Tel Aviv University researchers: Middle Eastern empires collapsed because of a climate crisis

A study of fossil grains of plant pollen extracted from the bottom of the Sea of ​​Galilee revealed evidence of an acute climatic crisis that hit the Middle East from the middle of the 13th century to the beginning of the 11th century BC - and led to the collapse of the ancient empires of the Middle East.

A study of fossil grains of plant pollen extracted from the bottom of the Sea of ​​Galilee revealed evidence of an acute climatic crisis that hit the Middle East from the middle of the 13th century to the beginning of the 11th century BC - and led to the collapse of the ancient empires of the Middle East. The results of the research are currently being published by Dr. Dafna Langut and Prof. Israel Finkelstein from the Department of Archeology at Tel Aviv University and Prof. Thomas Leith from the Steinman Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology at the University of Bonn. Research partner Prof. Mordechai Stein from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The article is published today in the journal: Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archeology of Tel Aviv University

"In a short period of time, the whole old world of the Bronze Age collapsed," explains Prof. Finkelstein. "The Hittite Empire, the mighty Egypt of the Rameses pharaohs, the Mycenaean culture with its magnificent palaces in Greece, the copper powerhouse of Cyprus, the trading city of Ugarit and the other great port cities of Syria, the cities of the state of Canaan - all of this disappeared within a few decades, and from the ruins of the old world The kingdoms of the Iron Age grew, among them Israel and Judah."

The researchers, who drilled at a depth of about 300 meters of water in the heart of the Sea of ​​Galilee, removed a core of soil about 20 meters long from the bottom of the lake, with the aim of sampling fossil grains of plant pollen from the sediment layers. "The pollen grains, the pollen, are the most durable organic material in nature," explains the palynologist (pollen researcher) Dr. Dafna Langut, who actually carried out the research. "The polen drifted to the Sea of ​​Galilee with the winds and streams, and then sank from the surface of the lake to its bottom. These pollen grains can tell us about the vegetation in the Kinneret region in the past thousands of years and therefore about the climate that prevailed in the region." After carbon 14 dating of tens of thousands of pollen grains, the researchers identified a period of severe drought between 1250 and 1100 BC. A soil core extracted from the western shore of the Dead Sea revealed a similar picture.

"The uniqueness of our study compared to other Polish studies conducted in recent years in the Middle East and in general," adds Prof. Finkelstein, "is that we worked with an unprecedented resolution of sampling every 40 years. Poles are usually sampled at intervals of hundreds of years, and this indeed makes sense if you are interested in questions related to prehistoric periods and glacial and interglacial cycles that prevailed in our regions. Since we set ourselves the goal of elucidating historical issues, accuracy was crucial. If we sampled the Polen in the Sea of ​​Galilee every 200 years, for example, it is possible that this dramatic climate crisis, which lasted 150 years, would have escaped our notice."

Another innovation in the current study is the complete chronological match between the results of the Poland study and two other pieces of evidence about the past: the destruction by fire of cities in the eastern Mediterranean area, many of them in the Land of Israel, also dating to the period between 1250 and 1100 BC, as well as spatial documents The ancient Middle East - from the Hittite capital in Anatolia in the north, through the port city of Ugarit in Syria and Tel Afek in Israel to Pharaonic Egypt in the south - speak of droughts and famine in the exact same period of time.

Langut, Finkelstein and Lit believe that severe cold waves destroyed the crops in the northern regions and the depletion of the rains damaged the crops in the Safar regions in Eastern Anatolia and Syria. "The cold waves in the north and the drought in the east caused large groups of people to be displaced from their place of residence and move south in search of food sources," explains Egyptologist Shirley Ben Dor Evin from the Department of Archeology at Tel Aviv University. These groups, among them the famous "sea heathens", moved on land and sea, looting cities and damaging the trade routes, which caused a deep economic and political crisis that gradually spread southward - also to the Land of Israel. "Everyone fought everyone else for ever-increasing resources," says Ben Dor.