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Climate change caused by volcanic eruptions has been linked to the downfall of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC:
A series of volcanic eruptions may have helped bring about the downfall of the last Egyptian dynasty 2,000 years ago.
By suppressing the monsoons that swelled the Nile River each summer, triggering flooding that supported the region's agriculture, the eruptions probably helped usher in an era of periodic revolts [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00957-y] [DX], researchers report online October 17 in Nature Communications. That upheaval ultimately doomed the dynasty that ruled Egypt's Ptolemaic Kingdom for nearly 300 years until the death of Cleopatra.
[...] Manning and colleagues pored over historical texts from Ptolemaic Egypt, comparing periods of unrest with the volcanic record in the ice cores. Eruptions coincided with the onset of many recorded revolts. Political instability, famine and drought may have come to a head around 44 B.C., when Italy's Mount Etna erupted explosively. The Ptolemaic dynasty soon came to a close in 30 B.C. with Cleopatra's suicide.
Also at Live Science and The Washington Post (archive).
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @11:09PM (6 children)
... with a female CEO. Factually true (even if it doesn't fit the PC agenda) so fire me Google.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday October 21 2017, @12:08AM (5 children)
Sorry, but the cause was because Cleopatra didn't want to marry her stupid brother. So she looked for an outside source of power. Call it discord in the executive suite if you want to, but the proximate cause wasn't bad management.
Now as to whether volcano caused crop failures contributed, that's a reasonable possibility. But the level of local unrest wasn't (at that point) sufficient to topple the government.
As to whether the Ptolemies count as Ancient Egyptians, that depends on how you define ancient. Roman times is old enough for me to consider them so, but there were certainly earlier dynasties. They weren't even the oldest non-native dynasty. That "honor" probably goes to the Hittites.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday October 21 2017, @12:40AM (4 children)
I'll join your chorus of singing bullshit.
You miss a flood or even a couple years of flood isn't going to yield crop reductions. You need sustained periods of non-flooded fields to see soil depletion sufficient to affect crops. In that latitude even ash darkened skies and lower temps would not have that much affect on crops.
But if your rulers claimed the equivalence of Gods, yet they couldn't manage a little ash cloud, well, maybe they weren't as powerful and divine as they claimed....
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 21 2017, @01:58AM
If the society had expanded to require the food capacity of "good" crop yield years, and a few consecutive bad years happened - the Nile is surrounded by desert, they can't just plant bigger fields.
Hungry people are cranky, and bad for dynasties.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 21 2017, @02:33AM (1 child)
Maybe. I have read other articles which attribute dynastic changes to climate changes. China lead the list of dynasty changes during climate change, if I recall correctly.
There may or may not be civil unrest before or even after a dynasty change, and there may or may not be valid reasons for unrest. But, when people start to go hungry, crazy stuff happens. If families start burying starved children, there are definitely changes in the wind.
I haven't read TFA, maybe the authors know what they are talking about, maybe they don't. But two or more years of serious crop failure may easily lead to a dynasty change. Imagine the US if corn and wheat both failed two to ten years running. The place would be a madhouse, maybe worse than what we read of the Soviet Union. Maybe as bad as North Korea. Hungry people aren't necessarily reasonable people.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday October 21 2017, @03:37AM
Yea, we'd be whining about how we had to pay more for Ukrainian wheat or whatever. Developed world has this stuff covered. It's places like Africa and Asia that would have the real problems with a global famine.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 21 2017, @05:06PM
That's not what I mean. There *may* have been crop failures and famines due to the volcano. But there are good historic records for that period, and the military invasion of the Romans was inspired because Egypt was the area's predominant exporter of grain. I didn't run across any mention of massive civil unrest, what I ran across was that Cleopatra disliked her brother and didn't want to marry him, so she was looking for some way out. She had to sneak out to meet with Caesar to enlist his support. She thought a military conquest by a foreign power was better than marrying her brother . (At least as long as she got to keep her throne. I doubt that she counted on a parade in chains through the streets of Rome.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.