Steffen, W.) 61–75 (The MIT Press, 2007).
Diamond, J. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Penguin, 2005).
Curta, F. The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series (Book 52), Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001).
Fei, J., Zhou, J. & Hou, Y. Clim. Change 81, 469–475 (2007).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Haldon, J. Cooling and societal change. Nature Geosci 9, 191–192 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2659
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2659
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Historical ecology reveals landscape transformation coincident with cultural development in central Italy since the Roman Period
Scientific Reports (2018)
-
Modelling Climate and Societal Resilience in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Last Millennium
Human Ecology (2018)
-
Short-term Cataclysmic Events in Premodern Complex Societies
Human Ecology (2018)
-
Reply to ‘Climate of doubt: a re-evaluation of Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s environmental hypothesis for the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary, 1242 CE’
Scientific Reports (2017)