Climate, Desertification, and the Rise and Collapse of China’s Historical Dynasties

Abstract

IntroductionArid and semiarid areas of ancient China include theMongolian Plateau, northern China, and some parts ofcentral China. These regions have experienced multiple aridphases throughout the Quaternary, and are highly sensitiveto climate change (Z. Zhu and Liu 1982). These areas weretraditionally managed using fragile pastoral and agriculturalsystems even though most of this area is covered by gobideserts, eolian dunes, sandy land, and steppes (Fig. 1),where both agriculture and the native vegetation have beenseriously degraded by frequent desertification cycles (Z.Zhu et al. 1980). Over the past 5,000 years, Chinesedynasties have been founded, have flourished, and have thendeclined and collapsed in various regions. In particular, therise and decline of dynasties in northern and central China,possibly due to desertification cycles, strongly influencedChina’s historical cultures (Rhoads 2003), which themselvesplayed a dominant role in Asian and world history(Stavrianos 1999). The Mongolian Plateau and northernand central China, where historical dynasties were supportedby traditional pastoral and agricultural systems, were highlysensitive to changes in desertification and biological produc-tivity produced by the late-Holocene Asian Monsoon (Neffet al. 2001;Fleitmannet al. 2003). Because of theimportance of a stable food supply to support the largepopulations required to economically and militarily sustain adynasty, these changes would have had a direct impact onthe health of dynasties in these regions.Archaeological evidence (Bao and Zhang 1984;FengandJiang 1996) reveals that cycles of desertification anddecreasing biological productivity occurred frequentlyand in almost all cases, dynasties flourished when desertifi-cation was reversing and biological productivity wasincreasing, and collapsed when desertification expanded intheir core regions (H. Wang 1996). Similarly, Man et al.(2000) suggested that the climate changes during historicalperiods had significant effects on changes in the position ofagriculture–grazing transitional zones and the fate of Chinesedynasties. However, the rise and decline of China’shistoricaldynasties and their relationship to changes in the region’sclimate are poorly understood. While there is considerableevidence for the effects of cultural and other socioeconomicfactors (Lv 1991), and there is some evidence of the collapseof dynasties during periods with a weak summer AsianMonsoon (Yancheva et al. 2007) or periods with unusuallylow temperatures (Zhang et al. 2007), the overall influenceof climate remains poorly understood.However, recent advances in climate change researchusing proxies allow a review of the relationship betweenclimate and the fate of the dynasties using high-resolutiondata. We here present evidence from published high-