-50

-45

-40

-35

-30

-25

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

De

g C

Years BP, thousands

Air Temp, Central Greenland, Deg C

Present Warm Period

14,500 yrs BP, the world begins to warm after the glaciation.

“Last Glacial Maximum” or LGM: Peaked from 26,500 yrs BP to 19,000 yrs BP. It was about 100,000 yrs. long. Characterized by a much lower sea level (120 m below current levels, Church and Gregory, “Sea Level Change,” Encyclopedia of Oceans), cold temperatures (3.5°C to 5.8°C cooler than today, von Diemling, Ganopolski, Held, and Rahmstorf, “How Cold was the Last Glacial Maximum,” Geophysical Research Letters, vol 33, 2006) and a very dry and dusty climate (von Diemling, et. al.).

8200 yrs BP Temp drops 3.3°C in 20 yrs in Greenland (Alley, et. Al., 1997, cool temps last 150 yrs. This marks the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic “B” period.

Sahara is a savanna or prairie, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data6.html

Sahara is a desert

Younger Dryas, Raimund, et al. 2008, National Geographic

12,800 11,500

Sahara is a savanna or prairie Sahara is a desert

Late Uruk period, cuneiform script begins.

Minoan Warm Period

Roman Warm Period

Medieval Warm Period

1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10,000 11,000 12,000 13,000 14,000 15,000 16,000 17,000 18,000

Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226.

Neolithic Chalcolithic Bronze Age Iron Age

-10

-8

-6

-4

-2

0

2

4

0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 18000

De

g. C

Years BP

Vostok, Antarctica Air Temperature, relative to present, Petit, et al, 2001, Nature

-8.00

-6.00

-4.00

-2.00

0.00

2.00

4.00

0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000

De

g C

Years BP

Agassiz/Renland Holocene Greenland temperature reconstruction (Vinther, et al.,2009, Nature)

Holocene Thermal Optimum

Agriculture begins in the Levant region of SW Asia (Syria and Israel) by the Natufians. Possibly the earliest “sedentary” culture. (21)

Climate and Human Civilization over the last 18,000 years

Years BP 0

Paleolithic

Earliest dates for Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia (Southern Turkey), this settlement is often considered the beginning of the Neolithic period.

Beginning of the Neolithic B culture. Houses are rectangular, with plaster floors. More domesticated animals.

7400 BP, Tartaria tablets, simple writing, Haarmann, 2002

19,000

Graph of reconstructed temperature (blue), CO2 (green), and dust (red) from the Vostok ice core for the past 420,000 years, notice the 95,800 year cycle of temperatures2

Temperature: www.scotese.com/climate.htm CO2: R. A. Berner, 2001, Am J of Science, vol 301, p 182-204

Immediate right: This is the monthly global temperature anomaly data from NOAA’s Tiros-N satellite. The graph is by Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy, Global Hydrology and Climate Center, U of Alabama. We only have true global atmospheric data since 1979. The smoothed line is a 37 month moving average. Prior to that, uneven surface readings are used to estimate global temperatures. These estimates (as anomalies) are shown, since 1850, in the far right graph. There is far less warming in the southern hemisphere.

1998 El Nino

1991 Mt. Pinatubo

+0.2°C or 0.36°F

-0.15°C or -0.27°F

Black Sea fills (8)

Gobekli Tepe, oldest city/monument known

Gobekli Tepe, abandoned and deliberately buried

Gobekli Tepe deliberately buried

Catalhoyuk a city of 8,000 exists near present day Cumra Konya, Turkey. They were agricultural and domesticated animals

-200

-150

-100

-50

0

50

100

1874 1894 1914 1934 1954 1974 1994 2014

mm

se

a le

vel c

han

ge

Year

Mean Sea Level, mm, 1874 to 2014

Recent sea level data from CSIRO (Australia) and Church and White

Andy May 11/9/2013

Present Warm Period

Minoan Warm Period

Roman Warm Period

Medieval Warm Period

http://www.lakepowell.net/sciencecenter/paleoclimate.htm

http://www.schauungen.de/forum/index.php?id=15102

Robert Rohde (15)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Stonehenge built (37)

Pyramid of Djoser constructed by Imhotep in Egypt

Homo floresiensis goes extinct, Morwood, Soejono, 2004

Black Sea fills and connects to Mediterranean according to Ryan and Pittman, 1997 (2)

Uruk period begins, the beginning of large scale cities

Ubaid period begins, large scale irrigation of crops begins and cotton is domesticated in India (2)

5.9 kiloyear event, Sahara becomes a desert. Caused a huge migration from central Africa to the Nile valley. This event ended the Ubaid empire.

Actual Temp

Δpresent Temp

Δpresent Temp

This data is unsmoothed. Each point is a 20 year average. The zero point is from a smoothed (filter is 2700 years wide) curve. Zero point is from 60 years ago to present.

Earliest Harappa (India) cities

In China (Jiahu culture) the earliest farming (millet and rice) settlements in China, Jiahu culture, also earliest Chinese writing and the earliest wine. http://www.world-archaeology.com/more/oldest-wine-from-jiahu-china/#.UmupLvmshcY

Earliest Mayan cities in Central America

Severe drought strikes Middle East, ends Bronze age civilization in Egypt, Israel and for the Hittites. (43)

Pottery being made in China, Wu, Science, 2012

Earliest Indian agriculture, Indus Valley (34)

Jericho, Israeli occupied Palestine, founded. The worlds oldest currently occupied city (2 and Encyclopedia Britannica)

4.2 Kiloyear event

Bond Events, Bond, G.; et al. (1997). "A Pervasive Millennial-Scale Cycle in North Atlantic Holocene and Glacial Climates". Science 278 (5341): 1257–1266.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Ref. (54)

Rice cultivation in China?? (34)

Ref. (56)

Late Glacial Interstadial