4.2 ka BP event

The Egyptological theory that the so-called “collapse” of the Old Kingdom was triggered by a short-term aridification event, although popular, is problematic at best. This work addresses the inexcusable reticence of this dialogue to the overwhelming evidence that the climatological events experienced during the First Intermediate Period, namely severe drought and agricultural hardship, were long-term effects of an extended period of landscape evolution to which the Egyptian people adapted over time. It argues, based on Commodity Theory and other psychological research, that the fundamental cognitive effect any resource’s heightened unavailability is an increase in its value, and that, therefore, worsening agricultural yield-losses effectuated profound and measurable changes to Egyptian economic life at least by Dynasty Four. During this time, several economizing architectural trends first emerge from the archaeological record, followed by a shift towards the frequent integration of at-risk foodstuffs into the offering cult via metaphor. Later, as agricultural hardships intensified, psychology also relates resource unavailability to higher rates of property crime during the First Intermediate Period.  Thus, as part of a growing body of climatological research into the late-Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, the present work advocates for greater integration of psychological theory into this discourse.

Ancient pseudo-histories may contain kernels of geographic truth. In the Sumerian King List, the long and south-focused antediluvian era may reflect a combination of the Ubaid and Uruk periods, while the initial post-Flood period, which was short and ruled from the north, may reflect the Jemdet Nasr phase. The King List’s subsequent return of kingship southward to Uruk and Ur ushers in the Early Dynastic period. For Egypt, the Heliopolitan mythological sequence in which Seth (patron deity of Upper Egypt) is succeeded by Horus (patron deity of Lower Egypt) may reflect the spread of Naqada culture from southern to northern Egypt in the 4th millennium BCE, with the Upper Egyptian origin of both deities reflecting the unification of the Two Lands under the control of Upper Egypt.

The initial sections of the Sumerian King List and the Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt and Royal Canon of Turin are compared with each other and with their counterparts in the Hellenistic king-lists of Berossos and Manetho. The actual ages of the cities in the antediluvian portion of the Sumerian King List are reflected rather well by their positions in that list. The total time allocated by Berossos to the antediluvian period in Mesopotamia is an order of magnitude higher than the total assigned by Manetho to the mythological/predynastic period in Egypt, perhaps because the Babylonians reckoned time using a sexagesimal (base-60) numeral system whereas the Egyptians used a decimal (base-10) one.

The Mesopotamian and Egyptian myths that signal the beginning of historical time involve direct and indirect references, respectively, to a flood – an event whose nature reflects the actual geography and hydrology of its source region. Mythologically, the water motif is used in opposing ways: the Mesopotamian formula involves a cataclysmic deluge which is nevertheless survived by a man, while the Egyptian one involves a benign inundation which receives the body of a slain god. A late embellishment of the Egyptian myth shares with a late version of the Mesopotamian one the image of a wooden box, with someone important inside it, being tossed aimlessly on the waves. Once again, the outcomes are opposite: the Egyptian vessel is a death-chamber in which a god is murdered, whereas the Babylonian one is a life-boat by which humanity is saved.

An interesting contrast to the mythical Great Flood is provided by the real-world aridification that culminated in the 4200 BP drought event, which helped to end both the Egyptian Old Kingdom and the Akkadian empire. It is possible that this sun-driven phenomenon contributed to the rise of the solar cult in 5th-Dynasty Egypt.

The Amorites have occupied a central place among discussions of identity and ethnicity in the late third and early second millennia B.C. This contribution addresses the principal role that climate change played in altering trajectories in the development of Amorite identities in the ancient Near East during this period. To address this question this paper outlines a consensus position on the textual and archaeological evidence for Amorite identities prior to the aridification event ca. 2200 B.C. This is followed by an evaluation of the evidence for the effects of this climatic change on specific regions—from the Egyptian Delta to Northern Mesopotamia—and its implications for social interactions that resulted in varied, yet related trajectories in the development of Amorite identities. Risk mitigation strategies that were employed by the region’s populations are evaluated as a principal means of addressing how different populations sought to cope with the impact of climate change, alongside persistent cultural changes associated with anthropogenic phenomena. The author concludes that climatic change, while not solely responsible, did play a crucial role in shaping Amorite identities in the late third millennium.

This essay places a much-maligned exemplar of lamentation literature in dialogue with recent climate data, medieval and Ottoman period Egyptian famines, studies of famine and plague cross-culturally, writings about cultural memory, and trauma studies to argue that the text sheds valuable light on Egypt's social history.

http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-3615-4/the-nile-natural-and-cultural-landscape-in-egypt

A fair part of the western Delta seems to have been inundated by a sea-transgression during the late Old Kingdom. It was caused most probably by the 4.2 ka BP-event, causing an eustatic rise of the sea. This hypothesis  explains why settlements in the Middle Kingdom and the SIP were concentrated in the eastern half and the western edge of the Delta whereas in the western half one finds a void. This situation also explains why the easternmost Nile-branch became in this time and the New Kingdom the most important rivercourse. This should focus our mind on installations along this waterway. Besides the harbours of Avaris and Piramesse, it is this region where from strategical point of view one would expect the localisation of the famous Thutmosid port of Peru-nefer which allowed perannual seatraffic. Even in the period of draught during the spring season the sea penetrated the nearly empty Nile channels and allowed navigation from a port not more than 40 km from the coast throughout the year.
We don't hear about Peru-nefer after Amenhotep II untill the end of the 18th Dynasty. This lack of records is reflected in the stratigraphy of the site of Tell el-Daba with a hiatus after this king until shortly before the Amarna Period. Remains of a fortress may be associated with the fortification activities of the Nile mouths  of Amenhotep, Son of Hapu. The fortress was enlarged under Horemheb. It seems that the presence of Near Easterners from the time of the Hyksos until the New Kingdom and the period of the Delta-residence Pi-Ramesse in the 19th and 20th Dynasty can be followed to some extent by the presence of Canaanate cults in all three town phases of Tell el-Daba - a site which was endowed throughout these periods with a big harbour basin. This suggests to some extent a continuum within a fast changing world.

This contribution highlights developments towards socio-economic and political complexity in Early Dilmun society during the City I period, particularly on Bahrain. This formative phase was highly dynamic, and saw the inception of several aspects  fundamental for the developments that took place during the ‘first phase of the second social formation’ (that unfolded during City IIa and which is associated with the creation of an Early State organization). It will be argued that the main impetus for changes in Bahrain’s social fabric during City I was a combination of factional competition, a rapidly expanding and aggregating population, and the investments needed to transform the natural landscape. These changes were not restricted to a small elite, as has been maintained up till now, but seem to have affected all segments of society.

Keywords: Dilmun, Bronze Age, 4.2 ka BP event, social complexity, heterarchy.

TYPESCRIPT: I AM NOT ALLOWED BY THE PUBLISHER TO UPLOAD THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION ONTO THIS FORUM FOR A PERIOD OF TWO YEARS.

"...This drought event was the ISM century-scale drought recorded at Mawmluh KM-A, ML. 1, 2, and at region-wide circum-Indian Ocean basin speleothem, marine and lake cores that include those for the 4.2 ka BP event in the Ethiopian highlands and Nile River. This occurred synchronously with the westerlies’ 4.2 ka BP abrupt event reduction of Mediterranean, West and South Asian precipitation, the EASM events in China, the north Atlantic glacial, lake and marine core events, and the North and South American 4.2 ka BP events. Meanwhile, the archaeological evidence for the synchronous collapse of Egyptian, Mediterranean, West Asian, and Indus settlement systems at 4.2 ka BP appears increasingly robust."

It is suggested that the progressive and destructive aridification during the Old Kingdom was recognised by ancient Egyptians as a sun-driven phenomenon, and that this awareness may have contributed to the rise of the solar cult in the 5th Dynasty.

[For further development of this proposal within a wide-ranging consideration of both mythic and real flood/drought events, see “Mythogeography and hydromythology in the initial sections of Sumerian and Egyptian king-lists” in my Academia portfolio.]

The Mediterranean region and the Levant have returned some of the clearest evidence of a climatically dry period occurring around 4200 years ago. However, some regional evidence is controversial and contradictory, and issues remain regarding timing, progression, and regional ar-ticulation of this event. In this paper, we review the evidence from selected proxies (sea-surface temperature, precipitation , and temperature reconstructed from pollen, δ 18 O on speleothems, and δ 18 O on lacustrine carbonate) over the Mediterranean Basin to infer possible regional climate patterns during the interval between 4.3 and 3.8 ka. The values and limitations of these proxies are discussed, and their potential for furnishing information on seasonality is also explored. Despite the chronological uncertainties, which are the main limitations for disentangling details of the climatic conditions , the data suggest that winter over the Mediterranean involved drier conditions, in addition to already dry summers. However, some exceptions to this prevail-where wetter conditions seem to have persisted-suggesting regional heterogeneity in climate patterns. Temperature data, even if sparse, also suggest a cooling anomaly, even if this is not uniform. The most common paradigm to interpret the precipitation regime in the Mediterranean-a North Atlantic Oscillation-like pattern-is not completely satisfactory to interpret the selected data.

"Societies adapted quickly to altered dry-farming cereal production at the onset and terminus of the 4.2–3.9 kaBP (4200–3900 years ago, or 2200–1900 BCE) abrupt climate change. Relatively high-resolution and independent
archaeological and paleoclimate records document that the period of abrupt climate change began with:
1) regional abandonments;
2) habitat-tracking to riparian, paludal, and karst spring-fed refugia; and
3) nomadization (subsistence-transfer from agriculture to pastoral nomadism). Adaptive social responses at the termination of the abrupt climate change included: 1) sedentarization; 2) political state formation; 3) increased and enhanced surplus agro-production; and 4) politico-territorial expansion. This 300-year period provides, therefore, an alluring Holocene example of societal responses to abrupt climate change across the eastern Mediterranean and west Asian landscapes, and in particular across steep gradient ecotones of modern Syria and Lebanon.... "

"The 2006 and 2008 excavations of the Leilan Acropolis Northwest focused upon the multi-phase building first discovered in 2002 in a test trench ....that exposed. .. a four-room house and courtyard. At the conclusion of the 2002 excavation it was assumed that the four-room house would subsequently prove to be part of a still larger structure or structures.  That was not the case, however.... "

There is a lack of high-resolution records of hydroclimate variability in the Eastern Mediterranean from the late glacial and early Holocene. More knowledge of the speed of climate shifts and the degree to which they were synchronous with changes in the North Atlantic or elsewhere is required to understand better the controls on Eastern Mediterranean climate. Using endogenic carbonate from a sediment sequence from Nar Gölü, a maar lake in central Turkey, dated by varve counting and uranium-thorium methods, we present high-resolution (∼25 years) oxygen (δ18O) and carbon isotope records, supported by carbonate mineralogy data, spanning the late glacial and Holocene. δ18Ocarbonate at Nar Gölü has been shown previously to be a strong proxy for regional water balance. After a dry period (i.e. evaporation far exceeding precipitation) in the Younger Dryas, the data show a transition into the relatively wetter early Holocene. In the early Holocene there are two drier periods that appear to ...

The end of the third millennium BCE represents (not only) on the Iberian Peninsula the time of transition to the Bronze Age. At the same time this is the time of a general climatic event, the so-called 4.2 ka BP event, which can be observed (in different manifestations) in different regions of the northern hemisphere. By synchronizing cultural and climatic developments and above all by assessing demographic developments and their spatial development, a much-discussed connection between the two phenomena can be made plausible and opens the perspective for further, more detailed research on the interdependence between cultural, demographic and climatological processes. For this purpose, the results of aoristics, 14C sum calibration and the evaluation of the concentration of long-chain n-alkane homologues of terrestrial origin as precipitation predictor are combined, their correlation is presented and possible responses are interpreted from the mapping of the settlement system developm...

"The Holocene is probably the most intensively studied series/epoch within the geological record, and embodies a wide array of geomorphological, climatic, biotic and
archaeological evidence; yet little attention has hitherto been paid to a formal  subdivision of this series/epoch. Here we report a tripartite division of the Holocene into the Greenlandian, Northgrippian and Meghalayan stages/ages and their corresponding Lower/Early, Middle, Upper/Late subseries/subepochs, each supported by a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP). The GSSP for the lowermost stage, the Greenlandian, is that of the Holocene as previously defined in the NGRIP2 Greenland ice core, and dated at 11,700 yr b2k (before 2000 CE). The GSSP for the Northgrippian is in the NGRIP1 Greenland ice core, and dated at 8236 yr b2k, whereas that for the Meghalayan is located in a speleothem from Mawmluh Cave, Meghalaya, northeast India with a date of 4250 yr b2k. The proposal on which this subdivision is based was submitted by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, approved by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, and formally
ratified by the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences on 14th June 2018."

January 10-12, 2018 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Pisa, Italy


Organizing Committee:
G. Zanchetta, M. Bini (Università di Pisa), C. Barbante (Università Ca' Foscari, Venezia), A. Provenzale (IGG-CNR, Pisa), L. Sagnotti, I. Isola (INGV, Italy), R. Bradley (UMass, Amherst), Y. Cai (Chinese Academy of Sciences), D.
Kaniewski (Université Paul Sabatier/CNRS),  H. Weiss (Yale University).


The ca. 4.2 - 3.9 ka BP abrupt aridification and cooling event is  recorded globally, in many cases at high-resolution, but its causes,  precise timing, qualities and quantification remain enigmatic.  A 3-day "4.2 ka BP event international workshop" will be held at the Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra (Università di Pisa), January  10-13,  2018, Pisa, Italy to present and discuss:

1. New high resolution data for the quantification of the event, its dating, abruptness, magnitude and duration;
2. New syntheses of the event's regional climatic manifestations
3. Spatio-temporal explanations and modelling of the event.



Approximately 50 participants are anticipated in addition to PhD and post- doctoral students.  Workshop sessions will be organized by regions and topics that will be specified in the workshop's second circular. Sessions will include 30 minute oral presentations and poster sessions. Solicited papers will open the thematic sessions, and a general discussion is scheduled to close the workshop.


Potential participants are requested to forward their proposed title and a brief abstract to:
zanchetta@dst.unipi.it, bini@dst.unipi.it, harvey.weiss@yale.edu, yanjun_cai@ieecas.cn
before October 15, 2017.


The workshop will arrange for the publication of individual papers and potential synthesis papers  in a special issue of an international peer reviewed journal.


The "4.2 ka BP event international workshop" will be free of charge, but travel and hotel expenses are not included. A list of convenient hotels will be provided and possible grant applications for young researchers will be communicated in the next circulars.

"Northern Mesopotamia’s low grain yield costs and high land transport costs were fundamental forces behind early state growth in the fifth-fourth millennia BC (Weiss 1983, 1986, 1997). That development, as well as the southern Mesopotamian Uruk colonization in northern Mesopotamia, was terminated by the 5.2 ka BP abrupt climate change that persisted for two centuries (Weiss 2001). In its wake, northern Mesopotamia underwent the Ninevite 5 experience: four hundred years of reduced settlement size, limited political consolidation, and abridged contact with southern Mesopotamia (Weiss and Rova eds. 2002)...."

It has been proposed that there was an abrupt climatic change event around 4.2 ka BP that affected societies and even has been linked to the collapse of empires. Subsequent studies have reached conclusions that both support and contradict the proposed event; yet nevertheless, 4.2 ka BP has now been adopted as the stratigraphic boundary point between the Middle and Upper Holocene. Time series plots of paleoclimate studies that claim to support the abrupt climate change hypothesis show differing temporal patterns so, in this study, we apply the Bayesian structural time series (BSTS) approach using the CausalImpact package to test data from southeast Europe and southwest Asia for which it is claimed that they demonstrate a climatic anomaly around 4.2 ka BP. To do this, each “affected” time series is synthetically reconstructed using “unaffected” series as predictors in a fully Bayesian framework by the BSTS method and then forecast beyond the assumed starting point of the event. A Bayesian hypothesis test is then applied to differences between each synthetic and real time series to test the impact of the event against the forecast data. While our results confirm that some studies cited in support of the 4.2 ka BP event hypothesis do indeed hold true, we also show that a number of other studies fail to demonstrate any credible effect. We observe spatial and data patterning in our results, and we speculate that this climatic deterioration may have been a consequence of an asymmetrical northward expansion or migration of the Northern Hemisphere Hadley cell. Furthermore, we observe that while the signals are generally not credible, types of proxy data from the Mesopotamia region and east are consistent with aeolian dust storms.

Pollen analysis is frequently used to build climate and environmental histories. A distinct Holocene pollen series exists for Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. This study reports linear modeling and hypothesis testing of long distance dispersal pollen from radiocarbon-dated packrat middens which reveal strong relationships between piñon pine (Pinus edulis) and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). Ponderosa pollen dominates midden pollen assemblages during the early Holocene, while a rapid shift to a much higher proportion of piñon to ponderosa pine pollen between ca. 5,440 - 5,102 cal. yr BP points to an aridization episode. This shift is associated with higher δ18O values in Southwest speleothem records relative to the preceding millennium. The period of aridization is followed by a sharp increase in El Niño/Southern Oscillation events that would have caused highly variable precipitation and lasted until ca. 4,200 cal. yr BP. Bayesian change-point analysis suggests that this aridization episode led to stable ecotonal boundaries for at least 3,000 years. The piñon/ponderosa transition may have been caused by punctuated multi-year droughts, analogous to those in the 20th century. The earliest documented instance of Zea mays cultivation on the Colorado Plateau is around ca. 3940 14C yr BP (ca. 4,364 cal. yr BP) (Hall 2010) in Chaco Canyon. The introduction of this labor-intensive cultigen from Mesoamerica may have been facilitated by changes in the regional ecosystems, specifically by an increase in piñon trees, that promoted increasing human territoriality. Linear modeling and hypothesis testing can complement traditional palynological techniques by adding greater resolution in vegetation patterning to climate/environmental histories.

In the eastern Mediterranean area, coherent patterns and synchronous events around 4.2 kaBP suggest an obvious link between cultural upheaval in urban societies and climate forcing. Here, the 4.2 kaBP aridification event is thought the cause of severe economic consequences and social unrest. The picture for the central and western Mediterranean regions, at the interface of North Atlantic (Bond event 3) and monsoon-influenced climate, is different. It remains unclear whether supra-regional drought around 4.2 ka BP extended into the western Mediterranean. Yet contemporaneous pre-urban societies, already marked by emerging complexity, were in profound upheaval during their transition from Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age ideologies. An array of abrupt cultural transitions, precisely dating to 4.2 kaBP, include widespread "crises" of Mediterranean Bell Beaker populations, the transitions from Pre-palace to Palace cultures on the Greek Islands, the transition from Los Millare...

The dietary habits of several pre-historic (3500-2000 BC) populations from different environmental regions of Anatolia were investigated using bioarchaeological and stable isotope analyses. These included: İkiztepe (north Anatolia), Titriş Höyük (south east Anatolia), Bademağacı (south Anatolia), and Bakla Tepe (south west Anatolia). The sampled populations from Bakla Tepe and Titriş Höyük include individuals from the EBA (Early Bronze Age) I-II and also EBA III periods. Therefore, it is possible, in a preliminary manner, to examine possible effects of the 4.2 Ka BP event on dietary habits and implied subsistence practices from an isotopic perspective. This paper will present an overview of the dietary habits of these populations, whilst discussing them in the context of this climatic event and associated changes.
For the first time, quantitative data and information for dietary habits and implied subsistence practices are provided for the EBA of Anatolia. They show that during this time in Anatolia there was relative homogeneity in dietary habits both at an intra- and inter-site and regional level, with diets being predominantly terrestrial mixed and C3 based. This homogeneity is also present in regions adjacent to Anatolia, perhaps suggesting a common model of staple finance. Marginal changes in isotopic values from the first to the second half of the 3rd millennium BC stimulate discussion on the nature of the effects of the 4.2 Ka BP event on the dietary habits of populations, at least from an isotopic perspective.

"Archaeological and soil-stratigraphic data define the origin, growth, and collapse of Subir, the third millennium rain-fed agriculture civilization of northern Mesopotamia on the Habur Plains of Syria. At 2200 B.C., a marked increase in aridity and wind circulation, subsequent to a volcanic eruption, induced a considerable degradation of land-use conditions. After four centuries of urban life, this abrupt climatic change evidently caused abandonment of Tell Leilan, regional desertion, and collapse of the Akkadian empire based in southern Mesopotamia. Synchronous collapse in adjacent regions suggests that the impact of the abrupt climatic change was extensive."

In this paper, the variation in forest cover in the central Mediterranean region, reflected by percentage changes in the arboreal pollen record, has been examined in relation to the 4.2 ka event. A total of 36 well-dated and detailed pollen records from latitudes between 45 and 36 • N were selected and their vegetation dynamics between 5 and 3 ka examined in relation to the physiographic and climatic features of the study area and to the influence of human activity on past vegetation, as suggested by anthropogenic pollen indicators. We have found that the sites located between 43 and 45 • N do not show any significant vegetation change in correspondence with the 4.2 ka event. Several sites located on the Italian Peninsula between 39 and 43 • N show a marked opening of the forest, suggesting a vegetation response to the climate instability of the 4.2 ka event. Between 36 and 39 • N, a forest decline is always visible around 4.2 ka, and in some cases it is dramatic. This indicates that this region was severely affected by a climate change towards arid conditions that lasted a few hundred years and was followed by a recovery of forest vegetation in the Middle Bronze Age. Human activity, especially intense in southern Italy, may have been favored by this natural opening of vegetation. In Sar-dinia and Corsica, no clear change in vegetation is observed at the same time. We suggest that during the 4.2 ka event southern Italy and Tunisia were under the prevalent influence of a north African climate system characterized by a persistent high-pressure cell.

The end of the third millennium BCE represents (not only) on the Iberian Peninsula the time of transition to the Bronze Age. At the same time this is the time of a general climatic event, the so-called 4.2 ka BP event, which can be observed (in different manifestations) in different regions of the northern hemisphere. By synchronizing cultural and climatic developments and above all by assessing demographic developments and their spatial development, a much-discussed connection between the two phenomena can be made plausible and opens the perspective for further, more detailed research on the interdependence between cultural, demographic and climatological processes. For this purpose, the results of aoristics, 14 C sum calibration and the evaluation of the concentration of long-chain n-alkane homologues of terrestrial origin as precipitation predictor are combined , their correlation is presented and possible responses are interpreted from the mapping of the settlement system develo...