The Americas

China was not the only civilization to rise during the “Crisis of the Known World”. While the three civilizations of the Near East were collapsing, the first complex societies were also arising in Mesoamerica (the Olmecs) and South America (the Chavín). By 2000 BC people began to settle permanently in river basins draining the western slopes of the Peruvian Andes and the Tuxtla Mountains in Mesoamerica. By 1000 BC, the Chavín of Peru and the Olmecs of Mesoamerica had built massive ceremonial centers and their warriors were spreading their influence through their respective territories.

The Second Group of “First” Civilizations (Note again – along rivers!)

But then in 900 BC the Chavín were ravaged by floods and starvation and there was revolt among the Olmecs. By 200 BC the civilizations of the Chavin and the Olmec were just a memory.

Like before, but in reverse, while China was racked by constant warfare and the first civilizations of the Americas were dissolving, in the Mediterranean, civilizations were growing --- again. This time Greece and Rome were on the rise.

Again look at the climate graph in the second post. What was happening with the global temperature? It was rising back up to where it was when agriculture was first invented and the very first civilizations arose. With the increase in global temperature civilization in the Mediterranean gets back on its feet only to crash again. The decline of the Western Roman Empire happened between 200 and 600 AD.

Notice, the global temperature fell again. Interesting! What is going on??

To understand what was going on you need to have some understanding of how weather and climate work on our Earth.

Next Post: It’s all Temperature Differentials!
“Science Content”: Atmospheric Science

Interestingly, while the first civilizations in the Middle East and India were collapsing, civilization in China and in the Americas was rising.

China and the Yellow River

As the climate warmed from 5000 BC to 3000 BC, more and more people began to settle in farming villages along the river banks of the Yangtze River in South China and along the Yellow River in Northern China just as they had done along the rivers of East Asia. This time period is called the pre-dynastic period of China. During the pre-dynastic period, villages grew larger and more socially organized. Pottery became more elegant, burial customs became more elaborate, and distinct social classes began to emerge. Clan leaders began to surround themselves with assistants and advisers, the beginnings of a bureaucracy. Then somewhere around 2200 BC, the Yellow River flooded thirteen years in a row and something had to be done. (Remember - 2200 BC is when drier weather became more and more of a problem in Sumeria and Egypt! Guess where the rain was going!)

According to Chinese legend a man known as “Yu the Great” solve the flooding problem by organizing the people of North China and building a vast system of dikes and channels. He was so successful that he was eventually made the first king of the first Dynasty of China, the Xia Dynasty (2000-1600 BC). This Dynasty was followed by the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BC) and the Zhou Dynasty (1100-770 BC). Chinese civilization was on the rise.

But then, during the period between 770 and 256 BC, all began to fall apart. This was a time of “political fragmentation and moral crisis” in northern China.

A king and his dynasty could rule only so long as they retained heaven’s favor. If a king neglected his sacred duties and acted tyrannically, heaven would display its displeasure by sending down ominous portents and natural disasters. If the king failed to heed such warnings, heaven would withdraw its mandate, disorder would increase, the political and social order would fall into chaos, and heaven would eventually select someone else upon whom to bestow a new mandate to rule. Patricia B. Ebrey

It was not the King’s fault. The global climate changed again.

Next Post: The Americas

Today we live in a world powered by oil and gas. We can put our cities just about anywhere. Food is shipped in and most of us in developed countries do not know where our food comes from – or if we do - we do not think about it much. However we all need to start thinking about it. To understand how important it is, it helps to take a quick look at a few of those early civilizations that have left us only monuments….

Three of the World’s First Civilizations (Did you notice they were all along rivers?)

The First Civilizations

Between 6000-3750 BC, a major cultural change in human behavior was again taking shape. People of unknown origin, which we call the Sumerians, moved out the mountains and began to settle in the southern flood plain of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. Little is known about these people but it is certain that over the course of 2000 years the Sumerians learned to manage crops and animals in the heat and aridity of the lowlands of Mesopotamia. The key to their success was irrigation. In addition, the most important inventions of humankind, the plow and the wheel, came into use. With increasing skill and organization, these irrigation farmers harnessed the destructive spring floods of the Euphrates River, improved their crop yields to the point of producing surpluses, and laid the foundations of the world's first civilization, the city-states of Sumer.


Not long after the beginnings of Sumerian civilization, the elements of civilization emerged along the banks of the Nile River in Egypt and the Indus River in modern day Pakistan. Two civilizations also flourished in the Mediterranean, the Minoan and Mycenaean. Each of these civilizations had their ups and downs. Each made major contributions to human kind but what ties them together is the timing of their final demise. Starting around 2200 BC and culminating around 1200 BC….

“… states large and small along the Mediterranean coast from Anatolia (Turkey) to the Delta (of Egypt) and from the Aegean Sea in the west to the Zargos Mountains in the east collapsed or were destroyed in what seems to have been a general crisis of the civilized world.” Civilization in the West

Look back at the global temperature graph in the previous post. Notice something? The global temperature around 1200 BC was at its lowest point in 3000 years and had been decreasing for about 1000 years. Though historians can and do argue about the cause or causes of each states demise, every one of these civilizations had at least two important things in common – dependence on agriculture and drought.

Drought is lack of rainfall. Growing crops and growing populations require rain either directly or flowing into rivers to use for irrigation. Once human populations became dependent on agriculture to feed themselves, they make themselves dependent on the global climate. Hunter/gathers can move to where the rain is falling, city dwellers can not. When their agriculture is threatened there will be major disruptions in the organization of civilizations created when the climate was right for agriculture. It is just that simple!

The period of time between 1200 and 800 BC is known as the “Greek Dark Age,” at time when the people of the time returned to a “more primitive level of culture and society”.

Next Post: China and the Yellow River
Why Eurasia First? It’s Geography!