2026 JULY ISSUE
5000 YEARS OF CLIMATE
AND CIVILIZATION
A STORY OF RESILIENCE
Written by ANDREW SIA
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From the Desk of the Publisher
It was my personal interest to know what it was like in the Middle East about 5000 years ago. The deeper I try to investigate; I found that it was very different from what it is today. In 3000 BC, our Earth’s population was 15-30 million. But today, we are talking about 8.3 billion.
Our world’s population is projected to reach 10 billion around 2060 according to data from the United Nations Population Division.
I hope that this piece can stir up more interest to understand our civilization and eventually learn to have more humanity. We have to learn how to respect our Earth and our Mother Nature.
The Middle East Before the Biblical Times
The Climate Situation in the Middle East in General
The Middle East was not one gigantic desert before biblical times. In fact, different parts of the region had very different environments. We can refer to the following places during those historic times.
Levant (modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan): Much of it had Mediterranean woodland, grasslands, fertile valleys, and agricultural areas. The Jordan Valley and coastal plains could be quite fertile.
Mesopotamia (modern Iraq): The Tigris and Euphrates supported extremely productive agriculture. This is one reason some of the world’s earliest cities and civilizations developed there.
Arabian Peninsula: Large portions were already arid or desert, although the climate changed considerably over thousands of years. Some areas that are desert today were once significantly greener.
Mesopotamia (modern Iraq): The Tigris and Euphrates supported extremely productive agriculture. This is one reason some of the world’s earliest cities and civilizations developed there.
Northern Middle East: Areas around Anatolia, northern Syria, and northern Mesopotamia had more rainfall and supported substantial grasslands and agriculture.
There is also an important distinction between “biblical time” and earlier prehistorical time. The Bible covers a broad period, roughly from the second millennium BCE onward depending on which events you mean. Climate in the region changed repeatedly during that time.
So, the picture isn’t the fertile Middle East suddenly became desert, rather the Middle East has always contained a mixture of deserts, semi-arid lands, forests, grasslands, and fertile river/coastal regions, with the boundaries shifting over time.
What Could Have Happened
Drying of the land in the Middle East occurred due to the climate transformation occurred thousands of years before the known biblical characters of Abraham, Moses, and David.
After the last Ice Age, approximately 10,000 to 6,000 BC, North Africa and parts of the Middle East were wetter than today. The scientists called this the African Humid Period. Sahara contained extensive grasslands, lakes, and rivers, and neighboring regions of Arabia and the New East also experienced wetter conditions.
Then our Earth’s orbital configuration gradually changed. Northern Hemisphere summer sunlight weakened, the African and Asian monsoon systems retreated southward, and rainfall declined. The African Humid Period ended broadly around 5500 to 3500 BC, although the transition varied considerably by region. Around 4000 BC, with the drying beginning earlier and continuing unevenly afterward.
We have to know that the Middle East was never uniformly green, and also not uniformly became desert.
The famous Fertile Crescent stretched through Mesopotamia and the Levant as the water remained available from rainfall and also supported by the major river systems. As we mentioned before the Tigris and Euphrates supported the Mesopotamian agriculture. The Nile supported Egypt. The Mediterranean facing Levant received substantially more rainfall than the desert areas east and south of it.
This allowed the Sumer to produce extraordinary agricultural surpluses even within an increasingly arid climate largely through their sophisticated irrigation system.
There is also strong paleoclimate evidence for a severe episode of aridity around 4,200 years ago which is about 2200 BC, whereas it brought down the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, and also let to political instability, warfare, migration, and economic challenges, together with environmental distress.
By the period of Abraham in the traditional biblical chronology, roughly at the early 2000 BC, the Near East was already known for its arid climate.
Biblical description of Canaan as a productive land and the hilly country could support vineyards and olive trees. Grains were grown in its valleys, pastoral lands supported sheep and goats, and the Jordan Valley was agriculturally important.
In Deuteronomy 8:7-9 gives us a wonderful environmental description: “A land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey.”
This is the typical Mediterranean agriculture with crops that we would expect from the climate and ecology of the ancient Levant.
Global Trade’s Situation
El Niño is a natural climate cycle. It arises from interactions between the tropical Pacific Ocean with influences arise with the atmosphere that have occurred for thousands of years. It has been long before our modern industrial society. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) emphasizes that humans do not cause El Niño and La Niña.
Human greenhouse gas emissions are raising Earth’s underlying temperature. This warmer background can influence the consequences of El Niño. Especially the heat and extreme-weather impacts, even though scientists are cautious about how global warming can change El Niño’s frequency or its intensity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rates the confidence in observed human-caused changes to El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability as low.
Having said that, today’s global warming which the human influence raises the climatic baseline, and the natural phenomenal such as El Niño and La Niña are brought up.
Forecasters are saying that there is an 81% chance the current developing El Niño will become a super event which can potentially rivaling the most powerful climate shocks in history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projects a 97% probability that this system will persist through early spring 2027, with central Pacific Ocean’s irregularity to peak at a record-breaking 4.1°C above average. Because this system is arriving on top of the already unprecedented global ocean warming, meteorologists warn that it will act as a major climate stress test with severe cascading impacts.
This guarantees a massive atmospheric heat dump, positioning 2027 to become the hottest year on record. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns a widespread, intense heatwaves and severe ecosystem stress. Strong wind would likely to surpass Atlantic hurricane development while fueling highly active Pacific hurricane.
In the United States, stormier, wetter winter across California and the southern states, while the unusually warm, snow-deficient winter across the northern states.
South America will face destructive storms and heavy rainfall in Peru, Ecuador, and Chile, while severe drought will threaten northern Brazil.
South Asia will have the weakened monsoons, but extreme drought and wildfire risks across Indonesia and Australia.
Africa will suffer severe drought across Southern Africa. But the Eastern Africa will have to deal with flood-inducing rains.
These climatic changes will bring a potential 15.8% surge in global food commodity prices due to agricultural disruption. The core crops will have 10 to 50% production shock, threatening hundreds of billions in agricultural losses.
The logistic bottlenecks will be drastically changed the river and ocean levels. This will chock shipping networks, causing supply chain constrains that could last into 2028. Already we have seen the Panama Canal, the 112-year-old canal, is cutting transits due to the low rainfall. The daily numbers of ship transits will allow 32 vessels to pass daily from September 15, compare with its current 36 vessels every day. The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and carries more than 3% of the global maritime trade. Already measures like reduce the loading of the vessels in order to contend with lower water levels. The drought has already happened between 2023 and 2024.
Conclusion
The history of the Middle East reminds us that the Earth’s climate has never been completely static. Natural climatic changes transformed landscapes and challenged civilizations thousands of years before our time. El Niño reminds us that powerful natural climate cycles continue today. But we learn from modern humanity that another factor—human-caused global warming—which is raising the background temperature upon which these natural variations now operate.
History teaches us not that humanity caused every climate change, but that civilization must respect the environment, know its vulnerability, and act responsibly toward the world entrusted to us.
We have to know that the population on Earth, five thousand years ago, which is around 3000 BC, was estimated within a very reasonable range of about 15-30 million people. Today, we are looking at roughly 8.3 billion. This is about 300-500 times as many human beings as the world in 3000 BC.
When a prolonged drought affected an ancient population, the consequences could certainly become catastrophic to a local area with crop failure, famine, migration, warfare, and even the collapse of settlements. But the need for water, food, and land were comparatively small with today’s number.
Today’s 8.3 billion people require food, freshwater, housing, transportation, and energy, and already big cities are threatened by the scarcity of water. There are millions of people who are living along those vulnerable coastlines. We are under climate pressure, vast population, and consumptions of all kinds.
Our Earth has endured enormous changes over its approximately 4.5 billion years and went through ice ages, warming periods, shifting of continents, change of oceans and waterways, volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, and dramatic changes in atmospheric conditions.
We may say that our Earth is resilient, and so is our human civilization. We must learn to respect our Earth and live in harmony with our Mother Nature.