Until recently, civilization (as a whole) had never endured severe climate change at global scale. Individual cultures, on the other hand, have confronted regional climate shifts time and again, and for the people involved, they’ve been no less devastating.

In fact, many of those cultures collapsed in the turmoil of fluctuating temperatures and dwindling precipitation (and, surely, other political and economic factors). From the deserts of the Middle East to the rainforest of Central America, just about every corner of our planet has been struck by climate-related disaster at one point or another in human history. Here are some of the casualties — starting with the world’s first empire.

1. Akkadian Empire

The Akkadian Empire formed 4,300 years ago, when Sargon the Great consolidated the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia under his rule. It extended along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from the Persian Gulf into modern Turkey. But within two centuries of its founding, around 2150 B.C.E., the empire suddenly collapsed.

In recent decades, some archaeologists have suspected the Akkadians succumbed to drought. The Curse of Akkad, a contemporary poem that purportedly tells of the empire’s decline, says “the large arable tracts yielded no grain, the inundated tracts yielded no fish, the irrigated orchards yielded no syrup or wine, the thick clouds did not rain.”

Then, in 2018, paleoclimatologists discovered new evidence in an unlikely place: northern Iran’s Gol-e-Zard Cave, hundreds of miles away. It may be distant, but the cave lies directly downwind of Akkadian territory, and the composition of its stalagmites offers a precise record of dry spells in the region — higher magnesium levels indicate dusty periods, once of which coincides perfectly with the fall of the empire.

2. Angkor

The crown jewel of the Khmer Empire, Angkor flourished in what is now Cambodia between the 9th and 15th centuries C.E. Its ornate, sprawling temple complex makes it a popular modern tourist destination, but in its heyday the city was equally remarkable for its sophisticated system of reservoirs and canals. Angkor is often called the “hydraulic city.”

As in all Southeast Asia, however, water cuts both ways: Angkor was highly vulnerable to summer monsoons. In 2010, climate researchers reconstructed centuries of the region’s climate history based on tree rings, a good proxy for rainfall. They concluded that, around the turn of the 15th century, seasonal flooding ravaged Angkor’s infrastructure, which was “vulnerable to the risk of massive, unrecoverable damage.”

It gets worse — these catastrophically wet years came during a decades-long drought. With crop productivity already suffering, and with its water management system in disarray, Angkor was less and less able to support agriculture. By 1431, the weakened city was overcome by invaders from the Siamese kingdom.

Read More: 5 Ancient Societies that Collapsed When the Water Ran Dry

3. Maya

The Maya civilization appeared in 2600 B.C.E., and persisted for more than three millennia before collapsing in what has been called “one of the most obvious and spectacular examples” of political and societal disintegration. In little more than a century, between 800 C.E. and 950 C.E., the Maya abandoned many of their great cities, and their cultural activity ground to a halt.

To be clear, they didn’t fully vanish — 8 million of them live in Central America to this day — and scholars have long disagreed about the nature of the collapse. The archaeologist Edward Wyllys Andrews IV went so far as to say that “in my belief no such thing happened.”

Nevertheless, over the past few decades, climatological research has confirmed what made this era so tumultuous for the Maya: a “megadrought,” spanning the 9th to 11th centuries. These dry cycles were, as one team of researchers wrote, “the most severe and frequent in Maya prehistory.” By 950 C.E., the magnificent pyramids and palaces of Tikal, Copan, and other urban centers were left in ruins.

4. Norse

In 985 C.E., according to the medieval Icelandic sagas, the first Vikings first sailed to Greenland. Unluckily for them, they’d chosen an atypically balmy moment to take up residence so near the Arctic Circle.

They established themselves there at the height of the Medieval Warm Period, during which rising temperatures could support agriculture. But then, around 1300, the cold returned with a vengeance after the massive eruption of Samalas, a volcano in Indonesia, triggered the Little Ice Age. When that volcanic winter reached Greenland, the Norse farmers simply couldn’t adapt quickly enough.

That, at least, is the traditional theory; some studies point in other directions. In 2022, a team of climatologists from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, reconstructed the region’s climate based on lake sediments. Surprisingly, they found not a drop in temperature but a “persistent drying trend.” They reasoned that this drought, which would have reduced grass for livestock grazing, may have been the true cause of the Greenland settlers’ demise.

5. Pueblo

For nearly two millennia from roughly 300 B.C.E. to 1300 C.E., the ancestral Pueblo thrived in what today seems the unlikeliest of environments: the southwestern United States. Centered around elaborate sandstone complexes in Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the Rio Grande, they farmed maize and built a vibrant trade network that spread across Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.

But they left their great cities behind when the climate finally turned on them in the middle of the 13th century. After centuries of deforestation and topsoil erosion, the region was already suffering from landscape degradation. Then — this should sound familiar by now — came the drought.

The Pueblo’s unsustainable land use practices were exacerbated by reduced rainfall, and finally their fields could no longer support the maize they so depended on for survival. They had no choice but to migrate. Many likely died in place or in transit, but the Pueblo, like the Maya, still have descendants in the modern world.

Read More: More Than Half of the Largest Bodies of Water in the World Are Drying Up

Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

Cody Cottier is a contributing writer at Discover who loves exploring big questions about the universe and our home planet, the nature of consciousness, the ethical implications of science and more. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media production from Washington State University.