778 natural disasters: Asia and the Pacific Volcanic eruptions can have disastrous effects far beyond their immediate vicinity Ash or other debris in the atmosphere reduces the amount of sunlight reaching the earth, thus lowering the temperature in the affected area Less sunlight means smaller crops, and lower temperatures can produce shifts in patterns of precipitation, leading to either flooding 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 Mesopotamia 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 shifts in cultures Probably as a result of the renewed interest 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 widespread drought) and changes in water levels of seas and lakes, disastrous floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions in the third millennium b.c.e Scientists have suggested various explanations, including a comet or asteroid exploding in the earth’s atmosphere, as is believed to have happened near Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908 The power of such an explosion or impact, equivalent to thousands of atomic bombs, could have produced huge fires, 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) wildfires, the one type of natural disaster that had the most impact on all the cultures of the ancient Near East is floods, or rather the story of the Flood, which appears in the literature of ancient Mesopotamia as well as the Bible Swirling floodwaters are an integral part of every ancient story of creation from Egypt to Babylonia Symbolically they represent the chaos from which order can emerge and which the creator deity tames and transforms into something beneficial However, many scholars see these stories as reflections of real events The earliest-known stories of a flood 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 humans and that the chief god, Enlil, is about to flood 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, floods the earth from both above and below, effectively killing all those irritating human beings and forcing even the gods themselves to flee Ut-napishtim and his family and livestock float off into the Zagros Mountains, where after 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-napishtim, Noah is divinely warned of the impending disaster He, too, builds a huge boat according to divine direction and fi lls it with animals The flood described in the Bible, however, 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 different set of mountains, those of Ararat Modern scholars have made many attempts to relate the ancient flood stories to scientifically documented phenomena such as the era of rainy weather that followed the last ice age, but without any conclusive result This uncertainty is unsurprising, 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 specific historical events ASIA AND THE PACIFIC BY KIRK H BEETZ The ancient people of Australia offer a good example of how hunter-gatherer cultures learned to cope with natural disasters 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 wildfires that can burn hundreds of square miles of territory at a time Still, the ancient Australians learned to live with both drought and fire The 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 find enough to at least survive Droughts meant not only a decrease in the amount of food that would otherwise be available but also dry forests and grasslands Lightning could easily start fires The ancient Australians sometimes ventured near fires rather than running away, because a fire drove game out into the open, which they would kill or capture for food After fires 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, which