{"id":16896,"date":"2019-10-25T06:50:30","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T06:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=16896"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:40:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:40:42","slug":"winter-dust-storms-may-collapse-of-the-akkadian-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/winter-dust-storms-may-collapse-of-the-akkadian-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter dust storms may collapse of the Akkadian Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ancient Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia fossil coral provide new evidence that frequent winter shamals, contributed to its collapse.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Akkadaina Empire<\/a>, first empire of Mesopotamia was wiped out by strong dust storms, according to new research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers from\nHokkaido University, the KIKAI Institute for Coral Reef Sciences, Kyushu\nUniversity, and Kiel University made paleoclimatic reconstructions of the\ntemperature and hydrological changes of the areas around the archaeological\nsite of Tell Leilan, the center of the Akkadian Empire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They sampled six\n4,100-year-old fossil\u00a0Porites<\/em>\u00a0corals\nfrom the Gulf of Oman, just directly downwind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Past studies have\nshown that the Akkadian Empire likely collapsed due to abrupt drought and civil\nturmoil. However, the climatic dynamics which caused widespread agricultural\nfailures and the end of an era have yet to be sufficiently explored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlthough the official mark of the collapse of\nthe Akkadian Empire is the invasion of Mesopotamia by other populations, our\nfossil samples are windows in time showing that variations in climate\nsignificantly contributed to the empire\u2019s decline,\u201d said Tsuyoshi Watanabe of\nHokkaido University\u2019s Department of Natural History Sciences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Akkadian Empire is\nbelieved to be 24th<\/sup>\u00a0to 22nd<\/sup>\u00a0century B.C.E. was\nthe first united empire in Mesopotamia and thrived with the development of\nirrigation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, settlements\nappear to have been suddenly abandoned ca. 4,200 years ago, causing its\ncollapse. The area would also not experience resettlement until about 300 years\nlater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The samples were aged\nby radiocarbon dating and geochemically analyzed to confirm they have not been\nsignificantly altered from their present state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fossil evidence\nshows that there was a prolonged winter shamal season accompanied by frequent\nshamal days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impact of the dust\nstorms and the lack of rainfall would have caused major agricultural problems\npossibly leading to social instability and famine, both factors which have been\npreviously associated with the collapse of the empire.<\/p>\n
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The Akkadaina Empire, first empire of Mesopotamia was wiped out by strong dust storms, according to new research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",1100,824,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai-200x200.png",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai-300x225.png",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai-768x575.png",750,562,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai-1024x767.png",750,562,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",1100,824,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",1100,824,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",1068,800,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",761,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",600,449,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",600,449,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai-760x490.png",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai-550x360.png",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai-95x65.png",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",640,479,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",96,72,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/the-fossil-of-akkai.png",150,112,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"News<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}