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The social impact of past climate change is one of the key areas of study relating to global climate change, particularly its ability to provide valuable lessons for dealing with ongoing challenges of global climate change. Drawing on the abundant historical literature, many recent studies have examined the social impacts of climate change in China during the past 2000 years. This paper reviews the main progress of these studies in three parts. First, a concept model based on the food security in relation to global climate change has been constructed, which can then be used to interpret impact-response processes of climate change in the history of China. Second, we derive a methodology for quantifying the impact of historical climate change, drawing on a series of 4 key social and economic sequences at a 10-year resolution. These have been reconstructed based on the semantic differential method over the past 2000 years in China. Third, using a variety of statistical analyses, we update the understanding of climate impacts throughout the history of China. The overall impacts of climate were negative in the cold periods and positive in the warm periods, at decadal to centennial scales during Chinese history. However, the impacts seemed a mixed blessing both in the cold or warm periods. The social-economic development and population growth in warm periods would intensify the natural resource shortage and disequilibria in the human-environment system, especially when encountering abrupt climate changes. Adaptation to adverse climate change could not only help people to avoid hardship whilst maximizing profits, but also expanded the capabilities for the continual development of Chinese civilization.

The final centuries BCE (Before Common Era) saw the main focus of trade between the Far East and Europe switch from the so called Northern Route across the Asian steppes to the classical silk roads. The cities across central Asia flourished and grew in size and importance. While clearly there were political, economic and cultural drivers for these changes, there may also have been a role for changes in climate in this relatively arid region of Asia. Analysis of a new ensemble of snapshot global climate model simulations, run every 250 years over the last 6000 years, allows us to assess the long term climatological changes seen across the central Asian arid region through which the classical Silk Roads run. While the climate is comparatively stable through the Holocene, the fluctuations seen in these simulations match significant cultural developments in the region. From 1500 BCE the deterioration of climate from a transient precipitation peak, along with technological development and the immigration of Aryan nomads, drove a shift towards urbanization and probably irrigation, culminating in the founding of the major cities of Bukhara and Samarkand around 700–500 BCE. Between 1000 and 250 BCE the modelled precipitation in the central Asian arid region undergoes a transition towards wetter climates. The changes in the Western Disturbances, which is the key weather system for central Asian precipitation, provides 10% more precipitation and the increased hydrological resources may provide the climatological foundation for the golden era of Silk Road trade.

The present study reviews recent interpretations of Central Asia’s and Northern Iran’s environmental and political history during the first half of the eleventh century. Namely, to cast light on the deficiencies in recent interpretations of Turkic , and to advocate searching for political-social agents that would explain the Eurasian Steppe’s history. In opposite to climatological reading of those years regional history, it aims at advancing a call for a more nuanced paradigm of the coming of the Saljūqs.

During the Final Bronze Age (around 3750/3700 BP), the proto-urban sedentary cultural entity in southern Central Asia—known as the Oxus civilization or Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex—underwent major social transformations in different field aspects leading to a deep cultural change in the middle of the 4th millennium BP. Among the different reasons suggested to explain these sociocultural changes, the hypothesis of global climate change in Central Asia at the beginning of the 4th millennium BP has been emphasized by different scholars. In this paper, I will examine current paleo-environmental data in relation with the climate evolution during the Mid- and Late Holocene. A critical assessment of the hypothesis of climatic change in Central Asia at the beginning of the 4th millennium BP allows to stimulate the discussion anew. I argue that the present data do not support a drastic climate change during the first half of the 4th millennium BP as a responsible factor for the fall of the Oxus civilization, although local environmental modifications should also not be underestimated and further investigated in a more integrated perspective of co-evolution of the ecological environment and the human societies.

From its formation in the early years of the thirteenth century, the Mongol Empire expanded rapidly along the steppe belt and trade routes comprising the Silk Road, forming partnerships with merchants and encouraging commerce, while also subjugating the resident nomadic and sedentary societies. In 1241–1242, the Mongols invaded and occupied Hungary for a year before mysteriously withdrawing eastward into the steppes. Many theories have been offered for this event and why Hungary’s border ended up marking the westernmost terminus of the Mongol Empire, including most recently Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s “environmental hypothesis” that short-term climatic fluctuation and environmental factors played a decisive role. This paper employs a comparative historical methodology to discuss three broad topics: the suitability of the Kingdom of Hungary for long-term occupation by the Mongols; the role that the climatic events of 1242 played in the famine that ravaged the kingdom after the withdrawal; and the role that environmental factors could have played in Mongol military setbacks and problems during the invasion. By doing so, this paper also aims to address additional points newly raised by Büntgen and Di Cosmo in a reply they made to an earlier article which questioned the enviromental hypothesis.

This study focuses on the northern catchment of Erhai Lake that lies in the heart of the ancient Southern Silk Road (the Tea-Horse Roads) in southwest China. The hydrologic environment of this region is complex and evolved under significant human impacts, especially after large populations migrated after 1382 under the policy of military tillage. This led to increased pressures on the human-water relationship of this region but also stimulated social resilience to water stresses. This paper investigates the manner in which local people addressed the conflicts of utilizing limited water for people, livestock and irrigation until 1912. The approaches of statistical analysis, spatial analysis and correlation analysis were adopted, and historical data on floods, water conservation projects, plants, and disease were collected to support a detailed examination of the evolution of the human-water relationship in the study area. The results indicate that: (1) the evolution of the hydrologic environment, including the river system and the hydro-chemical environment, had a close correspondence with human activities; (2) local people constructed various water conservation and engineering facilities and changed their farming structures to cope with water stresses, which partly contributed to the break out and spread of Schistosomiasis japonica; (3) the resilience of the human-water relationship became weaker as the management of water projects diminished; (4) the sustainable development of the human-water relationship could be maintained through regular water management and environmental governance. These findings emphasize the influences of social policy and human activities on the resilience of the catchment and improve our understanding of resilience theory.

Age and origin of ancient famous Karez water systems in the oases of the Turpan Basin are open questions in geoarchaeological and historical research. Four hypotheses exist: (a) invention during Han dynasty more than 2000 years ago, (b) transfer of technology from Persian Qanat’s more than 3000 years ago, (c) independent invention of local Uyghur people in the 15th century, and (d) late invention during the Chinese Qing dynasty (19th century). Our study dates, for the first time, 8 Karez systems by C from plants buried during the formation of Karez mounds, and interviews in order to record oral tradition. We found that the oldest investigated Karez systems originated in the Uyghurian Huihe dynasty (790–1755 AD), which coincides with the oral tradition. A second phase may have occurred during late Huihe/Qing dynasty (after 1755 AD), which may explain why information and the Uygurian term „Kan er jing“ went down in historic Chinese records. In conclusion, hypothesis (d) that oldest Karez systems were built during Qing dynasty has to be rejected because they are at least 600 years old. Instead, during the 3rd Chinese expansion in the 19th century AD the Karez system expanded and got maintenance. A review of regional palaeoclimatic proxies suggests that the origin and the maintenance of the Karez systems took place rather in more humid periods than in more arid ones. However, more research is needed on other Karez systems to test the pending hypotheses of a much older age.

Expansion of agricultural practices from the Fertile Crescent to China during the mid and late Holocene are believed to have shaped the early network of Silk Road routes and possibly regulated the dynamics of trade and exchange in the urban oases along the Silk Road throughout its existence. While the impacts of climate change on the Silk Road are more or less documented for the medieval period, they remain poorly understood for early history of the Silk Road, especially in Central Asia. We analyze hydroclimatic proxies derived from fluvial stratigraphy, geochronology, and tree-ring records that acted on various time scales in the Lake Balkhash Basin to learn how changes in water supply could have influenced the early farmers in the Semirechye region of southern Kazakhstan. Our approach aims to identify short-term and long-term variability of regional runoff and to compare the hydrological data with cultural dynamics coupled with the archaeological settlement pattern and agricultural production. The reconstructed runoff variability underscore the contribution of winter precipitation driven by the interaction between the Arctic oscillation and the Siberian High-Pressure System, to Central Asian river discharge. We show that Saka people of the Iron Age employed extensive ravine agriculture on the alluvial fans of the Tian Shan piedmont, where floodwater farming peaked between 400 BC and 200 BC. The early Silk Road farmers on the alluvial fans favored periods of reduced flood flows, river stability and glacier retreat in the Tian Shan Mountains. Moreover, they were able to apply simple flow control structures to lead water across the fan surface. It is very unlikely that changes in water supply ever significantly constricted agricultural expansion in this region.

The development of landscapes of the central part of the Middle-Volga region in the last 2500 years was a discontinuous process of the explosive growth of population and land utilization alternating with stages of depopulation and desolation. The periods of depopulation and transitions of cultures occurred at similar times to climate changes. Some cultures were associated with distinct climatic episodes, such as the association of the Dark Ages Cold Period with Hun, post Hun, Heraldic, and Khasarian times, and the Medival Warm Period with the time of Volga Bulgaria. A combination of archaeological and paleoecological analyses allowed us to reconstruct a sequence of landscape and land use changes in relation to the historical development of the region. The first millennium CE was a time of major changes in population, agricultural technologies, social structure, and settlement patterns in the forest-steppe zone. The MiddleVolga region underwent a transition from a non-populated, mainly-forested landscape of first centuries CE to a highly deforested agricultural landscape of the Volga Bulgarian state by the 11th century CE. Within several centuries, the landscape was transformed by shifting cultivation, wood and ore extraction, and the formation and expansion of pastures and road networks. The process of deforestation in the region was facilitated by the relatively warm climates of the Medieval Warm Period.

This chapter presents the first results and interpretations of a selected dataset of rock carvings from the Karakorum mountains. The research is focused on early Buddhist carvings and their spread and role within networks of the early Silk Roads in Central Asia from the 2nd–1st century BCE. The rock carvings and their archaeological context are studied to gain insight into routes from Gandhara through the Karakorum range. The first part presents the general aims and relevance. The second and third parts describe the analysis and interpretation of the Karakorum dataset, followed by the main points of discussion and conclusions to incite future investigations.