4.2 ka BP Megadrought and the Akkadian Collapse

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Crop Yields ◽  
First Empire ◽  
Adaptive Processes ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Farming Landscapes ◽  
Dry Farming ◽  
Standing Army ◽  
Irrigation Agriculture ◽  
Habitat Tracking

The Akkadians, of southern Mesopotamia, created the first empire ca. 2300 BC with the conquest and imperialization of southern irrigation agriculture and northern Mesopotamian dry-farming landscapes. The Akkadian Empire conquered and controlled a territory of roughly 30,000 square kilometers and, importantly, its wealth in labor and cereal crop-yields. The Empire maintained a standing army, weaponry, and a hierarchy of administrators, scribes, surveyors, craft specialists, and transport personnel, sustainable and profitable for about one hundred years. Archaeological excavations indicate the empire was still in the process of expansion when the 2200 BC–1900 BC/4.2–3.9 ka BP global abrupt climate change deflected or weakened the Mediterranean westerlies and the Indian Monsoon and generated synchronous megadrought across the Mediterranean, west Asia, the Indus, and northeast Africa. Dry-farming agriculture domains and their productivity across west Asia were reduced severely, forcing adaptive societal collapses, regional abandonments, habitat-tracking, nomadization, and the collapse of the Akkadian Empire. These adaptive processes extended across the hydrographically varied landscapes of west Asia and thereby provided demographic and societal resilience in the face of the megadrought’s abruptness, magnitude, and duration.

Megadrought and Collapse

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Societal Collapse ◽  
The Face ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Paleoclimate Proxy ◽  
Habitat Tracking

This is the first book to treat the major examples of megadrought and societal collapse, from the late Pleistocene end of hunter–gatherer culture and origins of cultivation to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer Empire capital at Angkor, and ranging from the Near East to South America. Previous enquiries have stressed the possible multiple and internal causes of collapse, such overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, warfare, and poor leadership and decision-making. In contrast, Megadrought and Collapse presents case studies of nine major episodes of societal collapse in which megadrought was the major and independent cause of societal collapse. In each case the most recent paleoclimatic evidence for megadroughts, multiple decades to multiple centuries in duration, is presented alongside the archaeological records for synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from paleoclimate proxy sources (lake, marine, and glacial cores; speleothems, or cave stalagmites; and tree-rings) and are explained by researchers directly engaged in their analysis. Researchers directly responsible for them discuss the relevant current archaeological records. Two arguments are developed through these case studies. The first is that societal collapse in different time periods and regions and at levels of social complexity ranging from simple foragers to complex empires would not have occurred without megadrought. The second is that similar responses to megadrought extend across these historical episodes: societal collapse in the face of insurmountable climate change, abandonment of settlements and regions, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural landscapes. As we confront megadrought today, and in the likely future, Megadrought and Collapse brings together the latest contributions to our understanding of past societal responses to the crisis on an equally global and diverse scale.

The Transcontinental Maghreb

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwige Tamalet Talbayev
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
The Political ◽  
Heuristic Model ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Historical Dynamics ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Way

Critically engaging the concept of the Mediterranean as a “liquid continent” (Gabriel Audisio), the book argues in favor of a “transcontinental” heuristic model that rests on the transmaritime deployment of the Maghreb within the millennia-old relation that has materially and culturally bound it to multiple Mediterranean sites. Studying a Mediterranean-inspired body of texts from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Gibraltar in French, Arabic, and Spanish, the book delivers provocative analyses that complicate the dichotomy between nation and Mediterranean, the valence of the postcolonial topos of nomadism in the face of postcolonial trauma, and conceptions of the Mediterranean as a mythical site averse to historical realization. The book substitutes a trans-Mediterranean reading of Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma as allegory of the Maghreb’s long-standing plurality for Albert Camus’ colonialist Mediterranean utopia. Through this adjusted Mediterranean genealogy, it reveals the intersection of these Mediterranean imaginaries with Maghrebi claims to an inclusive, democratic national ideal yet to be realized. Attuned to both the perpetual fluctuation of the Mediterranean as method and the political imperatives specific to the postcolonial Maghreb, the transcontinental reveals the limits of models of hybridity and nomadism oblivious to material realities. Through a sustained reflection on the potential and limitations of allegory and critical melancholia, the book shows how the Mediterranean successfully decenters postcolonial nation-building projects and mediates the nomadic subject’s reinsertion into a revised national collective respectful of heterogeneity. These far-reaching adjustments to our readings of the Maghreb and the Mediterranean help us rethink not just the space of the sea, the hybridity it produced, and the way it shaped historical dynamics (globalization, imperialism, decolonization, and nationalism) but also the very nature of postcolonial histories and identities along its shores.

Heat stress and crop yields in the Mediterranean basin: impact on expected insurance payouts

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. 1877-1890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Moriondo ◽  
Giovanni Argenti ◽  
Roberto Ferrise ◽  
Camilla Dibari ◽  
Giacomo Trombi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heat Stress ◽  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Mediterranean Basin

scholarly journals Ciència i Tecnologia per a l’Agricultura del Futur

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pere Arús
Keyword(s):  
Crop Yields ◽  
Population Based ◽  
First Century ◽  
Highly Qualified ◽  
Sustainability Criteria ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Correct Application ◽  
Access To Food

Guaranteeing access to food for a growing human population – based on sustainability criteria and in the face of the climate change threat – is the main challenge for twenty-first-century agriculture. The solutions are inevitably complex, require a variety of coordinated measures, and essentially, are dependent on the progress of science and the development of technologies to make more efficient use of available resources to increase crop yields and food quality to feed the world. Technologies such as genomics, computing, robotics, and nanotechnology, along with their correct application – which will require highly qualified users – will also be crucial elements to reach these objectives.

scholarly journals After fire regeneration in a Mediterranean serpentine mountain

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noelia Hidalgo Triana
Keyword(s):  
Survival Strategy ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Response Capacity ◽  
Mediterranean Mountains ◽  
The Face ◽  
Below Ground ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Serpentine Ecosystem ◽  
Field Works ◽  
High Degree

 Abstract: The management of Mediterranean mountains need to know whether or not the flora is adapted to respond to fire and, if so, through what mechanisms. Serpentine outcrops constitute particular ecosystems in the Mediterranean Basin, and plants need to make an additional adaptive effort. The objective of this study is to know the response to fire of the main members of the group of serpentine plants, which habit the Spanish Mediterranean ultramafic mountain, to help in their management. For this purpose, monitoring plots were established on a burned ultramafic outcrop, which was affected by fire in August 2012.They were located in the Mediterranean south of the Iberian Peninsula, Andalusia region. The dominant vegetation of this serpentine ecosystem had been studied previously to fire; it was a shrubland composed of endemic serpentinophytes (small shrubs and perennial herbs) included in Digitali laciniatae-Halimietum atriplicifolii plant association (Cisto-Lavanduletea class) in an opened pine forest. The post-fire response of the plants was studied in the stablished burned plots by field works through permanent 200 x 10 m transect methods, consisting on checking whether they were resprouters, seeders, both of them or if they showed no survival response. Additional information about fire related functional traits is provided for the studied taxa from other studies. Of the total of plants studied (23 taxa), 74% acted as resprouters, 30% as seeders, some of which also had the capacity to resprout (13%), and only 9% of the plants did not show any survival strategy. The presence of a resprouting burl was not high (17%), although serpentine small shrubs such as Bupleurum acutifolium and the generalist Teucrium haenseleri had this kind of organ. The herbaceous taxa Sanguisorba verrucosa, Galium boissieranum and Linum carratracense were seen to be resprouters and seeders. The serpentine obligated Ni-accumulator, Alyssum serpyllifolium subsp. malacitanum, did not show any survival strategy in the face of fire and therefore their populations need monitoring after fires. In the studied ecosystems no species had traits that would protect the aerial part of the plant against fire, although most of the species are capable of post-fire generation by below ground buds. Our results show that the ecosystem studied, composed of taxa with a high degree of endemism and some of them threatened, is predominantly adapted to survival after a fire, although their response capacity may be decreased by environmental factors.

scholarly journals Validation of the Telephone-Administered Version of the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS) Questionnaire

Nutrients ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria João Gregório ◽  
Ana M. Rodrigues ◽  
Clara Salvador ◽  
Sara S. Dias ◽  
Rute D. de Sousa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Diet ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Portuguese Version ◽  
Diet Adherence ◽  
Mediterranean Diet Adherence ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Mediterranean

A 14-Item Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS) questionnaire was developed and validated in face-to-face interviews, but not via telephone. The aims of this study were to evaluate the validity and reliability of a telephone-administered version of the MEDAS as well as to validate the Portuguese version of the MEDAS questionnaire. A convenience community-based sample of adults (n = 224) participated in a three-stage survey. First, trained researchers administered MEDAS via a telephone. Second, the Portuguese version of Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), and MEDAS were administered in a semi-structured face-to-face interview. Finally, MEDAS was again administered via telephone. The telephone-administered MEDAS questionnaire was compared with the face-to-face-version using several metrics. The telephone-administered MEDAS was significantly correlated with the face-to-face-administered MEDAS [r = 0.805, p < 0.001; interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.803, p < 0.001] and showed strong agreement (k = 0.60). The MEDAS scores that were obtained in the first and second telephone interviews were significantly correlated (r = 0.661, p < 0.001; ICC = 0.639, p < 0.001). The overall agreement between the Portuguese version of MEDAS and the FFQ-derived Mediterranean diet adherence score had a Cohen’s k = 0.39. The telephone-administered version of MEDAS is a valid tool for assessing the adherence to the Mediterranean diet and acquiring data for large population-based studies.

Right Out of The Gate: The Genomics of Lessepsian Invaders in The Vicinity of The Suez Canal

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Azzurro ◽  
Mathilde Nourigat ◽  
Francesca Cohn ◽  
Jamila Ben Souissi ◽  
Giacomo Bernardi
Keyword(s):  
Population Structure ◽  
Genetic Structure ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Suez Canal ◽  
Protein Coding ◽  
Invasive Fishes ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Siganus Rivulatus ◽  
Spatial Genetic Variation

Abstract Lessepsian fishes, entering the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, have showed so far little genetic structure, but notable exceptions suggest the importance of life-history factors that may influence their patterns of spatial genetic variation. In this study, by sampling two invasive fishes with different life histories (the rabbitfish Siganus rivulatus and the filefish Stephanolepis diaspros ), we looked at evidence of population structure and selection at the boundary between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean (the Suez Canal), using thousands of molecular markers. Results illustrate two divergent patterns of genetic patterns, with little genetic structure in S. rivulatus and strong population structure in S. diaspros, even at such small spatial scale. We discuss differences in ecological characteristics between the two species to account for such differences. In addition, we report that in the face of both high ( S. rivulatus ) and low ( S. diaspros ) gene flow, loci under selection were uncovered, and some protein coding genes were identified as being involved with osmoregulation, which seems to be an important feature of individuals crossing the salinity-variable Suez Canal. The presence of genes under selection in populations near the Suez Canal supports the idea that selection may be active and essential for successful invasions right out of the gate.

Hating Our Enemies—2 Kings, Nahum, and Jonah

2019 ◽  
pp. 246-255
Author(s):  
Ellen F. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Small States ◽  
Total Domination ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Exclusive Focus ◽  
Minor Prophets

The Prophets do not view the territory of Israel and Judah in isolation from its neighbors, the surrounding small states, and especially the vast empires that threatened or dominated the region throughout most of the monarchic period. For more than a century, the dominant force was Assyria; its fate is the exclusive focus of two of the Minor Prophets, Nahum and Jonah. Total domination of the Mediterranean region began during the expansionist reign of the Assyrian ruler Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BCE) and continued until the last decades of the seventh century, when the empire gradually weakened in the face of multiple enemies. The capital city of Nineveh fell in 612 BCE, as the Chaldean dynasty in Babylon began its own spectacular rise to dominance of western and central Asia....

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