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Cave's climate clues show ancient empires declined during dry spell
December 08, 2008MADISON - The decline of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes.
Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem, a team of American and Israeli geologists pieced together a detailed record of the area's climate from roughly 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. Their analysis, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Quaternary Research, reveals increasingly dry weather from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region.
The researchers, led by University of Wisconsin-Madison geology graduate student Ian Orland and professor John Valley, reconstructed the high-resolution climate record based on geochemical analysis of a stalagmite from Soreq Cave, located in the Stalactite Cave Nature Reserve near Jerusalem.
"It looks sort of like tree rings in cross-section. You have many concentric rings and you can analyze across these rings, but instead of looking at the ring widths, we're looking at the geochemical composition of each ring," says Orland.
Using oxygen isotope signatures and impurities - such as organic matter flushed into the cave by surface rain - trapped in the layered mineral deposits, Orland determined annual rainfall levels for the years the stalagmite was growing, from approximately 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D.
While cave formations have previously been used as climate indicators, past analyses have relied on relatively crude sampling tools, typically small dental drills, which required averaging across 10 or even 100 years at a time. The current analysis used an advanced ion microprobe in the Wisconsin Secondary-Ion Mass-Spectrometer (Wisc-SIMS) laboratory to sample spots just one-hundredth of a millimeter across. That represents about 100 times sharper detail than previous methods. With such fine resolution, the scientists were able to discriminate weather patterns from individual years and seasons.
Their detailed climate record shows that the Eastern Mediterranean became drier between 100 A.D. and 700 A.D., a time when Roman and Byzantine power in the region waned, including steep drops in precipitation around 100 A.D. and 400 A.D. "Whether this is what weakened the Byzantines or not isn't known, but it is an interesting correlation," Valley says. "These things were certainly going on at the time that those historic changes occurred."
The team is now applying the same techniques to older samples from the same cave. "One period of interest is the last glacial termination, around 19,000 years ago - the most recent period in Earth's history when the whole globe experienced a warming of 4 to 5 degrees Celsius," Orland says.
Formations from this period of rapid change may help them better understand how weather patterns respond to quickly warming temperatures.
Soreq Cave - at least 185,000 years old and still active - also offers the hope of creating a high-resolution long-term climate change record to parallel those generated from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores.
"No one knows what happened on the continents- At the poles, the climate might have been quite different," says Valley. "This is a record of what was going on in a very different part of the world."
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"It looks sort of like tree rings in cross-section. You have many concentric rings and you can analyze across these rings, but instead of looking at the ring widths, we're looking at the geochemical composition of each ring," says Orland.
Using oxygen isotope signatures and impurities - such as organic matter flushed into the cave by surface rain - trapped in the layered mineral deposits, Orland determined annual rainfall levels for the years the stalagmite was growing, from approximately 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D.
While cave formations have previously been used as climate indicators, past analyses have relied on relatively crude sampling tools, typically small dental drills, which required averaging across 10 or even 100 years at a time. The current analysis used an advanced ion microprobe in the Wisconsin Secondary-Ion Mass-Spectrometer (Wisc-SIMS) laboratory to sample spots just one-hundredth of a millimeter across. That represents about 100 times sharper detail than previous methods. With such fine resolution, the scientists were able to discriminate weather patterns from individual years and seasons.
Their detailed climate record shows that the Eastern Mediterranean became drier between 100 A.D. and 700 A.D., a time when Roman and Byzantine power in the region waned, including steep drops in precipitation around 100 A.D. and 400 A.D. "Whether this is what weakened the Byzantines or not isn't known, but it is an interesting correlation," Valley says. "These things were certainly going on at the time that those historic changes occurred."
The team is now applying the same techniques to older samples from the same cave. "One period of interest is the last glacial termination, around 19,000 years ago - the most recent period in Earth's history when the whole globe experienced a warming of 4 to 5 degrees Celsius," Orland says.
Formations from this period of rapid change may help them better understand how weather patterns respond to quickly warming temperatures.
Soreq Cave - at least 185,000 years old and still active - also offers the hope of creating a high-resolution long-term climate change record to parallel those generated from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores.
"No one knows what happened on the continents- At the poles, the climate might have been quite different," says Valley. "This is a record of what was going on in a very different part of the world."
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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An artificial underground cave, the largest in Israel, has been exposed in the Jordan Valley in the course of a survey carried out by the University of Haifa's Department of Archaeology. Prof. Adam Zertal, who headed the excavating team, reckons that this cave was originally a large quarry during the Roman and Byzantine era and was one of its kind.
Hebrew U. archaeological excavations uncover Roman temple in Zippori (Sepphoris)
Ruins of a Roman temple from the second century CE have recently been unearthed in the Zippori National Park in Israel. Above the temple are foundations of a church from the Byzantine period. The excavations, which were undertaken by the Noam Shudofsky Zippori Expedition led by of Prof. Zeev Weiss of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shed light on the multi-cultural society of ancient Zippori.
Scientists discover small RNAs that regulate gene expression and protect the genome
RNA is best known as a working copy of the DNA sequence of genes. In this role, it's a carrier of the genes' instructions to the cell, which manufactures proteins according to information in the RNA molecule.
Evidence of commerce between ancient Israel and China
Throughout the 12th and 13th centuries - during the time of the Crusades -ceramic vessels reached Acre from: Mediterranean regions, the Levant, Europe, North Africa, and even China - reveals new research, which examined trade of ceramic vessels, conducted at the University of Haifa.
Vikings did not dress the way we thought
Vivid colors, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors - the Vikings dressed with considerably more panache than we previously thought. The men were especially vain, and the women dressed provocatively, but with the advent of Christianity, fashions changed, according to Swedish archeologist Annika Larsson.
UD scientists take underwater robot on Black Sea expedition
Using a novel underwater robot, University of Delaware marine scientists will help reveal the mysteries of the Black Sea's geology and maritime history, including ages-old shipwrecks, during an international expedition that is now underway.
Tomb of King Herod discovered at Herodium
The long search for Herod the Great's tomb has ended with the exposure of the remains of his grave, sarcophagus and mausoleum on Mount Herodium's northeastern slope, Prof. Ehud Netzer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology announced today.
Interactive storytelling tools for museums
You're viewing a sculpture from the Classical Period in Greek history. Fascinating in itself. Yet how much more interesting would it be if you could see how the characters from the period interact? That is the premise behind the IST project ART-E-FACT.
The Cost of Control: Speculation on the Impact of Management Consultants on Creativity in the BBC
The BBC has made increasing use of management consultants in recent years. Its creativity is said to have diminished. This paper explores the possibility of a connection. Management consultants have been hired in such profusion because authority in the organisation has passed from administrators to managers, of whom unrealistic expectations are made. Both the modern manager and the management consultant feed on change, and the pressures placed on the BBC by government have provided perfect justification for radical change. One consequence has been the opening of a cultural chasm between those who manage and those who create. But this is novel only in its extremity. The attitude of BBC manag
Fundamental Research About Russian Political Ideology And Mythology
On the 24th of June, 2004, one of the most revered icons in Russian Orthodoxy, the Icon of the Virgin of Tikhvin, will return to the place where, according to the legend, it miraculously appeared in 1383 and where it was worshipped till 1941, when its intricate way to Germany and then to the United States of America began. In the middle of the 16th century the Icon of the Virgin of Tikhvin was declared identical with one of the most revered icons of Constantinople, the Icon of the Virgin of Lydda and Rome ("Rimljanynja"), which according to legend had departed the capital of the Byzantine empire exactly 70 years before it was conquered, in 1453, by the Turkish "infidels", in order to find re
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