Unlike surrounding rural areas, ancient cities failed to pivot and become resilient
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Christian Holzinger, Unsplash |
Why did some ancient Khmer and Mesoamerican cities collapse between 900-1500CE
while their rural surrounds continued to prosper?
Intentional adaptation to climate changed conditions may be the answer,
suggests a new study, which offers lessons for today.
Cities and
their hinterlands must build resilience to survive climate stress; this is the
grave warning emanating from a
study
of ancient civilisations and climate change.
From 900 to 1500CE, Khmer cities in mainland Southeast Asia (including Angkor)
and Maya cities in Mesoamerica collapsed, coinciding with periods of intense
climate variability.
While the ceremonial and administrative urban
cores of many cities were abandoned, the surrounding communities may have
endured because of long-term investment in resilient landscapes.
“They created extensive landscapes of terraced and bunded (embanked to control
water flow) agricultural fields that acted as massive sinks for water,
sediment and nutrients,” said lead author Associate Professor
Daniel Penny, from the University of Sydney
School of Geosciences.
"This long-term investment in soil fertility and the capture and storage of water resources may have allowed some communities to persist..."
Associate Professor Daniel Penny
"This long-term investment in soil fertility and the capture and storage of
water resources may have allowed some communities to persist long after the
urban cores had been abandoned.”
He and his colleague at the University of Texas at Austin, Professor Timothy
Beach, came to this conclusion via a review of relevant archaeological and
environmental information from Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica.
At the ancient city of Angkor in modern Cambodia, for example, the
administrative and ceremonial core was progressively abandoned over several
decades, culminating in a series of catastrophic droughts in the 14th
and 15th century, but the surrounding agricultural landscapes may
have persisted through these episodes of climatic stress.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
their study provides a rough roadmap for resilience in the face of climate
change.
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The 12th century CE temple of Preah Khan, one of
hundreds of ritual and administrative spaces in the urban core of
Angkor in modern Cambodia that were progressively abandoned during
the 14th and 15th centuries,
coincident with period of intense drought.
Credit: Daniel Penny. |
These historical cases of urban collapse emphasise that long-term and large-scale investment in landscape resilience – such as improving water storage and retention, improving soil fertility, and securing biodiversity – can better enable both urban and rural communities to tolerate periods of climatic stress.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believes this will become more frequent and more intense in many parts of the world over the coming century.
“We often think of these historic events as disasters, but they also have much to teach us about persistence, resilience and continuity in the face of climate variability,” said Associate Professor Penny.
Links
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- Earth’s Magnetic Field Broke Down 42,000 Years Ago And Caused Massive Sudden Climate Change
- Ancient Humans’ Demise Could Foreshadow Our Own Species’ Extinction
- Earth Barreling Toward 'Hothouse' State Not Seen In 50 Million Years, Epic New Climate Record Shows
- How Neanderthals Adjusted To Climate Change
- We Pieced Together The Most Precise Records Of Major Climate Events From Thousands Of Years Ago. Here’s What We Found
- Earth's vital signs worsen amid 'business as usual' climate policy
- Soil, carbon sequestration and the fight against climate change
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