Climate change has devastated many people around the globe. It changed even the way humans, animals, and plants survive. For example, a recent study showed that flowers are altering their UV pigments in their petals to adapt to the changing climate. Another example is the increase in shark attacks in Australia which is also attributed to climate change.
Climate change has affected a lot of living things and perhaps ancient civilizations as well, as what a new analysis of a civilization that once lived in the 13th century in the lands surrounding the Aral Sea, according to Inverse.
According to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), there is an alternative reason for why the ancient civilization in Central Asia in the 13th century disappeared. It said that war did not lead this civilization to its demise, but rather climate change.
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Brief History of the Transoxania
This ancient civilization is known as the Transoxania or Beyond the Oxus River, which is another name for the Amu Darya. Its civilization grew between 650 and 760 AD. It has become an important crossroads in the Silk Road trading route and also the center of thought and art during the early Islamic renaissance. The place was even called the "Land of the Thousand Cities."
They fend off Arab invaders and saw a recovery of most settlements in the Ortrar Oasis along with an economic boom, said Mark Macklin and Willem Toonen, authors of the study.
However, it did not last long for their civilization to be confronted with Mongol invasion of the city of Ortrar in 1218 which led to its complete demise between the 16th to 17th centuries.
"The Mongol invasion... had a completely different outcome with limited recovery and this occurred more than 100 years after the destruction of Otrar," Macklin and Toonen explain.
Climate Change Not the Mongolian Invasion
Inverse reported that the big idea in the collapse of Transoxania is that it was caused by the Mongolian invasion at that time. However, this might not be the case at all. Archaeologists proposed another theory of the civilization's demise and looked at one of Transoxania's assets, which is the river.
They used two techniques, radiometric dating and optically stimulated luminescence dating, to look for the irrigation canals which were likely abandoned. They first established when these canals were disused and then dated river sediments to reconstruct a history of water flow in the rivers that flowed in these canals.
Their analysis confirmed that the effectiveness of the irrigation systems was affected by climate change at the same time that Mongol invaders came to Transoxania, which greatly influenced their survival. That also explains how their civilization was able to thrive after the Arab invasions and not after the Mongolians arrived.
Macklin and Toonen said that it was wet during and after the Arab invasions, which is good for irrigation and agriculture. But the place was stricken by drought which means irrigation is not possible during the Mongolian invasions.
Ultimately, the Transoxania civilization disappeared because of climate change, warfare, politics, and the decline of the Silk Road. The researchers stressed that it is not an 'either-or' scenario for the Transoxania's collapse.
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