Around 3000 BC, great changes befell climate and culture throughout the world. In the Pacific Basin, El Nino started up after a long hiatus, shifting from a permanent, stable condition to an irregular cycle that periodically throws climate into chaos. As a result, environmental conditions in the region became much less predictable from year to year, with “anomalous” droughts in Australia, floods in Peru, and other effects of El Nino fluctuation occurring more frequently. In the Northern Hemisphere, warmer temperatures of the preceding 3,000 years cooled down to about what they are now; new evidence suggests that the Southern Hemisphere experienced a similar change in temperature. Desertification increased in Mesopotamia and Northern Africa.

In Peru, coastal cultures soon turned from nomadic fishing, hunting and gathering to living in bigger, permanent settlements and building large mud brick platforms - the precursors to the great adobe pyramids of the Moche, the Tucume and others. Pyramid building in Egypt also started around this time, when all the great civilizations of the ancient Middle East show major change. The Maya calendar has a zero date of 3113 BC, which is only a few years different from two of the zero years in Hindu calendars - and within the period of global environmental transformation centered at 3000 BC.

What drove the changes in climate? How extensive and intensive were they? In each region, how closely in time are the cultural and climatic changes linked? What role did the climate play in pushing prehistoric people to change their behavior and thus the course of human history?

In October of last year, FERCO brought top scholars from the fields of archaeology and paleoclimatology together at the University of Maine to address these questions and compare notes. Often, scientists in these two areas of study do not have the personal contact necessary to recognize links and draw connections; this conference was a unique and timely opportunity to change that situation and assess current knowledge of culture and climate at 3000 BC.

This is not simply an simply an exercise in dusty history - the changes discussed took place at a time of warmer-than-present global temperature, similar to conditions predicted within the next century under models of global warming. Questions such as whether El Nino was stuck in a permanent on-phase when the world was warmer and what that meant for people may be relevant to understanding and planning for our own near future. The outcome of the conference will be a book written by the attending scientists and aimed at a general educated public as well as a scientific audience.