1.6 Drought has always been and will be; the way we encounter is important
Archeological and historical studies showing that drought has been occurred at different regions around the world with different extent, magnitude, duration and frequency. Knowing historical droughts, its impacts and the way people deal with them, is also very important. Even impacts are so dramatic which can destroy civilizations and empires. Below you will find different historical droughts and its impacts around the world from Netherlands to South Asia.
1) Historical Droughts in the Netherlands
A research study perform at AgriWatch with the help of interns from Saxion university
The Netherlands is known for their fight against the water, but our studies showed that several historical and severe droughts also happened in the Netherlands, changing the fight against the water to fight for water. Weather and the human response to those weather extremes from before the height of the Middle Ages is much less documented and accessible. Therefore, the focus was on the time after the year 1400 A.D. In the following years, drought happened in the Netherlands: 1464, 1471, 1473, 1492, 1540, 1567, 1676, 1684, 1719, 1750.
The impacts were as follows:
stress to the domestic animals (beast of burden, ...),
Make human, animal and vegetation more prone to diseases,
decrease the harvest outcome,
Rivers were used as natural defences of the borders of countries and fortifications, during droughts rivers were passable on foot which made conflict zones more prone to violent conflict,
higher food prices, famine, malnutrition, and higher child mortality,
fire in the cities, crop fields and grasslands,
People suffered from dysentery or heart attack,
The water and windmills couldn't function due to the weather, so wheat and barley couldn't be processed for bread.
But how did Dutch farmers tackle drought in the past?
In the Middle Ages, the droughts were seen as a punishment of God for the sins humans had committed. During these challenging times, people turned to saints to ask for their intervention and to God for forgiveness. In later years (the sixteenth century and onwards), people began to believe that demonic forces were behind the droughts. This led to accusations of people using witchcraft to create droughts. People believed that getting rid of the so-called “witches” would solve and prevent other droughts. Prayers and witch-burning did little to stop the droughts. A more realistic response was needed to at once solve the shortage of water. One potential solution was to create new water supplies, for example, dig new wells, deepen the existing wells, or even transport fresh water over greater distances. Another potential solution was to make more use of the existing wetlands and the inundation areas. These areas could be used for cattle if the hay harvest was bad due to droughts. Some of these wet pastures were even ploughed to temporarily make it into more arable land.
2) Did a mega drought topple empires 4,200 years ago?
An Article in Nature journal, Published 26th Jan 2022
Researches by a group of archaeologists from Yale university illustrated that drought hit in roughly 2200 BC, collapsed the Akkadian Empire, the first trans-regional government in the World. The central authority had disintegrated, and many people had voted with their feet, leaving the region.
Akkadian Empire (2334-2218 BCE) was the first multi-national political entity in the world, founded by Sargon the Great (2334-2279 BCE) who unified Mesopotamia under his rule. Sargon (or his scribes) claimed that the Akkadian Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf through modern-day Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Syria (possibly Lebanon) through the lower part of Asia Minor to the Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus (https://www.worldhistory.org/akkad).
Map of the Akkadian empire at the time of Sargon (Green Polygon), late 24th century BCE (http://www.worldhistory.org)
The overlap between an epic drought and the collapse of the Akkadian Empire was no mere coincidence, according to Weiss, an archaeologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. When he and his colleagues discovered the evidence of drought in the early 1990s, they proposed that the abrupt climate disruption had brought the ancient empire down. This example has become a grim warning of how vulnerable complex societies can be to climate change. The Akkadian Empire was not the only complex society that was disrupted or overthrown as a result. “We’ve got Mesopotamia, the Nile, the Aegean and the Mediterranean all the way to Spain,” says Weiss. In all these places, he says, there is evidence from around 4,200 years ago for a drying climate, for the collapse of central authorities, and for people moving to escape the newly arid zones.
In Egypt, a time of instability known as the First Intermediate Period occurred roughly from 2181 to 2055 BC. The pharaohs of the preceding Old Kingdom lost control of the country and competing power bases emerged. There is evidence that the flow of the Nile River decreased from 2200 BC. Weiss says the best explanation is a decrease in the monsoon rains that feed the Nile, which would have contributed to the political instability that felled the Old Kingdom. (Egyptologists are wary of this argument, however; some maintain that political upheaval at the time didn’t lead to the abandonment of cities).
For more information, please see this article from Nature journal:
3) Ancient mega drought may explain civilization's ‘missing millennia' in Southeast Asia
An Article in Science journal, Published 24th Aug 2020
A megadrought that lasted more than 1000 years may have plagued Southeast Asia 5000 years ago, setting up dramatic shifts in regional civilizations, suggests a new study of cave rocks in northern Laos. The researchers believe the drought began when the drying of the distant Sahara Desert disrupted monsoon rains and triggered droughts throughout the rest of Asia and Africa.
For years, archaeologists studying mainland Southeast Asia—an area encompassing modern-day Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam—have been puzzled by what they call "the missing millennia," a period from roughly 6000 to 4000 years ago with little evidence of human settlements. University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Joyce White, a co-author on the new paper, says she and others long thought this was because researchers hadn't yet pinpointed where people of the era lived. Now, she believes the settlements could be missing because a megadrought devastated their populations and drove them to find water elsewhere. To re-create the climate of that time, White and her colleagues investigated stalagmites in Tham Doun Mai, a cave in northern Laos. Stalagmites are tapering pillars of rock that rise from the floors of caves; they slowly grow taller as mineral-rich water drips from cave ceilings—often after rainfall. By analyzing the content of the slowly deposited rock, researchers can gauge not only the age of the rock, but also how wet it was at the time. Scientists first radioisotope dated sections of three stalagmites from 9500 to 700 years ago. They next examined oxygen isotopes in the rocks to see how rainfall might have varied over those times. When rain falls, drops bearing heavy oxygen-18 isotopes land before those holding lighter oxygen-16 isotopes. Frequent downpours let loose both isotopes, but arid places that see only spotty showers tend to be depleted in light oxygen. By looking for stalagmite layers that were enriched in oxygen-18, the researchers could identify times when the climate was dry. The researchers found that rainfall in the cave was relatively steady for more than 4000 years before abruptly decreasing between roughly 5100 to 3500 years ago. That suggests the region may have experienced a prolonged, heretofore unrecognized drought that lasted more than 1 millennium, the researchers report in Nature Communications.
For more information, please see the following article at Science journal:
4) Five droughts that changed human history
May 27, 2019
Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/5-droughts-that-changed-human-history/
Reports of severe droughts are rarely out of the headlines as our world warms up. North Korea has said it's suffering the worst drought in 37 years, while the last five months have been the driest in the history of the Panama Canal, according to authorities.
A recent study says human activity could have exacerbated a century of such droughts.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) compared historical precipitation and tree ring data between 1900 and 2005, finding that a "human fingerprint" - through human-manufactured greenhouse gasses - has had a significant impact on global drought risk.
The report argues this human impact is set to grow, potentially leading to "severe" consequences for humanity - including more frequent and severe droughts, food and water shortages, destructive wildfires and conflicts between people competing for resources.
It’s a sobering scenario that, if realized, would lengthen an already extensive list of droughts that have affected the trajectory of human history for thousands of years. Here are five of those droughts and how they are thought to have changed the world.
Number of deaths caused by major droughts worldwide from 1900 to 2016 Image: Statista
1. The drought that prompted the spread of humanity
DNA research suggests a series of megadroughts between 135,000 and 75,000 years ago may have been responsible for the first migrations of early humans out of Africa.
Scientists say that variable climate conditions made the land in parts of Africa frequently inhospitable for human habitation. Droughts may have limited access to fundamental resources, forcing inhabitants to migrate outside the continent to find sustenance.
2. The drought that changed ancient Egypt
Archaeologists investigating the royal tombs of Egypt's Old Kingdom found evidence of a drought that hit the Middle East and parts of Europe 4,500 years ago.
Some experts say it was that drought, rather than civil strife, that caused the fall of the pharaohs, who ruled Ancient Egypt for 3,000 years before the region became a province of the Roman Empire in 30BC.
3. The drought that destroyed the Mayans
The Mayan empire in Mesoamerica was hit by drought at the most vulnerable moment in its history.
Rapid population growth coincided with a halving of annual rainfall 1,200 years ago, causing crops to fail and a war with neighboring nations over dwindling water resources to ultimately precipitate the demise of the Mayan civilization.
4. The drought that spread deadly diseases
The Dust Bowl in the Great Plains of the US Midwest and Canada in the mid-1930s drove two million people off the land and led to an outbreak of diseases.
At the time it was not realized that the dust transmitted measles, influenza and a fungal lung disease called Valley Fever. For people already weakened by malnutrition, these diseases often proved fatal.
5. China's 'Most Disastrous' Drought
While China has weathered numerous severe droughts throughout its history, perhaps none was as consequential as the 1928-1930 drought, which some experts have called "the most disastrous event in the 20th century in China." The drought led to a widespread famine, claiming the lives of anywhere between three million and 10 million people.
More recently, in mid-2017, Chinese authorities said a large northern region had experienced the worst drought on record, citing climate change as the culprit for extreme weather patterns throughout parts of the country.