The kingdom of Tibet perished due to climate change

The researchers concluded that the collapse of the Kingdom of Gu Ge in the 17th century could have been caused by a drop in temperature.

The Goge Kingdom was founded in western Tibet at the end of the 10th century and prospered for about 700 years before collapsing in the 1630s. Failure to the neighboring kingdom of Ladakh ended Gu's existence. Way like an independent country but then the population and society in the area collapsed. Some scientists attribute this large-scale loss of life to war, but many researchers say this explanation is not convincing enough and that environmental factors are also involved.

Ruins of the Ancient Kingdom.

Previous research looked at changes in crop yields and drought in the region, but there was no evidence of changing temperatures. However, the latest research finds evidence that local temperatures dropped by about 4 degrees Celsius between the 14th and 17th centuries, contributing to a decline in crop production that led to the fall of the kingdom.

The world experienced a prolonged period of cool during this period, sometimes called the mini ice age. The effects of climate change are thought to be linked to a series of global conflicts or disasters, such as the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China.

The team from China, the US, and the Netherlands collected and analyzed sediment samples from lakes in Tibet to better understand historical temperature changes. They published the study in the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology last month. The researchers analyzed 29 surface sediment samples from lakes on the Tibetan Plateau and another 39 from published datasets.

The team was able to track temperature changes by looking at lake sediments, which include a lipid, an organic compound produced by the bacteria brGDGTs, that is sensitive to temperature changes. Through changes in lipid concentrations in a 2,000-year-old sediment core at Lake Xiada Co near the ruins of the ancient kingdom of Gu Ge, they were able to determine how the temperature changed during that period.

"We found warm weather during the kingdom's heyday, but the temperature dropped from 2 degrees Celsius to -2 degrees Celsius when Gu Ge died," said Liang Jie, team leader and assistant at the Research Institute Tibetan Plateau of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ITPCAS), said. "Don't underestimate the change from a drop in temperature. It will lead to crop loss due to lower temperatures and less meltwater from glaciers to irrigate crops."

James Russell, a professor at Brown University and co-author of the study, predicts that in the near future, upland areas such as the Tibetan plateau will experience the effects of global warming more than anywhere else. on Earth beyond the Arctic. Tibet has the most glaciers outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Over the past century, temperatures on the plateau have increased by 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade, three times faster than the global average. Rising temperatures have caused 82 percent of glaciers on the plateau to shrink over the past half-century.

China started a second scientific research survey on the Tibetan plateau in 2017, focusing on glaciers, climate change, biodiversity and ecological change.