I was thinking about the biggest
discoveries of the past 30 years or so in our understanding of history. I’m no archeologist but here’s my list of
surprising finds of the recent era.
#1 is what happened to the Old
Kingdom of Egypt. It just disappeared
for 150 years and then suddenly there were new pharaohs and a Middle
Kingdom. What happened? If you go back to a textbook of about 1980
they tell you that there was a period of social unrest and chaos, rival
families competed for the throne and there must have been wars. Eventually a new dynasty arose and began to
rule. But no explanation. They also did a huge expansion of canals and
irrigation systems. And they began to
store large amounts of grain. What we
now realize is that the final Sahara Warming occurred about 2200 BC and silt
studies of the Upper Nile show that a massive drought took place. Think Larger than Dust Bowl sized drought that
went on for at least 20 years.
Starvation indications in official records and city digs show that the
nation was brought to desperation and chaos by just the simple lack of an
annual flood. The new pharaohs of the
middle kingdom didn’t claim to have divine powers to make the annual flood of
the Nile happen. Smart move. This is
like the time I was introduced to Jeff Buffalohead, Chairman of the Otoe tribe. “Don’t call me chief!” he said. “Chief means you own everything nobody else
wants. Like Hey, Chief, your stray dog got in my trash! Are you going to clean
it up.”
#2 is the Mayas disappearance in the
middle of the 800’s. The great Mayan
achievements of mathematics, astronomy and writing just disappeared. And so did 90% of the population. The people didn’t migrate elsewhere, as can
be shown by both DNA sampling and demographic estimates. Their great cities
have been surprisingly found, but these were mysteriously abandoned. What happened the Mayas? There were formerly dozens of theories about
war and religious self-destruction and some sort of mystery diseases arriving
on their shores. But nothing fit until a
Texas banker-turned-archeologist theorized that drought was the reason. Indeed, he found many tell-tale signs like
graneries emptied and abandoned, priests slaughtered by mobs, and
cannibalism. Then a geologic team found
sediment cores from a swamp that had salt deposits that fit perfectly the
timeline of the demise. The swamp must
have dried up extensively for at least a dozen years. Other signs of ocean current changes that
bring lesser droughts to the Yucatan were found as well. So most of the Mayas disappeared from famine
and drought, got into desperate fights that destroyed their civilization and
left it to return into jungle. Of course, there are still about 1.5 million
Maya remnant people in Guatemala today.
One Guatemalan guy I met said, “Yeah we were good in math but used a
base 20 number system. It was easy to
count when people were barefoot. And we
had a zero, but kids hated it when they got that score on a test.”
#3 is the Little Ice age of
Europe. From 1309 to 1324 it is
estimated that temperatures declined by 10F from the warming in the 13th
century. Famines and the bubonic plague occurred. In sudden cooling changes rodents expand in
population because their predators die while they successfully retreat to
burrows and shelter. So how do we know
that climate really changed? Prior to
1300, grapes were extensively grown in England and you can’t do that anymore.
Grain crops failed in wet cold climates.
There was an Indonesian volcano which blew its head off just prior to
1300 and this may have started the cycle.
But the sun was the real culprit.
How do we know? Chinese priests
studied sunspots which were necessary to their religion. Right on time in 1309 they recorded in alarm
that the sunspots had gone away. Indeed
their records show a dearth of sunspots well into the 1600’s when Europe began
to observe. When the sun’s output slows,
sunspots decline because they are like solar magnetic storms on the
surface. Less energy, fewer spots. The sunspots returned about 1850, and our
modern era of warming has progressed since then. And we note that before 1850,
Dickens wrote about Christmas snow in Christmas Carol which took place in
London. Snow today is rare in London. Which is why London has Arabs for immigrants
instead of Lapps.
The barbarian invasions are now
thought to have resulted as climate changed in central Asia and forest belts
shifted north by as much as 300 miles.
Old territories of certain tribes came under dispute and the barbarians
were forced or by opportunity migrated.
The best example is the Magyars or Hungarians, a tribe of Gemanic
peoples who spoke a unique and thus traceable language. As their territory warmed, they went from
forest dwellers to plains riders and invaded Europe in the 900s.
Bottom line: Early man had a hard
time adapting to climate changes. None
were due to any CO2 output from modern industrialization. Which proves that the earth has climate
fluctuations of a large order, all due to natural causes.
But if you don’t believe this, then
you have to believe in one of my favorite cartoons. 3 cavemen standing on a mountain top looking
out at an enormous glacier field. First
guy says, “Dang, this is all melting!” Second guy: “It’s all our fault!” 3rd
caveman: “We will just have to install socialism and tax the bejabbers out of
ourselves.”
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