If you want to see the impact of climate change on modern society, a study found for example in the ancient Mayan civilization, which was devastated by famine, war, and fall when the weather patterns of rain turned into a prolonged drought.
An international research team to collect the detailed climate record of 2000 years of wet and dry weather patterns of the area now known as the country of Belize, formerly Maya cities develop in situ from the year 300 to 1000.
By using the data locked in the stalagmites - the mineral deposits left behind from water droplets in the caves - and archaeological data made by the Maya, the team is then reported its findings in the journal Science on Thursday.
Unlike global warming trend triggered by human activities, including greenhouse gas emissions, climate change in Central America at the breaking of the Maya civilization happens because the weather patterns changing with powerful naturally.
Weather patterns change brings high humidity, which encourages the growth of the Maya civilization, and the dry period that brought drought and drought for centuries, says the lead author of the report, Douglas Kennett, an anthropologist at Penn State University.
In wet periods, developing large farms, the population was increased in the centers of Maya culture, Kennett said in a telephone interview. At this time also occurred strengthening the role of the king in centers of civilization, they claimed could bring rain and thus bring prosperity. They also perform ritual sacrifice in order to continue to support the agricultural weather.
The analogy with modern civilization
When switching to a dry monsoon in the year 660, Kennett said, the power and influence of the king's collapse, and the impact on the war that is becoming more frequent because of the seizure of natural resources increasingly limited.
"You can imagine the Maya people trapped," he said. "The idea is to make sure these kings rains keep coming, they keep everything organized, and everything is fine if you are in the period of the rainy season .. but when things are bad, and the king is making offerings, but nothing changed, then people began to wonder why the king's power. "
Fall of Maya kings politics occurred in the year 900, when a prolonged drought began to rebel against their power. But Maya populations persist for a century later, when the last devastating drought of the year 1000 to 1100 and forced the Mayans leave population centers of their biggest.
Even at the height of Mayan civilization, humans have an effect on the environment, says Kennett, especially with agriculture that cause erosion. In the long dry season, the Mayans were doing agricultural intensification.
As climate change in the region is dry in a long pattern called intertropikal conversion zone, it exacerbates the effects of environmental damage caused by humans, said Kennett.
"There's an analogy here that we can draw into a modern context and should we worry about" in Africa and Europe, he said.
If there is a climate change that ignoring the farming systems in the region, there can be hunger, social instability, and war and then involve other populations, he said - just as happened in the Mayan civilization.
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