During the Bronze Age, Mesopotamia witnessed several climatic crises. In the long run, these crises fostered the development of stable forms of statehood and thus encouraged cooperation between political elites and non-elites. This is the main conclusion of a study published in the journal PNAS and authored by two academics from the University of Bologna (Italy) and the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany).
This study investigated the impact of climatic disturbances in Mesopotamia between 3100 and 1750 BC. The two scholars looked at these questions through the lens of economics and adopted a game-theoretic approach. They applied this approach to the first detailed database on the climate and institutional evolution of the 44 major states of Mesopotamia.
Severe and prolonged droughts pushed land-owning elites to grant property and political rights to non-elites, who had the skills and tools to stem the damage caused by climate change. The elites did it to persuade the non-elites that a sufficient share of the crops would be shared through the production of public goods explains Carmine Guerriero, professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Bologna and one of the authors of this study. For their part, the non-elitists promoted institutional changes, adopting a culture of cooperation to persuade the elites of their commitment to future cooperation.
Three severe droughts seem to confirm these intuitions. In the last stages of the Urban Revolution (3800–3300 BC), religious groups intervened and ended up coordinating the effort to build the first artificial canals. Later, during the Early Dynastic Period (3100–2550 BC), the Palatine army promoted cooperation among farmers, granting them protection and the resources of military enlistment. During the Imperial Age (2350–1750 BC), merchant corporations, which had become increasingly dominant, offered a valuable, weather-independent alternative to agricultural pursuits. In contrast, periods of more benign climate encouraged cooperation between non-elites and elites, while elites were not forced to relinquish their power and non-elites were not forced to adopt a culture of intense cooperation.
Due to their largely agricultural economic systems, some developing countries are experiencing climate change in a way that resembles that of the Mesopotamian states, and will also experience politically relevant consequences adds Guerrero. On the one hand, unfavorable weather shocks can promote cooperation between normally opposed parties by granting more rights to non-elitists. On the other hand, favorable climatic conditions allow cooperation between elites and non-elites through less inclusive social orders and with a certain degree of cultural accumulation. Therefore, two major objectives in this regard are to spread a strong culture of cooperation and to avoid the random transfer of more inclusive social orders in developing countries .
In short, the analysis of the events related to the lost civilizations can offer useful ideas to understand and solve the problems of the current era. The past offers a more encouraging perspective with which we can gauge the severity of current crises, including the pandemic Guerriero suggests. Furthermore, the past shows the importance of an interdisciplinary approach involving the social and natural sciences to obtain a more accurate assessment of the short-, medium- and long-term effects of climate change .