2nd Millennium BC
| Year(s) | Event(s) | |
|---|---|---|
| Start | End | |
| 1900 BC | The Atra-Hasis Epic describes Babylonian flood, with warnings of the consequences of human overpopulation. | |
| 1600 BC | Minoan eruption destroys much of Santorini island, and destroys the Minoan civilization on Crete. This may have inspired the legend of Atlantis. | |
| 1450 BC | Minoan civilization in the Mediterranean declines, but scholars are divided on the cause. Possibly a volcanic eruption was the source of the catastrophe (see Minoan eruption). On the other hand, gradual deforestation may have led to materials shortages in manufacturing and shipping. Loss of timber and subsequent deterioration of its land was probably a factor in the decline of Minoan power in the late Bronze Age, according to John Perlin in A Forest Journey. | |
| 1206 BC | 1187 BC | Evidence of major droughts in the Eastern Mediterranean. Hittite and Ugarit records show requests for grain were sent to Egypt, probably during the reign of Pharaoh Merenptah. Carpenter has suggested that droughts of equal severity to those of the 1950s in Greece, would have been sufficient to cause the Late Bronze Age collapse. The cause may have been a temporary diversion of winter storms north of the Pyrenees and Alps. Central Europe experienced generally wetter conditions, while those in the Eastern Mediterranean were substantially drier. There seems to have been a general abandonment of peasant subsistence agriculture in favour of nomadic pastoralism in Central Anatolia, Syria and northern Mesopotamia, Palestine, the Sinai and NW Arabia. |
| c. 2000 BC | c. 1000 BC |
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Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Environmental History
Famous quotes containing the word millennium:
“The millennium will not come as soon as women vote, but it will not come until they do vote.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)