A three-year drought may have brought down the ancient Hittite empire

Wood from modern Turkish burial chambers reveals sudden severe drought around the time the Hittite city was abandoned 3,000 years ago

To Claire Wilson

The 3,000-year-old Middle Eastern Hittite empire may have collapsed after three years of drought.

The discovery comes from analyzing the wood used to build the burial chambers of a later ruler who may have been the father of King Midas, mentioned in Greek legend.

A sudden drought “would have undoubtedly caused major problems with the food supply. It would have had a rather dramatic effect on the empire’s tax base,” says Sturt Manning of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. say.

Encircling most of modern-day Turkey and lasting nearly five centuries, the Hittite Empire was one of the major geopolitical powers of the ancient world, with ironwork skills, a cuneiform writing system and an army capable of rivaling neighboring Egypt. was equipped with

Ancient documents and archaeological finds suggest that around 1200 BC, the city began to be abandoned and the empire began to split into independent states.

Several causes have been proposed, including disease, famine, a transition to a dry climate over the centuries, and an early invasion by a mysterious group named in Egyptian texts as the “Sea Peoples”.

Now, Manning’s team has found evidence of a rapid and severe drought in a giant chamber tomb built in the city of Gordion in 748 BC. The tomb mound is much larger than other nearby mounds and was built around the time the local King Midas came to the throne, so some archaeologists believe it was for the previous ruler, the father of King Midas. It states that it may have been created, but nothing remains to identify its inhabitants.

Clues to the centuries-old Hittite collapse come from the juniper logs that make up the burial chambers. The logs were taken from 18 of his trees growing between 1775 and 748 BC.

Less rainfall means less tree growth, which manifests itself as narrow gaps between the rings. One of them was during the three years from 1198 to 1196 BC, just as the Hittite cities began to be abandoned.

This was backed up by another type of test that measures the proportions of different forms of carbon from wood samples. This indicates a gradual increase in atmospheric dryness between 1300 and 1200 BC, followed by an abrupt drying between 1222 and 1195 BC.

“Most traditional societies had a reservoir that helped them survive a single crop failure,” says Manning. “By the time you reach it three times in a row, it’s in crisis.”

Alan Greaves of the University of Liverpool, UK, who was not involved in the study, said the results shed new light on climate change at the time. “How do you pay soldiers and how do you pay artisans to make things?” he says. “A short, acute drought would be enough to overthrow a highly centralized state that relies heavily on the collection and distribution of grain and agricultural products.”