Editor's pick
This post is part of hand-picked stories from across the web, curated by the editors of the Assyria Post.
This post is part of hand-picked stories from across the web, curated by the editors of the Assyria Post.
“As far as we know, ours is the first study to put forward the hypothesis that climate change – specifically drought – helped to destroy the Assyrian Empire,” said Schneider, doctoral candidate in anthropology at UC San Diego and first author on the paper in the Springer journal Climatic Change.
The researchers’ work connects recently published climate data to text found on a clay tablet. The text is a letter to the king, written by a court astrologer, reporting (almost incidentally) that “no harvest was reaped” in 657 BC.
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Too Many People, Not Enough Water – Now and 2700 Years Ago
The Assyrian Empire once dominated the ancient Near East. At the start of the 7th century BC, it was a mighty military machine and the largest empire the Old World had yet seen. But then, before the century was out, it had collapsed. Why? An international study now offers two new factors as possible contributors to the empire’s sudden demise – overpopulation and drought.
Inga Kiderra
