Volcanic eruptions can have disastrous eff ects far beyond
their immediate vicinity. Ash or other debris in the atmo-
sphere reduces the amount of sunlight reaching the earth,
thus lowering the temperature in the aff ected area. Less sun-
light means smaller crops, and lower temperatures can pro-
duce shift s in patterns of precipitation, leading to either
fl ooding or drought. Soil debris from Mesopotamia suggests
that some sort of catastrophic event—perhaps a volcanic
eruption or even a meteorite impact—occurred in the Near
East around 2350 b.c.e. Some scientists have speculated that
this event caused an abrupt climatic change in the area, in
turn leading to a change of dynasties in southern Mesopota-
mia. However, the climate change appears to have occurred
over the course of some 100 years following the mysterious
catastrophe, making it unlikely that this single event caused
the shift in weather patterns.
Seismic disturbances are not the only catastrophes linked
with shift s in cultures. Probably as a result of the renewed in-
terest in comets in the 1990s, some scientists have attempted
to explain cultural changes in the Near East as the long-term
consequences of comet impacts. For example, there is a great
deal of evidence for sudden climate changes (leading to wide-
spread drought) and changes in water levels of seas and lakes,
disastrous fl oods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions in
the third millennium b.c.e. Scientists have suggested vari-
ous explanations, including a comet or asteroid exploding in
the earth’s atmosphere, as is believed to have happened near
Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908. Th e power of such an explosion
or impact, equivalent to thousands of atomic bombs, could
have produced huge fi res, seismic tremors, tsunamis, and
gargantuan clouds of debris. Such an event would have been
universally seen as a message from the gods, would doubtless
have been recorded as a notable event in any king’s reign, and
probably also would have been transformed into myth, but
clear written evidence is lacking.
Despite the frequency of earthquakes, not to mention
windstorms and sandstorms, drought, and (in some areas)
wildfi res, the one type of natural disaster that had the most
impact on all the cultures of the ancient Near East is fl oods,
or rather the story of the Flood, which appears in the litera-
ture of ancient Mesopotamia as well as the Bible. Swirling
fl oodwaters are an integral part of every ancient story of cre-
ation from Egypt to Babylonia. Symbolically they represent
the chaos from which order can emerge and which the cre-
ator deity tames and transforms into something benefi cial.
However, many scholars see these stories as refl ections of real
events.
Th e earliest-known stories of a fl ood that covered all the
earth are told in several ancient Mesopotamian epics. In one
version a man called Ut-napishtim is warned by Ea, god of
wisdom and of freshwaters, that the gods are angry with hu-
mans and that the chief god, Enlil, is about to fl ood the earth
in order to get some peace and quiet. Ea gives Ut-napishtim
interesting directions on how to build a boat (for example,
it is to be in the form of a cube) and tells him to go into the
vessel with his family and a few animals. Enlil, assisted by the
storm god and the god of the Underworld, fl oods the earth
from both above and below, eff ectively killing all those irri-
tating human beings and forcing even the gods themselves to
fl ee. Ut-napishtim and his family and livestock fl oat off into
the Zagros Mountains, where aft er seven days they eventually
come aground on the sides of a high peak.
Although this story was lost for thousands of years, when
it was rediscovered it was immediately familiar to anyone
who had read the biblical book of Genesis. In both cases a
man who is wiser and godlier than others is chosen to survive
the destruction of humankind by an angry deity. Like Ut-na-
pishtim, Noah is divinely warned of the impending disaster.
He, too, builds a huge boat according to divine direction and
fi lls it with animals. Th e fl ood described in the Bible, how-
ever, lasts 40 days and 40 nights rather than just one week,
and Noah brings with him pairs of living creatures. Noah’s
Ark also ends up in a slightly diff erent set of mountains, those
of Ararat.
Modern scholars have made many attempts to relate the
ancient fl ood stories to scientifi cally documented phenomena
such as the era of rainy weather that followed the last ice age,
but without any conclusive result. Th is uncertainty is unsur-
prising, given that the story is about 5,000 years old and the
events it chronicles are probably much older—typical of the
problems that face those historians and scientists known as
catastrophists, who try to connect ancient natural disasters
with specifi c historical events.ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
Th e ancient people of Australia off er a good example of how
hunter-gatherer cultures learned to cope with natural disas-
ters. Australia is a vast territory with a variety of habitats
such as rain forest, grassland, and desert. Its weather cycles
can last for years at a time, which means that its droughts
can persist for several years. Australia is also prone to wild-
fi res that can burn hundreds of square miles of territory at a
time. Still, the ancient Australians learned to live with both
drought and fi re.
Th e ancient Australians were mobile and lived in small
groups. During good times they had more than they could
eat available to them because of their minimal population;
during droughts their low population density allowed them
to fi nd enough to at least survive. Droughts meant not only a
decrease in t he amount of food t hat wou ld ot her w ise be avail-
able but also dry forests and grasslands. Lightning could easily
start fi res. Th e ancient Australians sometimes ventured near
fi res rather than running away, because a fi re drove game out
into the open, which they would kill or capture for food. Aft er
fi res burned out, what might look desolate to outsiders was for
the Australians a potential bounty because among the earliest
plants to appear would be edible ones—especially those that
had evolved to cope with drought by retaining water, which778 natural disasters: Asia and the Pacific