Three years of extreme drought may have brought about the collapse of the mighty Hittite Empire around 1200 BC, researchers have said, linking the plight of the fallen civilization to the modern world’s climate crisis.
The Hittites dominated Anatolia in modern-day Turkey for nearly 500 years, even rivaling the power of the Egyptian Empire for a period.
They were one of several influential ancient civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East which were all toppled or severely weakened at around the same time, bringing the curtain down on the Bronze Age.
The Hittites mysteriously abandoned their capital and religious center Hattusa around 1200 BC, when the royal line died out and written historical documents dried up.
The empire’s centuries-old political and cultural structures ended “quite rapidly,” Sturt Manning, an archaeologist at Cornell University in the United States and lead author of a new study, told AFP.
There are several theories for what was behind the “Late Bronze Age collapse”, including attacks from naval raiders called the “Sea Peoples”, epidemics and famines—as well as a 300-year change to a drier, cooler climate.
But exactly what triggered the demise of these empires has remained unclear.
Now, for the Hittites at least, the answer may have come inscribed in the rings of ancient juniper wood.
A dam built by the Hittites, whose power rivalled the Egyptian…
2023-02-12 10:08:21
Original from phys.org
A new study has recently revealed that climate change may have played a part in the downfall of the ancient Hittite Empire.
The Hittite Empire, which began around 2,000 BC, was an influential civilization in the ancient world. It reached its height in the mid-13th century BC, and at that point, the Empire held control of a large area extending from southeastern Europe, through modern-day Turkey to the border of Egypt.
However, the Empire began to decline sometime around the late 13th century and had disappeared by 1180 BC. In the past, scholars suggested that this decline was due to the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’, a group of seafaring warriors that came from the Mediterranean region, but recent evidence suggests that climate change may have played a part in the Empire’s fall.
The new study, published in the journal Geoarchaeology, suggested that rapid shifts in temperature and rainfall during the late Bronze Age—the era in which the Hittite Empire flourished—disrupted the region’s agricultural system, contributing to the decline.
The team of researchers behind the study used core samples taken from the Sea of Marmara to reconstruct the region’s climate patterns over the last 2,000 years. They then compared those records with archaeological evidence to track the rise and fall of the Hittite Empire.
The researchers found that during the peak of the Hittite Empire, the region experienced periods of both severe drought and extreme flooding. These extreme environmental conditions are believed to have had an impact on the agricultural system of the region and could have been one of the key factors leading to the decline of the Hittite Empire.
The study also suggests that this period of climate change was a global phenomenon which affected other parts of the world, such as Mesopotamia and Egypt, at the same time.
While the exact cause of the Hittite Empire’s demise is still unclear, this study provides further evidence that climate change may have had an important role to play. It also serves as a reminder of the far-reaching effects of climate change and the need to take action to mitigate its impacts.