Gao, Chaochao; Ludlow, Francis; Matthews, John A.; Stine, Alexander R.; Robock, Alan; Pan, Yuqing; Breen, Richard; Nolan, Brianán; Sigl, Michael (2021). Volcanic climate impacts can act as ultimate and proximate causes of Chinese dynastic collapse. Communications earth & environment, 2(1) Springer Nature 10.1038/s43247-021-00284-7
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Gao2021_accepted.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (4MB) | Preview |
State or societal collapses are often described as featuring rapid reductions in socioeconomic complexity, population loss or displacement, and/or political discontinuity, with climate thought to contribute mainly by disrupting a society’s agroecological base. Here we use a state-of-the-art multi-ice-core reconstruction of explosive volcanism, representing the dominant global external driver of severe short-term climatic change, to reveal a systematic association between eruptions and dynastic collapse across two millennia of Chinese history. We next employ a 1,062-year reconstruction of Chinese warfare as a proxy for political and socioeconomic stress to reveal the dynamic role of volcanic climatic shocks in collapse. We find that smaller shocks may act as the ultimate cause of collapse at times of high pre-existing stress, whereas larger shocks may act with greater independence as proximate causes without substantial observed pre-existing stress. We further show that post-collapse warfare tends to diminish rapidly, such that collapse itself may act as an evolved adaptation tied to the influential “mandate of heaven” concept in which successive dynasties could claim legitimacy as divinely sanctioned mandate holders, facilitating a more rapid restoration of social order.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
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Division/Institute: |
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Climate and Environmental Physics 10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR) |
UniBE Contributor: |
Sigl, Michael |
Subjects: |
500 Science > 530 Physics 900 History > 950 History of Asia |
ISSN: |
2662-4435 |
Publisher: |
Springer Nature |
Funders: |
[18] European Research Council |
Projects: |
[1314] Timing of Holocene volcanic eruptions and their radiative aerosol forcing |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Michael Sigl |
Date Deposited: |
26 Nov 2021 07:45 |
Last Modified: |
05 Dec 2022 15:54 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1038/s43247-021-00284-7 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Chinese history, Imperial China, history, society, climate, climate change, paleoclimate, dynasties, Ming dynasty, collapse, ice core, Greenland, NEEM, volcanism, volcanic eruptions, sulfate, radiative forcing, extreme event, hazard, drought, megadrought, compound event, societal collapse, resilience, vulnerability, warfare, Mandate of Heaven, dynastic cycle |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/160932 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/160932 |
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