Climate Variations and Changes in World History

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  • 気候変動と文明の盛衰
  • キコウ ヘンドウ ト ブンメイ ノ セイスイ

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Abstract

The results of hydro-environment researches into marine and lacustrine sediments revealed climatic variations which seem to have some relationships between turns in world history and climatic changes. In the Japan Sea and northeast Pacific off Kashima from the Late Glacial to the Holocene, diatom temperature, Td' = (frequency of warm-water species) - (frequency of warm-and cold-water species) -1?100, values show rhythmic fluctuations with durations of 1 kyr and 400-500 yrs (Koizumi et al., 2004, 2006). This indicates a strong and regular inflow of the warm Tsushima Current into the Japan Sea as a branch of the warm Kuroshio Current. The decreases of Td' values correspond to a period of climatic deterioration under which cultural changes occurred in Japan. The paleoclimatic variations and the triple events of high 14C in the atmospheric residual 14C record denoted by Stuiver et al. (1991) are recognized in the diatom variations.<BR>A similar periodicity is also recognized in North Atlantic drift ice (Bond et al., 2001), concentrations of sea salt and terrestrial dust in the GISP2 ice core (O'Brien et al., 1995), in lake deposits from the Jura in France (Magny, 1995), Tibet (Gasse et al., 1991; Ji et al., 2005), and Alaska (Hu et al., 2003), and oxygen isotope variations from stalagmites in southern China (Wang et al., 2005) and Oman (Neff et al., 2001).<BR>Climatic deteriorations are synchronous with periods when serious changes occurred in human intellectual achievements during the Holocene. The Agricultural Revolution (11, 000-10, 000yr BC), with the cultivation of wild plants and domestication of wild animals to produce and secure food, seems to coincide with the Younger Dryas event. Increased agricultural production made it possible to afford a population not engaged in agriculture, for example, people engaged in handicrafts, festivals, and politics. This seems to occur in the period coinciding with T2 event in the T1-T4 triplets, which have Maunder-and Sporer-type patterns occurring in sets of three, denoted by Stuiver and Braziunas (1993). The religious courtesy belief in the recycling and the reinforcing of life was converted into a rational and systematic consideration of life based on universal theory. This conversion of thinking seems to coincide with the T3 event. Modern science was established in Europe in the 17th century. And now human beings are destroying natural environments using highly developed scientific technologies of their own. This is a negative revolution that human beings have never previously experienced.<BR>In the south-to-north transect of the cores from both the Pacific and Japan Sea sides of Honshu, Td' values indicate that the Kuroshio Current and Tsushima Warm Current are both weakening at present. The present interglacial period might end and become a cooler climatic condition like a Little Ice Age within 300 years. The insolation at 37°N among the Earth's orbital parameters is weak at present (Koizumi and Ikeda, 1997). However, the mean global temperature has risen about 0.5°C during the last century. Warming of the Earth, which is caused mainly by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, has made natural environments unstable.

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