In the area where the Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexican borders meet, ancestral pueblo societies flourished and then collapsed over the course of 800 years.
Their culture changed after each recovery. Their amazing stone and earth dwellings can be seen in their pottery. The matrilineal dynasty ruled some peoples who used ink tattoos.
As in the collapse of other ancient civilizations, ancestral Pueblo social collapses align with periods of changing climate, suggesting that there was more to their collapses than just the environment.
Last year archaeologists took a closer look at what was happening in these societies before 1400CE. The researchers were able to create a time series of the societies' productivity using tree-ring analyses.
When there was a lull in said construction, good maize growing seasons were clustered around the peak construction periods.
There were distinct slow-down in recovery that were associated with increased signs of violence.
The collapse of ancient societies like the Neolithic Europeans had no link to changing climates. The human brain and the tropical rainforest are examples of complex systems.
The warning signals turn out to be universal. They are based on the fact that resilience is lost when recovery is slowed down.
Scheffer and colleagues believe that social tensions like wealth inequality, racial injustice, and general unrest wore away at social cohesion until they were pushed over the edge by another dry spell. Around 700, 900, and 1140CE, this seems to have happened to the people of the Pueblo.
The ancestral Pueblo peoples were forced to leave the region due to a combination of conflict and a lack of water.
"Societies that are cohesive can often find ways to overcome climate challenges," said Kohler.
The societies that are riven by internal social dynamics of any sort are fragile because of those factors. Climate challenges can get very serious.
The ancient Pueblo peoples did find a way to thrive elsewhere, possibly by dramatically transforming their culture once more, and their descendants live on tribal lands around the empty places that were once the center of the world. Their past gives us a warning.
Climate change is no longer a theoretical problem as we face rising wealth inequality and deep political and racial divisions. There will be trouble if we are not prepared to face the challenges of changing climate.
We need to pay attention if we are to avoid repeating history.
The research was published in a journal.
The first version of this article was published in 2020.
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