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Comment by ducktective | Hacker News Reader

The theory parent is mentioning, doesn't just talk about "less hot and less arid" but a lush green and very favorable for agriculture.

If these people went as far as to carve camels in stones, that would mean these animals were prevalent in their areas and way of life which is in direct conflict with assuming their land were anything but hot and arid.

I have heard of the theory about different climate of Egypt and Iraq in ancient times. It seems logical that civilization should have started in a climate supportive for mass agriculture.

It's depressing when we think of earth's climate change over a time scale unimaginable for humans. The theory implies (at least for me) that the decline of quality of life in ME/NorthAfrica has more to do with a random external change not in control of insignificant humans.

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In the book, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, the author goes over Ptolemy's historical records of rain in Alexandria and compares it to today. In short, Alexandria used to get continual rain throughout the year whereas today it gets rain from October to March and then not much else. I believe it's in chapter 2 if anyone wants to look at the charts on the Amazon preview.

Arizona is very hot, very arid, and also very favourable for agriculture, with significant production of lettuce and cotton. As long as you can make sure your crops get water through irrigation (which ancient Mesopotamians were very skilled at), your crops will thrive. In fact, the heat and sunlight actually provide a bit of an advantage.

However, a number of factors eventually led to the collapse of the civilisations in the fertile crescent. One factor has been the region getting warmer and drier, which poses a challenge even with irrigation. As an example of how different the climate is now from what it was then, Uruk used to be on a channel of the Euphrates, but now that riverbed is completely dried up. Meanwhile, Ur was once a coastal city, but is now ten miles inland.

Another factor for the collapse of these civilisations is that the process of irrigation accumulated salt in the soil. The very process that made complex civilisation possible in this part of the world eventually contributed to its end.

I recommend the Fall of Civilizations podcast for more on this and other societies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2lJUOv0hLA

Semi-arid is perfectly compatible with agriculture. In fact, many of the earliest sites for agriculture around the world are found in arid or semi-arid environments. I'd suggest reading Dennell's paper on the deserts of Asia.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.12.002

Why not both? More lush by the rivers, and still arid away from water.

But they could still only have camels as their pack animals, since that's all they'd domesticated. It's not like camels will die in non-arid locations

The camel in the region (dromedary) was not domesticated until about ~2000BCE. Long after agriculture, and long after this sculpture.

Likely the animal was venerated as a meat source.

Speaking of different climate in North Africa/Middle East: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period

As recently as 5,000 years ago, it was a much wetter place.

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