ABSTRACT
Despite widespread concerns about contemporary global warming, climate considerations do not currently warrant a great deal of attention in Old World archeology. Culture and ideology seem to fare much better in an era more inclined to emphasize differences between and among societies. Yet the current ambivalence toward climate as an explanatory variable may be sacrificing an important key to ways in which ancient systems behaved, both similarly and differently. For instance, the first two areas to develop in the Old World, Mesopotamia and Egypt, differed from each other tremendously. Mesopotamia was politically polycentric, early to urbanize, and taken over by successive waves of people who had moved into the area from adjacent hinterlands. Egypt became politically unicentric fairly early on, was slow to urbanize, and was comparatively more successful at resisting outsider takeover bids through the second millennium b.c.e. Despite some early Mesopotamian influences on Egypt, their cultures, religions, political ideologies, and languages were quite different. Although unlike in many ways, the two earliest systems did share something that might be termed “political-economic rhythm.” The parallels in the timing of the changes of successive regimes and periods of greater and lesser turmoil in the two ancient Near Eastern centers are quite remarkable. Cultural and ideological differences cannot account for these similarities. To the extent that climate change can contribute to explaining these similarities, climate appears to have been a particularly significant parameter in the functioning of the ancient southwest Asian world (Chew 2001).
