Citation

Zhang Z, Tian H, Cazelles B, Kausrud KL, Bräuning A, Guo F, Stenseth NC. Proc. Biol. Sci. 2010; 277(1701): 3745-3753.

Affiliation

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management on Pest Insects and Rodents in Agriculture, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China. zhangzb@ioz.ac.cn

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Royal Society of London)

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2010.0890

PMID

20630883

PMCID

PMC2992701

Abstract

Recent studies have linked climatic and social instabilities in ancient China; the underlying causal mechanisms have, however, often not been quantitatively assessed. Here, using historical records and palaeoclimatic reconstructions during AD 10-1900, we demonstrate that war frequency, price of rice, locust plague, drought frequency, flood frequency and temperature in China show two predominant periodic bands around 160 and 320 years where they interact significantly with each other. Temperature cooling shows direct positive association with the frequency of external aggression war to the Chinese dynasties mostly from the northern pastoral nomadic societies, and indirect positive association with the frequency of internal war within the Chinese dynasties through drought and locust plagues. The collapses of the agricultural dynasties of the Han, Tang, Song and Ming are more closely associated with low temperature. Our study suggests that food production during the last two millennia has been more unstable during cooler periods, resulting in more social conflicts owing to rebellions within the dynasties or/and southward aggressions from northern pastoral nomadic societies in ancient China.

Language: en