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Late Holocene drought responsible for the collapse of Old World civilizations is recorded in an Italian cave flowstone

¹ School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia
² Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Pisa, via Santa Maria 53, Pisa 56124, Italy
³ School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia
⁴ Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, East Kilbride, G75 0GF Glasgow, UK
⁵ School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia
⁶ School of Geosciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia
⁷ Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Firenze, via G. La Pira 4, Firenze 50121, Italy

A severe drought in parts of low-latitude northeastern Africa and southwestern Asia 4200 yr ago caused major disruption to ancient civilizations. Stable isotope, trace element, and organic fluorescence data from a calcite flowstone collected from the well-watered Alpi Apuane karst of central-western Italy indicate that the climatic event responsible for this drought was also recorded in mid-latitude Europe. Although the timing of this event coincides with an episode of increased ice-rafted debris to the subpolar North Atlantic, the regional ocean-atmosphere response seems atypical of similar Holocene ice-rafting events. Furthermore, comparison of the flowstone data with other regional proxies suggests that the most extreme part of the dry spell occurred toward the end of a longer-term climate anomaly.

Key Words: speleothems • Holocene • drought • geochemistry • Italy

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