Climatic change and the beginnings of world civilisations
by
Fekri Hassan
U.C.L. London (UK)

A major event of abrupt global climatic cooling associated with a significant shift in the Intertropical Convergence Zone at 4500-4400 radiocarbon years before present (3300-2900 cal BC) played a major role in the origins of the world earliest state civilisations. The shift in the ITCZ triggered droughts in river valleys where agriculture had been previously adopted. The rapid onset of severe droughts hastened the emergence of state-level political organisation in Egypt and Mesopotamia from the amalgamation of regional polities. The transition to state societies was successful because it buffered local scarcities by facilitating trans-regional demographic adjustments and managerial co-ordination of economic and human resources. The synchronous emergence of state societies and complex hierarchical polities in different areas of the world between 3200 and 2800 cal BC was thus a function of pre-existing agrarian subsistence and political organisations in large river valleys and the benefits of interegional managerial coordination in response to a global climatic event adversely affecting local communities in the ITCZ belt.

Date received: June 13, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cahr-33.