It's always 'climate change'. Dozens of megafauna disappear? 'climate change'. Whole tribes with fortifications suddenly disappear? 'climate change'. Wholesale population replacement? 'climate change'. It's our age's "peoples don't migrate, pots do". It's gotten to the point that when I read about the latest population genetics result show introgression or replacement and they invoke 'climate change', I no longer know if it's a case where it could be climate change or just the usual total refusal to speculate about pre-historic warfare and predation.
Is the end of an ice age not a form of climate change then?
A fact of the matter is that a lot of evolution is driven by constantly changing climates. The supervolcanos and asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs also did so through climate change: too much dust in the air and too little sunlight made the land colder, killed much of the plants, and made resources more scarce. Small warm-blooded animals suddenly had the edge.
It is a bit of a catch-all, though. Just "climate change" doesn't tell you much. Receding glaciers and more accessible land tells you a lot more.
And its not like the last ice age just neatly stopped - there was a significant cooling period during the Younger Dryas which wasn't quite a bad as a full Ice Age but was still pretty severe:
These things aren't mutually exclusive. I think there are events that occurred around periods of climate change, which may have caused changes in animal or human migration. This could lead to warfare, or even more simply disease transmission.
We've had nearly continuous warfare for the last 2,000 years. I've read a number of history books on it, and none have suggested climate change as being a cause, or even a factor.
This article (written in backlash to some recent high profile claims of conflicts caused by climate change) suggests that blaming climate for human conflicts is nothing new:
It’s that they promote a kind of climate reductionism, one
that carries echoes of the deterministic theories that were
once popular during the second half of the 19th century.
Consider, for instance, John William Draper’s History of
the American Civil War, published in 1867. Draper, who
served as president of the medical college of New York
University from 1850 to 1873, was a professor of chemistry
and an architect of the so-called “conflict model” of
science and religion, bringing a scientist’s eye to his
task. On the very first page of his book, he announced “the
great truth that societies advance in a preordained and
inevitable course” guided by “uncontrollable causes.” Chief
among these was the climate.
You wouldn't ever see "the climate changed so we moved" as a cause here, because climate change takes a few generations to fully manifest. People without written records and good observation tools wouldn't be able to spot or record the climate change. But such people would certainly notice when agricultural output drops and decide to move to places where the situation is better.
Such wholesale migrations have been the cause of many conflicts. Steppe nomads have migrated to Europe on many occasions over the last two thousand years and each time it has led to war. Even within Europe this sort of migration was observed. For example, Julius Caesar fought Germanic tribes who had decided to migrate to Gaul because the grass was greener on that side of the Rhine.
Populations regularly outgrow their food supply and migrate. That isn't climate change. They also exhaust their land with poor farming practices, that isn't climate change, either.
A drought isn't climate change. The annual weather is a chaotic system, and a drought for a year or two (or even 10) is normal. Climate change is much longer term.
We see climate change affecting the Middle East as it dries up sources of water and forces people to migrate or move to the populated cities that have a water source.
It has also caused a refugee crisis as people can't get food or water and flee their nation to go some place else to live.
It has also allowed terrorists to rise up in Syria and Iraq and take over weakened cities that had water sources dry up and people left unable to defend those cities from takeover by terrorists.
So I imagine back during the Ice Age, people moved around as well as struggled to survive. Some lost their food and water sources and turned to warfare on other tribes to survive. People who hung out in southern Europe where the climate was not too bad had a better chance of survival than people who lived on ice sheets up north.
Do you realize that this is basically just apologetics for the reign of W? The reason that there are armed conflicts in Iraq is because USA broke that nation, and the decades it will take to heal have not yet elapsed. The reason there are armed conflicts in Syria is because it's next to Iraq, and also various parties have schemed to weaken the (admittedly awful) incumbent regime. The desert isn't new. It's not as though fifty years ago these places were covered in rain forests. It's not as though ISIS have less need for water than whomever they've replaced.
Because the middle east was a sea of peace, social stability and contentment beforehand? The Iraq war was a disaster, but let's not kid ourselves about a simplistic root cause.
Except for the Kuwait invasion and Gulf War, and between 500.000 and 1.5M people dead in the 9 years of Iran-Irak war in the 80s, and tens of thousand palestinians killed by jordanians in the 70s, and several Israel-Arab wars since 1947, and Lebanon civil war.
No, that was outside of the decade in question. So it's not being ignored so much as excluded by definition.
Of course, the time when Iraq did that shortly before the decade in question, he had just spent nearly a decade involved in another invasion of a neighboring country -- with the full support of the US, which even rushed to publicly support Iraq when international pressure arose over their use of chemical weapons. So, its not exactly a mystery where he got the idea he could just invade neighboring countries with no consequences.
> So, its not exactly a mystery where he got the idea he could just invade neighboring countries with no consequences.
IIRC, an apparently poorly considered
remark by US Ambassador to Iraq April
Glaspie on the US position on Saddam's
dispute with Kuwait was a biggie.
The joke, and maybe the truth, about
the Dick Cheney remark that there was
"no doubt" Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction was that, of course he
had such weapons (poison gas) and
of course we knew he had them because
we "still had the receipts" from
when we sold that gas to him.
Of course we wanted Saddam to use
that gas against Iran.
IMHO it now appears that Dick Cheney,
the neo-cons, etc., had an idea about
the world and, especially, Iraq:
(1) Saddam was a bad guy. So,
push on him, and if he doesn't
obey, then invade him.
We pushed; Saddam didn't obey;
W and Co. invaded him in
Gulf War II.
(2) Then part of the idea was W's
statement "The Iraqi people are
perfectly capable of governing
themselves.". So, with such
thinking, the US rushed to set
up a government -- democratic,
constitutional, parliamentary,
secular.
Apparently the US expectation was
that quickly the US would leave and
Iraq would be liberated,
free, relatively independent,
peaceful, prosperous from the oil,
and a buddy of the US.
Then a reality check set in: Oops,
nope. Instead we learned what
Saddam had warned us about, that
we would have one heck of a time
holding Iraq together. Saddam,
with Stalinist techniques, had
held Iraq together, but without
Saddam what we did there just
let the place come apart.
Apart? Nearly every street thug,
gang leader, ambitious politician
or cleric, international opportunist,
etc. saw the fertile ground and
started up. Soon there was the
insurgency, i.e., something
between just chaos and a civil war.
A big trigger? One of the first things the US
administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer,
did was to disband Saddam's army.
Hmm .... That army had ballpark
7 million men. Let's see:
IIRC, Iraq had ballpark 35 million
people so 17.5 million males.
So, the 7 million men was
essentially all the men of military
age in the country -- all of them.
Hmm.
So, right away Bremer just put
all 7 million
on the streets, broke. Uh, maybe
we might have thought a little about
just why Saddam had those 7 million
men in his army? Maybe mostly to
keep them under his control and off
the streets?
In particular, as the army was
disbanded, Saddam's huge weapons
supplies were left unguarded, then
stolen, then used in the insurgency,
e.g., as roadside bombs that
killed/injured a lot of US soldiers.
The main reason for the insurgency?
There are three
main populations in Iraq,
Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. They
all hate each other.
At least the Sunnis and Shiites
have been at war with each other
for over 1000 years.
And now, Iraq is essentially partitioned
into Kurd, Sunni, and Shiite areas.
The Shiites have Baghdad and
south and east from there
to Iran, the Persian Gulf,
Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
The Sunnis have the area north
and west of Baghdad and
extending into northern Syria,
and that Sunni area is mostly
under the control of fundamentalist,
medieval, brutal, angry, hostile,
ambitious
ISIS.
The Kurds have their areas, mostly on
both sides of the border of
Turkey.
Iran? Shiite.
Saudi Arabia? Sunni.
Assad in Syria? A branch of Shiite.
The rebels in Syria? Sunni.
The civil war in Syria? Apparently
just another chapter of the
1000+ year old Sunni-Shiite war.
What's different since 100 years ago?
There used to
be a lot of desert and not
much money or many people --
few people, poor, separated.
Now with the oil money, the desert
is still there but there is
lots of money and many more people.
So, the old Sunni-Shiite
war can draw lots more blood.
So, that's what W, Cheney, the
neo-cons, Wolfowitz,
and Bremer took the US into.
They were going to dump Saddam, set up
a secular democracy friendly with the
the US, and leave, all quickly.
Lots of thugs quickly saw the
fatal flaws, but W and Co. didn't.
So, the US spent lots of precious
US blood and treasure chasing
the dreams of Cheney, W, etc.
Lesson? If the US wants to play
a role in a swamp, then it needs
to understand the reptiles --
snakes, alligators, etc. Else,
can get bitten by the snakes and
alligators.
> There are three main populations in Iraq, Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds.
I would say this was a nitpick, but given the sibling response its perhaps a more important correction, the three main groupings around which identity politics, etc., work in Iraq are:
Sunni Arabs, Shi'ite Arabs, and Kurds.
The "Arab" modifier matters, because the Kurds are mostly Sunni, but are not (in terms of political identity) aligned with the Sunni Arabs.
And "climate change" is a misleading word to call resource exhaustion caused by human populations outgrowing the carrying capacity of their environment. It's as if the humans are simply passive victims of external circumstances.
Syria is a mix of different factors. It has a large proportion of subsistence farmers who are disproportionately effected by climatic conditions. It is reasonable to suggest that food shortages and rising poverty could exasperate other sources of insecurity.
Most parts of the world (i.e. outside western europe and certain Pacific Rim nations) have a large proportion of subsistence farmers. Most of those parts do not have Iraq and Syria's problems.
Although he may spin it a little further than it is worth, in fact before all the latest events of the last several years started, the Middle East was the area determined to be most at risk of a "major war" specifically because of issues with international water rights, water amounts & the worsening effect climate change was having on it.
It was boring think-tank material, not the stuff you read in the paper every day, but it was a top concern among people who considered long-term policy.
It's very much a picture of the drought causing people to move to overstretched towns and cities to look for work, and rising discontent with their government as a result. In some areas, mercenary work might be the only paid work available.
I agree, it is kind of obvious, wherever human appear, megafauna disappear, from Europe to South America. Oh must be climate change.
It could be climate change, but that doesnt explain anything, since its so far reaching and general.
Maybe this latest global warming/climate change, is not the first time humans had an impact on climate? Its certainly not the first time any species had an impact on climate, looking at you cyanobacteria.
Pre agriculture society has built Goḱbi Tepe, and other "stone age monuments", its not far fetched that they diverted rivers and thus caused desertification of some area which may had other effects on global climate.
Wasnt the Sahara a swamp pre-agriculture?
Also, the "pre-agriculture = low population" is just a speculation, it could have been far higher population in some areas and we wouldnt have any evidence for it today. See for example Americas before conquestadors, there were areas with millions of people, and not all doing agriculture or even horticulture.
The best areas which could have supported a very high population have been destroyed, all the best areas were taken by "civilized" war people, and now the only nomads/hunter gatherers left are in far-reached shitty areas.
> Maybe this latest global warming/climate change, is not the first time humans had an impact on climate? Its certainly not the first time any species had an impact on climate, looking at you cyanobacteria.
No -- if you read their arguments more closely, what they suspect is that some populations were able to adapt to sudden climate change, while others were not.
Its peculiar that a group with a specific DNA marker would be wiped out so completely by climate change while another group was not (or at least prospered at a later time in the same region).
Could this more easily be explained by an aggressive disease or plague that wiped out anyone it contacted and the separation of the 2 groups (N and M) in different locations protected enough of the N group for it to prosper. Also isolated pockets of M carriers who had migrated beyond the infected area survived.
"Could this more easily be explained by an aggressive disease or plague that wiped out anyone it contacted"
This sounds so familiar! "The previous local populations just vanished and we, the current inhabitants, had nothing to do with it, cross my heart!"
The dramatic change should have been very beneficial to the hunter-gatherers. They survived so long in tundra but they somehow couldn't cope with the abundance of plants and plant eating venison brought along? Come on! It's more likely that the previous harsh conditions weren't that inviting for the better hunters of N type super-haplogroup living somewhere else, and as soon as that changed so did the hunting lands' owners!
Disease is nothing to sneeze at! One new virus could quite possibly have wiped out an entire population (as it did so often in more recent human history). The end of the glaciers was the perfect condition to increase mobility and thus disease vectors.
In fact, this is so inevitable we'd have to explain why it couldn't happen, before speculating on less-likely scenarios?
"we'd have to explain why it couldn't happen, before speculating on less-likely scenarios"
The colonization of Americas is the perfect counter-example for disease wipe-out explanation. Pre-Columbian American population had no immunity whatsoever to a bunch of serious diseases (some of which managed to become pandemics back in colonizer's homelands), diseases that have accumulated over millennia (since the last Bering overland/over-ice human crossing)! You'd expect that on first Columbian contacts there should have appeared a pandemic so severe over the whole Americas that after a few years the Europeans should have had no one alive to encounter! Not only they still encountered, but long after the first contact they also had a hard time dealing with local resistance of underdeveloped tribes which had worse medical conditions than what was to be had in ancient Rome! Not only that locals haven't been wiped out, but they managed to contribute in a large quote to nowadays's Ibero-America's genotype despite the European settlers' massive migration! So yes, I think it's enough reason to consider the disease a less likely cause for a continental scale wipe-out (which is what the article was talking about).
A perfect example! Estimates are that 100 million aboriginal Americans were wiped out by diseases brought by Europeans. Most of the population of North America succumbed. The largest dieoff in human history.
We'll never really know the depth of native culture pre-Columbian because of this.
In my opinion not always "climate change" but one of the main factor. For me main factor is opportunity to moder human to acclimate for this factores. Yes, climate changes are important but more value is respond for that e.g. better groups organisation, better equipment. In that time if you do not acclimate quick you died
