From the University of Bradford
Scientists will have to find alternative explanations for a huge population collapse in Europe at the end of the Bronze Age as researchers prove definitively that climate change – commonly assumed to be responsible – could not have been the culprit.
Archaeologists and environmental scientists from the University of Bradford, University of Leeds, University College Cork, Ireland (UCC), and Queen’s University Belfast have shown that the changes in climate that scientists believed to coincide with the fall in population in fact occurred at least two generations later.
Their results, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that human activity starts to decline after 900BC, and falls rapidly after 800BC, indicating a population collapse. But the climate records show that colder, wetter conditions didn’t occur until around two generations later.
Fluctuations in levels of human activity through time are reflected by the numbers of radiocarbon dates for a given period. The team used new statistical techniques to analyse more than 2000 radiocarbon dates, taken from hundreds of archaeological sites in Ireland, to pinpoint the precise dates that Europe’s Bronze Age population collapse occurred.
The team then analysed past climate records from peat bogs in Ireland and compared the archaeological data to these climate records to see if the dates tallied. That information was then compared with evidence of climate change across NW Europe between 1200 and 500 BC.
“Our evidence shows definitively that the population decline in this period cannot have been caused by climate change,” says Ian Armit, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bradford, and lead author of the study.
Graeme Swindles, Associate Professor of Earth System Dynamics at the University of Leeds, added, “We found clear evidence for a rapid change in climate to much wetter conditions, which we were able to precisely pinpoint to 750BC using statistical methods.”
According to Professor Armit, social and economic stress is more likely to be the cause of the sudden and widespread fall in numbers. Communities producing bronze needed to trade over very large distances to obtain copper and tin. Control of these networks enabled the growth of complex, hierarchical societies dominated by a warrior elite. As iron production took over, these networks collapsed, leading to widespread conflict and social collapse. It may be these unstable social conditions, rather than climate change, that led to the population collapse at the end of the Bronze Age.
According to Katharina Becker, Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at UCC, the Late Bronze Age is usually seen as a time of plenty, in contrast to an impoverished Early Iron Age. “Our results show that the rich Bronze Age artefact record does not provide the full picture and that crisis began earlier than previously thought,” she says.
“Although climate change was not directly responsible for the collapse it is likely that the poor climatic conditions would have affected farming,” adds Professor Armit. “This would have been particularly difficult for vulnerable communities, preventing population recovery for several centuries.”
The findings have significance for modern day climate change debates which, argues Professor Armit, are often too quick to link historical climate events with changes in population.
“The impact of climate change on humans is a huge concern today as we monitor rising temperatures globally,” says Professor Armit.
“Often, in examining the past, we are inclined to link evidence of climate change with evidence of population change. Actually, if you have high quality data and apply modern analytical techniques, you get a much clearer picture and start to see the real complexity of human/environment relationships in the past.”
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Virus? Climate change? I don’t think so.
Remember before bronze, swords didn’t exist and iron was an improvement over bronze.
Although this catastrophic reduction of population is news to me, I think it was probably a widespread case of bronze and steel poisoning.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Umm… The Battle Hammer is as effective or more effective than the sword… And bows and arrows can be much better. Then there are spears and pikes and more. People have been killing each other very effectively with whatever they have to hand. Always have. Doesn’t need bronze or steel.
I’m reading Eric H Cline’s “1177BC and the Collapse of Civilisation. ” It’s rather interesting. In it he mentions the Santorini volcanic eruptions which were originally placed at about 1258 BC. Cline makes the point there were about seven eruptions with the last about 1600BC. Some of these would have sent tsunamis over the northern coasts of Crete which may have successively damaged the Minoan trading empire.
There were the usual wars and enforcements of tribute from the Hittite, Mycenean and Egyptian Empires.
But about 1177, a wave or waves of immigrants from the West came into the eastern Med. They attacked Egypt and others. Egypt beat them off at great cost. These were called The Sea Peoples. (There is a carved note about this on one of the Pharoah’s tombs.) Some of these Sea People settled in Canaan (the Philistines).
Also around these times, were thought to be substantial earthquakes. City mounds (Tells) in Palestine have been excavated and found to have been flattened and burnt. It could have been by invaders or by earthquake. Whole cities which, up to the destruction, had appeared highly prosperous, were completely abandoned.
A “Little Ice Age” would be right on time at about 750BC, climbing into the Roman Warming which started around 250 – 200BC.
Sophocles, have a look at this:
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/4-gtemps.gif
(from chiefio wordpress com)
Thank you for the book recommendation.
Note that while I have that at my site, the original graph is from Cliff Harris aand Randy Mann as noted on the bottom line of the graph.
Will the real Mann please stand up.
Thx Chief.
Thanks for the graph, Zeke and Chief — saved.
Where we are now looks extraordinarily ordinary.
Thanks Zeke. Appreciate that, good graphic. It doesn’t quite match (time displacement to the right) other material I’ve read, but I wouldn’t regard that material as particularly rigorous.
I note it doesn’t show the short cooiing from about 1050AD to 1110AD which coincided with the Oort minimum.
Oh dear, yet another bunch of innocents(?) that thinks that noisy and fuzzy data can be miraculously cleaned up by “Bayesian methods”: Can anybody who has access to the paper check and tell what prior they used? Careful selection of the prior can gtve you practically any result you want with “Bayesian methods”.
By the way separating what happened 800 BC and 750 BC by using radiocarbon dates isn’t possible. The method simply isn’t that precise..
Precipitation may have been more important than temperature. I wonder if these researchers took into account the work of R. A, Bryson.
Climate is actually an important driver of human history.The Bronze Age suffered good times and bad times, monumental work and warfare according to the movement of its climate.
Temperature is a reasonable proxy for agricultural plenty. Warmth equates to less cloud, sunny days which, if the precipitation doesn’t fail through the onset of drought, leads to good crop growth, which creates food surpluses. Food in plenty gives population increase and balmy climes with adequate food lowers the death rate. And all this gives an economic surplus for investment in monumental works, and wars.
Prolonged drought OTH, is highly destructive. It leads to massive movements of peoples as the drought-stricken land is eventually abandoned. Of course, those who are settled in non-drought ridden land will defend it against it such invasion.
It was the MWP which saw the economic surplus invested in cathedral building across Europe and support for the Crusaders in Palestine, which included ransoming a king or two. The defeat at Acre (1291) by the Mameluks brought the Palestinian adventures (ninth or tenth crusade) to an end. The Wolff minimum began over the following decade and the crop surplus across Eurape began to slump as the NH entered the start of the LIA.
Dating or archaeological sites to within “a couple of generations” is rare and because the procedure is expensive good dates are seldom taken except from the best preserved remains – and good preservation needs burial and burial tends to occur as a result of occupation activity and therefore AFTER a period of occupation.
Moreover, dating a decline in population at a time of changing society when people may be leaving one area for another rather than just disappearing is inevitably difficult.
However, the link between climate and population in Scotland is clear from the 1690s famines which is reported as being colder (the Cairngorms retained its snow covering throughout the year) and wetter (according to evidence from lake sediments in Scandinavia). The book the “Ill years” details the quite horrific accounts of the period with people dying on the streets of Edinburgh and at the sides of roads everywhere over Scotland . Detailed investigations from Parish records suggest something like a 1/5 to 1/3 of the population of Scotland** died in this colder-wetter period.
1690s A Global & US Event
There’s also evidence of a relationship between witch trials and colder climate. In a recent documentary about the Salem Witch trials in 1692/1693 a very compelling argument was put forward that the Salem witch trials were a result of Ergot fungus poisoning. The Ergot fungus acts as a hallucinogen with many of the symptoms being similar to those described in the Salem witch trial and a plausible link to specific supply of grain also being made. There were similar such events throughout Europe. There’s also evidence from the Darien Scheme in central America, that the climate was distinctly worse in central America the late 1690s to what it had been a decade earlier when the advisor to the scheme had lived there amongst the natives.
**or perhaps Highland population – the research is confusing.
I should add that Ergot fungus thrives in damp conditions.
And the idea that the climate suddenly turned bad is quite bizarre. When I looked at the starting date for peat cores, I found a huge diversity suggesting that climate had been gradually getting worse over perhaps a thousands years with each site having a slightly different threshold where the damp-wet conditions crossed the threshold at which peat bogs start to form.
Mike,
do you have references for peat bog formation. I’m particularly interested in Scotland, in my youth I spent a lot of time hill walking and rambling, and the difference in depth of peat over the remains of trees always interested me; the usual short of Why, When, What, Where and How questions.
Just reading this cr&p makes me want to be sick. Taxpayer’s money is rushing down the drain. Please can we have governments that treat taxpayer’s money as their own ? Oh …… they do.
Millions of people live like this right now. Millions, about 60 million in Ethiopia in mud huts. Some have power, most don’t. Charcoal, wood and dung are the main fuels for heating and cooking.
Perhaps these people discovered iron.
Even Wikipedia can be helpful. It’s iron age article states the decrease in bronze was due to a shortage of tin. It seems iron was well known in the time period stated but smelting was difficult. It took the combination of scarcity plus innovation of cheaply making iron into steel that doomed bronze when tin became plentiful. I.E., by that time, iron was cheaper than bronze. One might say it’s one of the earliest examples of free market economics — the capitalism of the ancient world. How very refreshing.
Meanwhile, lots of civilizations “collapsed”. Good examples abound. At least dozens of theories for each. Some even have “consensus”.
I suggest a read of: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0691140898 It is an in depth analysis of the cultures and potential factors in the collapse of the civilizations at that time. The civilizations formed a complex and hence mathematically chaotic system. To say any one factor triggered their collapse is probably incorrect.
So the decrease in population must have caused the climate change.
Less population meant less cooking fires, thus less CO2. The drop in human CO2 production caused the climate to change to colder, wetter conditions.
See the study is just more proof that human produced CO2 controls climate.
/sarc
Despite the investigations of rainfall in the article, two other facts are known about the end of the Bronze Age: The Sea People and their land-based associates like the Dorians devastated the eastern Mediterranean and likely the Black Sea cities, too. Why were the Sea People on the move? Persistent drought resulted in large portions of the population being sent off to other colonies. The Lydians are on record as sending off half of their people due to crop failures, and the Etruscans have been shown to be Hittites. So it rained heavily after 800BCE, but the scientists should look for signs of drought before that in eastern Europe, possibly causing massive migrations down the Danube and Volga.
I have long thought that the Dorian invasion of Greece that ended the Mycenaean era coincides nicely with the end of the bronze age and the discovery of a new and better material for making weapons, and the inevitable result for those whose technology was a little behind the times.
Most of that is fine… but… The Etruscan language is dramatically different from Hittite. Hittite is a direct and understandable Indo-European sort and reasonably attested. Etruscan is perhaps an isolate, or perhaps related to the language of Lemnos. It is an agglutinative language and attempts have been made to put it into a family (one named Tyrsenian another Raetic. While it MAY have originated from Anatolia, it just isn’t the same as Hittite. Neighbors perhaps, but not family…
The general thesis, though, is ‘spot on’. When it gets too wet in N. Europe it tends to drought in the Levant. It isn’t just “rain everywhere” or “drought everywhere”. They need to be looking for migrations from both causes.
I’m sure that the Bronze Age ended because they found something better. The Iron Age replaced it around 1200BC. No other reason is required.
Remember, the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.
That’s new to me. I know the Hittites left Turkey and went somewhere but I never heard they went to Italy and founded Veii.
I’m not disputing the fact I just want to know more. Do you have a reference? This interests me.
Doh, that was to Caz. Still haven’t got used to nested comments.
Here is a journalist’s report, since I can’t find the scientific article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/18/italy.johnhooper
Thanks.
The article implies they came from the Lydian civilisation, not Hittite – but they are both Anatolian and the genetic markers would be similar. Interesting idea.
The Etruscans introduced the Chariot to Italy – so that fits.
M Courtney – yes, the genetic connection should be ‘Anatolian’ rather than specifically one civilization like the Hittites or Lydians. I think I read somewhere else that (modern) Tuscans and Armenians have close haplotypes, and even their cattle are more closely related than to other cattle stock in central Europe.
Of course, it is a bit contentious. (We all know science is never settled.) Some haplotypes map to Germans, but that connection could be a much older one, shared through the neolithic farmers who entered Europe ~8000 BC from the near east.
I think that, with all the bounty of the bronze age, they came up with a theory of global warming and acted on it …
What a funny thing to say….
“Their results, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that human activity starts to decline after 900BC, and falls rapidly after 800BC, indicating a population collapse. But the climate records show that colder, wetter conditions didn’t occur until around two generations later.”
The Late Bronze Age collapse was ~300 years earlier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
http://snag.gy/TseC7.jpg
And the wetter conditions from around ~750 BC at the end of the Greek Dark Ages would have been a relief, not a cause for a population collapse.
You are correct. I was going to comment, but glad you already did.
The BAC occurred in the eastern Med and Mesopotamia, c. 1180 BC, so the period Bradford U studied in Ireland was indeed centuries later.
IMO the lowered demand for bronze after the BAC would have severely impacted the economy of the British Isles, so dependent on the copper and tin trade.
About the Bronze Age collapse being around 1200 BC agreed, but I skipped parts of the article and failed to see that the study was based in Ireland, thanks for pointing that out. So the ~750 BC wet event would then more likely be a separate cold period.
Yes, which is why I wouldn’t rule out a climatic component to the core collapse, since the classic BAC occurred far away and centuries previously. The end of the so-called “Minoan” Warm Period actually fits fairly nicely. That Warm Period IMO is not well named, since the Minoan Civilization was earlier, roughly 2700 to 1450 BC.
The study involves non-archaeologists and non-historians evaluating evidence which is far from as precise as they suppose to explain a cultural phenomenon on the fringe of then European civilization that was first identified far away in both space and time.
But by the standards of “climate science”, the paper isn’t all that bad, IMO.
It was precisely during what they call the Minoan Warm Period in the GISP series, the northern Frigid zone warmed as the northern Temperate zone cooled.
University of Bradford. Ha, ha, ha.
In Bradford, they teach students that the Sun sets into a muddy pool, that winged horses can fly (especially at night), and that Darwinism is the work of the devil. And if you do not know the reason for this, you should take a great interest in contemporary society.
I would not trust any research that comes out of Bradford.
Ralph.
Yes, Bradford is an Islamic City (except only a quarter of the population is Muslim).
And not all Muslims think alike, not all students come from their home town and there is no evidence that University of Bradford is creationist.
Interesting conclusion – at least 2 generations later. Hmmmm, that would be about 30 to 35 years, I would guess, since it would have been about the age of 15 when the next generation would start. It is nice to know that they have so finely calibrated their proxies that they can actually be so certain of events that happen merely 30 years apart from 3000 years later. Mind if I don’t actually accept the calibrated proxies since they can’t decide what temperatures to calibrate them against to start with? It is always nice to see “scientists” using guesswork as facts.
A comment was made about unlearning history. Yes, it truly IS hard to learn from history since it changes on a virtual daily basis based on virtual facts. I now understand why we keep doing the same things over and over – like devastating wars and spreading disease – since there appears to be no history to learn from in the first place, just an amorphous period of time that changes like a kaleidoscope as we look back at it.
“precisely pinpoint to 750BC using statistical methods.”
As others have ponted out, that’s a hoot and a half… An oxymoron of the first degree.
More to the point, populations expand in warm good times. They reach the absolute carry capacity of the land. Then, at the inflection to cooler, the collapse begins. By the time the climate has fully swapped, you are into it 30 years (or more). Then eventually the population stabilizes at the lowest carry capacity of the cold non-productive phase. It starts to increase again at the inflection to warm and continues to increase to the peak. One can also have a similar cycle in temperate places based on dry (drying and dying) vs wet (growing and thriving) cycles. The cold / warm tends to dominate central to northern Europe, while the dry / wet cycle tends to dominate the Levant and into Egypt. Unfortunately, they often are in sync. Rain band moves north and central / northern Europe gets too cold and wet just as the Levant and Egypt get major drought….
Attempting to capture that with a couple of proxies and statistics is madness…. They really ought to just read the history of the periods and places and leave making up fantasies to the archaeologists…
“precisely pinpoint to 750BC using statistical methods.”
As others have ponted out, that’s a hoot and a half… An oxymoron of the first degree.
==================================================================
I bet there was at least one computer involved …
… so it must be accurate. (/sarc)
There were no cars in the Bronze age so there could not have been any climate change at that time
“It may be these unstable social conditions, rather than climate change, that led to the population collapse at the end of the Bronze Age.”
For some reason they were eager to replace a perfectly good explanation with a mystery.
Some signal processing expert should look at what they’ve done with the radiocarbon dates. Probably they didn’t grasp the resolution constraints and worked with artefacts.
No, Swindles, you did not pinpoint anything with statistical methods.
However, Swindles, I do not think you will Curry favour with the Pope, no
matter how bright a light you think you Shine, you are leading Mann down the wrong Alley, and you will end up Keeling over.
All names are plagiarized from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_climate_scientists and are
copyright their respective parents.
I suppose I should point out (for the Americans), that I am attempting here the weakest and most despicable form of humour, for which I do expect to be duly PUNished.
“He who would pun would pick a pocket!” (;
ref: “Master and Commander”
No need to explain, Mr. Bajner. The denizens of WUWT are some of the sharpest punkins in the patch ;o)
There is one other factor to bear in mind here that has not been mentioned. The Early Iron Age fall in population corresponds with the calibration of C14. This was devised as a sop to Egyptologists who would not accept C14 methodology as it consistently came up with Egyptian dates that were too early according to their carefully worked out chronology. These dates were between a 100 and 200 years too early and were rejected by Egyptologists and a large body of academic historians. Universities had invested a lot of money in C14 laboratories and they came up with the calibration method to shut them up, or that is how it panned out as all of a sudden historians started to accept C14 dates and there was never a glimmer of opposition. Now and again something goes wrong. For example, the destruction of Assyrian Nineveh by the Medes is well known. It occurred around 610BC. However, calibrated C14 dates came up 150 years earlier. Mainstream always finds excuses and this was put down to a high fish diet. That sounds fishy but this was the mainstream response. In other words, raw C14 dates may be more reliable and Egyptian dates may need to tumble by 150 years and there may have never been a drastic drop in population in Early Iron Age Europe. If dating methodology has created a dark age, or a phantom century or two, there would be no evidence of human activity. One solution to think about
Very interesting. It is reminiscent of Firestone’s ideas about the decline of the megafauna in North America. the Lesser Dryas being due to calibration jump in the Carbon dating – jumping us straight back into the a previous cold period.
In this case the argument is that the C14 was always s right and the calibration was wrong. But where did the Pharaohs go? Anarchy or forgotten Pharaohs who aren’t recorded?
It should be possible to calibrate on alexander’s time. we have good records from then and that’s over 2000 years ago.
Carol says, “Egyptologists who would not accept C14 methodology as it consistently came up with Egyptian dates that were too early according to their carefully worked out chronology. These dates were between a 100 and 200 years too early and were rejected by Egyptologists and a large body of academic historians.”
The dates in the ancient world set by early historians were syncronized with Egyptian dates. So errors in Egyptology are deeply built into all other histories.
The same problem appears with the Etruscans. I have 20 books on the subject, and though few mention it, the Etruscan dates are all calibrated to Greek history. But this guarantees that Etruscans are always “borrowing” and copying Greek material. It is a kind of circular logic. For example, the alphabet was originally developed by the Phoenicians and adapted by the Greeks. Historians say the Etruscans borrowed it from the Greeks and gave it to the Latins. (Often they omit the fact that the alphabet came from the Phoenicians.) But as the Etruscans were great sea farers, traders, and probably from Anatolia, there is no reason to assume that there was a Greek intermediary; they would have simply adapted it themselves. Here is an Etruscan ink well:
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg20227106.000/mg20227106.000-2_353.jpg
So anyway the circular way things are dated always favor Egypt and Greece, two obsessions of the Enlightenment.
Who is prepared to rattle the cage & incur the wrath of William Michael Connolley?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#Possible_causes_of_collapse