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Did a mega drought topple empires 4,200 years ago?

People abandoned thriving cities in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and farther afield at about the same time as a decades-long drought gripped parts of the planet.
  1. Michael Marshall

    1. Michael Marshall is a science journalist in Devon, UK.

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Relief created from a cylinder seal from the Akkad dynasty showing water gods and baffalo

Water flows from a vessel held by a god in this seal of an Akkadian king from around 2200 bc, about the time that a drought affected the empire. Credit: The Art Archive/Shutterstock

The missing earthworms were a sign. As archaeologist Harvey Weiss and his colleagues excavated a site in northeast Syria, they found a buried layer of wind-blown silt so barren there was hardly any evidence of earthworms at work during that ancient era. Something drastic had happened thousands of years ago — something that choked the land with dust for decades, leaving a blanket of soil too inhospitable even for earthworms.

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Nature 601, 498-501 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00157-9

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