Science Diary: Exploring Tibet – Monsoon Politics

Music; Ambience: sound of rain, thunderstorm, storm

JM: Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. We’re in Tibet with Anthropologist Mark Aldenderfer. One of the questions he’s pursuing is how a change in weather might have changed a culture.

MA: “Presently I’m in Lhasa, Tibet preparing to go out to far western Tibet in the area known as Ngari to begin to conduct my archaeological field research to look at what appears to be a significant and abrupt shift in the intensity of the Asian monsoon at about 1300AD. “

JM: The summer monsoon winds typically bring heavy rains to the region.

MA: The paleo-climate records of the region indicate that something happened to the monsoon, meaning that it didn’t rain as much across the Himalayan arc, it rained less, it rained more intensely. The question then becomes: what kinds of changes this effected in the nature of the political and social systems of the people living in Tibet around 1300AD. What we’re trying to do with this is understand something about the dynamics of human response to past climatic events, we can also begin then to look at how those changes could be used to understand how people in the future might also then be able to respond to similar sorts of events. Now obviously we’re looking at two very different kinds of societies: thirteen hundred year old Tibet is not the same as modern day Tibet. Having said that, these still are subsistence farmers and herders, and what we can look at is the nature of political change and how the monsoon affects and disrupts their lives, and then use this to understand how we might help decision makers who might be confronted with this kind of situation in the future.

JM: This understanding may soon be helpful in our time. One of the predicted impacts of global climate change is an increase in monsoon intensity. Pulse of the Planet Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation.

Science Diary: Exploring Tibet - Monsoon Politics

Climate change thousands of years ago may have changed a culture.

Air Date:05/14/2007

Scientist:

Transcript:

Science Diary: Exploring Tibet - Monsoon Politics

Music; Ambience: sound of rain, thunderstorm, storm

JM: Welcome to Pulse of the Planet's Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. We're in Tibet with Anthropologist Mark Aldenderfer. One of the questions he's pursuing is how a change in weather might have changed a culture.

MA: "Presently I'm in Lhasa, Tibet preparing to go out to far western Tibet in the area known as Ngari to begin to conduct my archaeological field research to look at what appears to be a significant and abrupt shift in the intensity of the Asian monsoon at about 1300AD. "

JM: The summer monsoon winds typically bring heavy rains to the region.

MA: The paleo-climate records of the region indicate that something happened to the monsoon, meaning that it didn't rain as much across the Himalayan arc, it rained less, it rained more intensely. The question then becomes: what kinds of changes this effected in the nature of the political and social systems of the people living in Tibet around 1300AD. What we're trying to do with this is understand something about the dynamics of human response to past climatic events, we can also begin then to look at how those changes could be used to understand how people in the future might also then be able to respond to similar sorts of events. Now obviously we're looking at two very different kinds of societies: thirteen hundred year old Tibet is not the same as modern day Tibet. Having said that, these still are subsistence farmers and herders, and what we can look at is the nature of political change and how the monsoon affects and disrupts their lives, and then use this to understand how we might help decision makers who might be confronted with this kind of situation in the future.

JM: This understanding may soon be helpful in our time. One of the predicted impacts of global climate change is an increase in monsoon intensity. Pulse of the Planet Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation.