Late Holocene drought responsible for the collapse of Old World civilizations is recorded in an Italian cave flowstone | NOVA. The University of Newcastle's Digital Repository

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/26922

Title: Late Holocene drought responsible for the collapse of Old World civilizations is recorded in an Italian cave flowstone
Author/Creator: Drysdale, Russell; Zanchetta, Giovanni; Hellstrom, John; Maas, Roland; Fallick, Anthony; Pickett, Matthew; Cartwright, Ian; Piccini, Leonardo
Description: A severe drought in parts of low-latitude northeastern Africa and southwestern Asia ∼4200 yr ago caused major disruption to ancient civilizations. Stable isotope, trace element, and organic fluorescence data from a calcite flowstone collected from the well-watered Alpi Apuane karst of central-western Italy indicate that the climatic event responsible for this drought was also recorded in mid-latitude Europe. Although the timing of this event coincides with an episode of increased ice-rafted debris to the subpolar North Atlantic, the regional ocean-atmosphere response seems atypical of similar Holocene ice-rafting events. Furthermore, comparison of the flowstone data with other regional proxies suggests that the most extreme part of the dry spell occurred toward the end of a longer-term climate anomaly.
Relation: Geology (Boulder) Vol. 34, Issue 2, p. 101-104
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G22103.1
Date: 2006
Publisher: Geological Society of America
Keyword(s): speleothems; Holocene; drought; geochemistry; Italy
Resource Type: journal article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/26922
Identifier: ISSN:0091-7613

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