NMC349H1

Climate and Collapse in the Ancient Near East

Discussions of climate change and its repercussions for modern society have become pervasive in the media and in general social discourse. The past offers a deep timescale within which to examine the plethora of ways in which humans have interacted with their environment and responded and adapted to climate variability in various periods. However, when we find stories about past civilizations and their relationship with their environment in the media, these are almost exclusively framed as stories of unavoidable collapse. Is this legitimate, or over-dramatic? What can we learn from past societies and how they adapted to ancient climate change—or perhaps failed to do so? This course addresses the methods used to reconstruct past climate, the details of what we know about Near Eastern palaeoclimate, and the frameworks of collapse and resilience that are frequently employed in explaining episodes of rapid climate change in the Near East.