Research Information System
International Symposium on Advanced Engineering Technologies , Kahramanmaraş, Turkey, 16 - 18 June 2022, pp.125
The future of climate
change and its effects on civilizations and the environment is the primary
concern of climate studies. Paleoclimate studies focus on past climate changes
and aim to produce high-resolution proxy records to figure out key dynamics
between climate change and human impact. Especially the late Holocene period is
vital for these kinds of studies because the climate conditions were similar to
today and human effects on the environment started to increase. In recent
years, speleothems have been known as significant paleoclimate archives with
developing analytical methods. They provide highly resolved and precisely dated
proxy records back to 500k years by Uranium-series dating. Therefore, they
provide excellent opportunity to produce past climate records. In this study, a
total of 246 stable isotopes (δ18O and δ13C) and 9 U-Th
measurements were applied on stalagmite Ta-9 collected from SW Turkey. The
results show that the focused part of the stalagmite Ta-9 covers the period
between 1600 and 3500 yr BP. Stable isotope profiles indicate two intense dry
conditions were dominant in the region. One of them corresponds to the Late
Bronze Age-Iron Age transition and the other one Roman Warm Period. According
to archaeological studies, the drought that lasted 300 years in the eastern
Mediterranean at 3200 yr BP caused the collapse of advanced civilizations. This
study shows that more intense dry conditions occurred after the transition at
around 3000 yr BP. On the other hand, short term drier conditions are also
reflected earlier than 3200 yr BP in stalagmite Ta-9 records. Therefore, we
suggested that the drought hypothesis causing Late Bronze Age collapses should
be reconsidered as episodic drier conditions rather than long-lasted single drought
event.