The climate of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean was far more turbulent than previously thought — and a new study suggests that people adapted anyway.
The climate of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean was far more turbulent than previously thought — and a new study suggests that people adapted anyway.
An international team of scientists, spearheaded by UC San Diego's Center for Cyber-Archaeology and Sustainability (CCAS) and the University of Haifa's Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies (RIMS), has developed a new way to track ancient climate and used it to decode 4,000 years of key environmental history in the ancient Mediterranean. The paper was published in Quaternary Science Reviews on May 13.
Focusing on a former wetland on Israel's Carmel Coast, a narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Carmel mountain range, the researchers examined a period known as the end of the African Humid Period, a time when the region was transforming from lush and wet to increasingly dry. Rather than a slow, steady drying, the climate lurched between wet and dry extremes, sometimes within a single human lifetime, sometimes over centuries. Yet people appear to have adapted rather than abandoned the region.
Read More at: University of California - San Diego
