Available online xxxKeywords: Climate and society Southwest Asia Neolithic 8.2 ka event 9.2 ka event Resilience a b s t r a c t Climate change is often cited as a major factor in social change. The so-called 8.2 ka event was one of the most pronounced and abrupt Holocene cold and arid events. The 9.2 ka event was similar, albeit of a smaller magnitude. Both events affected the Northern Hemisphere climate and caused cooling and aridification in Southwest Asia. Yet, the impacts of the 8.2 and 9.2 ka events on early farming communities in this region are not well understood. Current hypotheses for an effect of the 8.2 ka event vary from large-scale site abandonment and migration (including the Neolithisation of Europe) to continuation of occupation and local adaptation, while impacts of the 9.2 ka have not previously been systematically studied. In this paper, we present a thorough assessment of available, quality-checked radiocarbon ( 14 C) dates for sites from Southwest Asia covering the time interval between 9500 and 7500 cal BP, which we interpret in combination with archaeological evidence. In this way, the synchronicity between changes observed in the archaeological record and the rapid climate events is tested. It is shown that there is no evidence for a simultaneous and widespread collapse, large-scale site abandonment, or migration at the time of the events. However, there are indications for local adaptation. We conclude that early farming communities were resilient to the abrupt, severe climate changes at 9250 and 8200 cal BP.
Droughts have had large impacts on past and present societies. High‐resolution paleoclimate data are essential to place recent droughts in a meaningful historical context and to predict regional future changes with greater accuracy. Such records, however, are very scarce in the Middle East in general, and the Fertile Crescent in particular. Here we present a 2400 year long speleothem‐based multiproxy record from Gejkar Cave in northern Iraq. Oxygen and carbon isotopes and magnesium are faithful recorders of effective moisture. The new Gejkar record not only shows that droughts in 1998–2000 and 2007–2010, which have been argued to be a contributing factor to Syrian civil war, were extreme compared to the current mean climate, but they were also superimposed on a long‐term aridification trend that already started around or before 950 C.E. (Common Era). This long‐term trend is not captured by tree ring records and climate models, emphasizing the importance of using various paleoclimate proxy data to evaluate and improve climate models and to correctly inform policy makers about future hydroclimatic changes in this drought‐prone region.
To predict the nature and impacts of future climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean (EM), a "hotspot" which will experience severe impacts (Giorgi, 2006), past climatic variability must be constrained (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2013). Paucity of meteorological data (<100 years) renders palaeoclimate records vital for understanding spatio-temporal variance. Likewise, an abundance of archeological data facilitates analysis of human-climate-environment interactions and resilience of past societies to climatic fluctuations (Luterbacher et al., 2012).
This study reassesses and refines the use of crop carbon stable isotope values (Δ 13 C) to reconstruct past water availability. Triticum turgidum ssp. durum (durum wheat), Hordeum vulgare (six-row barley) and Sorghum bicolor (sorghum) were experimentally grown at three crop research stations in Jordan for up to three years under five different irrigation regimes: 0% (rainfall only), 40%, 80%, 100% and 120% of the crops' optimum water requirements. The results show a large variation in carbon stable isotope values of crops that received similar amounts of water, either as absolute water input or as percentage of crop requirements. We conclude that C 3 crop carbon stable isotope composition should be assessed using a climate zone specific framework. In addition, we argue that interpretation should be done in terms of extremely high values showing an abundance of water versus low values indicating water stress, with values in between these extremes best interpreted in conjunction with other proxy evidence. Carbon stable isotope values of the C 4 crop Sorghum were not found to be useful for the reconstruction of water availability.
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