Late Holocene drought responsible for the collapse of Old World civilizations is recorded in an Italian cave flowstone

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Publication Date

2-1-2006

Publication Title

Geology

Volume Number

34

Issue Number

2

Abstract

A severe drought in parts of low-latitude northeastern Africa and southwestern Asia ∼4200 yr ago caused major disruption to ancient civilizations. Stable isotope, trace element, and organic fluorescence data from a calcite flowstone collected from the well-watered Alpi Apuane karst of central-western Italy indicate that the climatic event responsible for this drought was also recorded in mid-latitude Europe. Although the timing of this event coincides with an episode of increased ice-rafted debris to the subpolar North Atlantic, the regional ocean-atmosphere response seems atypical of similar Holocene ice-rafting events. Furthermore, comparison of the flowstone data with other regional proxies suggests that the most extreme part of the dry spell occurred toward the end of a longer-term climate anomaly.

Keywords

Speleothems, Holocene, Drought, Geochemistry, Italy

Document Type

Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1130/G22103.1

Language

English

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