A severe drought ended the Hittite Empire.

For five centuries the Hittites were one of the great powers of the ancient world.

From their capital, Hattusa, they built an empire with multiple political and economic connections in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean.

But come the year 1170 BC, this civilization had disappeared, the same as its Mycenaean contemporaries, while Assyria and Egypt fragmented or reduced their area.

In addition, in the case of the Hittites, unlike other contemporary kingdoms,

and until the second half of the 19th century they were a civilization forgotten by history.

The cause of its sudden disappearance has been the subject of debate among experts, with several possible explanations such as changes in military technology, migrations, climate changes, epidemics or the arrival of a mysterious civilization from the central Mediterranean, to the they have been called the Sea Peoples. In fact, many researchers today consider the idea of ​​a "perfect storm" more likely: a confluence of various factors that led to the fall of the ancient kingdom.

New research, published Wednesday in the journal

, suggests that severe changes in climate may have pushed its population, accustomed to life in an arid region in present-day Turkey, beyond its adaptive limits.

In particular,

A third consecutive year of drought is particularly rare and was very severe in the pre-modern world. It would undermine both political power, through the lack of food, the need for taxes to maintain the elite or the impossibility of feeding the army, such as the religious one, since it

as clearly the gods have abandoned the people and rejected the current rulers," says Sturt Manning, a professor of archeology at Cornell University in the US.

Aerial view of BogazköyBenjamin Anderson

Even so, many questions remain about the precise relationship of changes in climate and historical events.

"The Hittite collapse comes from the top: from the ruling system, the High King, the capital (home of the gods), the bureaucracy, etc.", adds Manning.

"Besides,

The episode falls within a 300-year period in which the climate of the Mediterranean region became drier and colder, a fact that is now associated with the end of several ancient civilizations that marked the end of the Bronze Age in the East. Next.

A work published in 2013 by French researchers in the journal

, based on the analysis of pollen grains found in sediments of a salty lake in Larnaca (Cyprus), already pointed to drought as the cause of the disappearance of Mycenaeans, Minoans and Hittites.

Lessons for climate change

The work that is now published in

has made it possible to identify the exact dates.

Its authors analyze the rings in remains of juniper wood (

and

) excavated at the Gordion site, in the center of present-day Turkey.

Based on the size and shape of these rings, which make it possible to identify the growing seasons of the trees, they have been able to follow the hydric evolution of the area.

In addition, the study of the stable isotope of carbon-13 helps to a more precise dating.

The communities that lived there more than 3,000 years ago had developed mechanisms to cope with the usual conditions in the region, including years of low rainfall, as evidenced by grain silos or the construction of dams.

However,

from which their efforts did not allow them to adapt, especially in interior territories.

This situation would have caused the intensive use of landscapes and natural resources, inflicting lasting damage on their ecosystems, and finally the abandonment of territories, including Hattusa.

One of the enigmas in the study of the history of the Hittites has been the abandonment of their capital in the last decades of the empire, since the exodus seems to have been meticulously planned and not the result of a violent episode.

Sample of reclaimed wood from the GordionCornell Tree Ring Laboratory site

The authors of the article underline the importance of studying how to deal with the current climate crisis.

"There is contemporary relevance, our societies are resilient to climate threats within the foreseeable, but today's climate change is leading us into more difficult circumstances, it's causing more extreme weather events," says Sturt Manning.

"It can be assumed that the climatic changes that humans will experience in the next century will be much more severe than those experienced by the Hittites. The collapse of a five-century-old, highly climate-resilient civilization should make us wonder: which is it really our resilience?

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