A Sixth-Century CE Drought in Arabia New Palaeoclimate Data and Some Historical Implications

Abstract

Establishing plausible causal associations between the impact of climate and/or environment and past human societies presents many challenges, as the case of the decline of the S. Arabian kingdom of Himyar in the sixth century CE indicates. Evidence from a new high-resolution stalagmite record for the last 2,600 years shows that a period of drought in the early sixth century, hardly mentioned in the sources, was of unusual duration and severity. We argue that, while this likely contributed to undermine the sociopolitical resilience of Himyar and thus contributed to the societal changes in the region from the 520s to the late sixth/early seventh century, identifying the exact causal relationships involved is fraught with difficulty. 1