Dripstone Records Drought That Might Have Paved The Way For Islam

Science Dripstone Records Drought That Might Have Paved The Way For Islam David Bressan Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I deal with the rocky road to our modern understanding of earth New! Follow this author to improve your content experience. Got it! Jun 17, 2022, 08:12am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Layered dripstone from the Hoti Cave, Oman, with samples used to reconstruct past precipitation .

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T. Kipfer/University of Basel About 1,500 years ago, the Near East experienced a devastating drought. Combined with political unrest and war, the drought left behind a region in disarray, thereby creating the conditions on the Arabian peninsula that made possible the spread of the newly emerging religion of Islam.

On the plateaus of modern-day Yemen, traces of terraced fields and ruins of earth dams and canals – parts of a particularly sophisticated irrigation system – are all that remains of the Himyarite Kingdom . However, despite its former strength, during the sixth century CE the kingdom entered into a period of crisis and political unrest. A war between its northern neighbors, the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, spilling over into Himyar, further weakened the kingdom.

When its western neighbor of Aksum (now Ethiopia) finally invaded Himyar and conquered the realm, the formerly powerful state definitively lost significance. In the resulting power vacuum a new religion emerged during the seventh century promising salvation – Islam. A new study used layered cave-deposits, called dripstone by geologists, to reconstruct the climate during this period.

A previously overlooked factor, namely extreme drought, may have been decisive in contributing to the demise of Himyar and the upheavals in ancient Arabia. The researchers analyzed the shape and isotopic composition of a dripstone from the Al Hoota Cave in present-day Oman. MORE FOR YOU New Research Finds A Connection Between Domestic Violence And These Two Personality Disorders This Scientist Helps Andean Forests And Ecuador’s Women In STEM Exceptional Fossil Preservation Suggests That Discovering Dinosaur DNA May Not Be Impossible With his research team, Dominik Fleitmann (left) analyzes stalagmites from various dripstone caves .

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C. Flierl/University of Basel “Even with the naked eye you can see from the stalagmite that there must have been a very dry period lasting several decades,” explains study author Dr. Dominik Fleitmann .

When less water drips onto the dripstone, less of it runs down the sides. The stone grows with a smaller diameter than in years with a higher drip rate. In tropical and sub-tropical regions, there is also a correlation between the amount of precipitation and its chemical composition.

These changes are recorded in dripstone, as it is formed from dripping rainwater. Based on chemical measurements of the dripstone’s layers, and in combination with radiometric dating, it is possible to reconstruct how much it rained at what point in time. Bases on the chemical composition, the research team concludes not only that less rain fell over a longer period, but that there must have been an extreme drought.

Based on the radioactive decay of uranium, the researchers were able to date this dry period to the early sixth century CE, albeit only with an accuracy of 30 years. “Water is absolutely the most important resource. It is clear that a decrease in rainfall and especially several years of extreme drought could destabilize a vulnerable semi-desert kingdom,” explains Fleitmann.

Furthermore, the irrigation systems required constant maintenance and repairs, which could only be achieved with tens of thousands of well-organized workers. The population of Himyar, stricken by water scarcity, was presumably no longer able to ensure this laborious maintenance, aggravating the situation further. “Whether there was a direct temporal correlation between this drought and the decline of the Himyarite Kingdom, or whether it actually didn’t begin until afterwards—that was not possible to determine conclusively from this data alone,” says Fleitmann.

He therefore analyzed further climate reconstructions from the region and combed through historical sources, collaborating with historians to narrow down the time of the extreme drought. “It was a bit like a murder case: we have a dead kingdom and are looking for the culprit. Step by step, the evidence brought us closer to the answer,” says the researcher.

Helpful sources included, for example, data about the water level of the Dead Sea and historical documents describing a drought of several years in the region and dating to 520 CE, which do indeed connect the extreme drought with the crisis in the Himyarite Kingdom. “When we think of extreme weather events, we often think only of a short period afterwards, limited to a few years,” Fleitmann says. “The fact that changes in the climate can lead to states being destabilized, thereby changing the course of history, is often disregarded.

” “The population was experiencing great hardship as a result of starvation and war. This meant Islam met with fertile ground: people were searching for new hope, something that could bring people together again as a society. The new religion offered this.

” That does not mean to say the drought directly brought about the emergence of Islam, emphasizes the researcher. “However, it was an important factor in the context of the upheavals in the Arabian world of the sixth century. ” The paper ” Droughts and societal change: the environmental context for the emergence of Islam in late Antique Arabia ” is published in the journal Science (2022).

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