A detailed climatic context for the growth and decay of Cretan Civilisations

克里坦岛的地貌是复杂的地质过程的结果，导致该岛在大约300万至400万年前的上新世时期从海洋中浮现(McEnroe，2010)。该岛的地形、气候和花卉种类繁多。整个地中海地形都集中在长约250公里、宽只有60公里的陆地上，这就是例证(McEnroe，2010)。此外，在过去的几千年里，克里坦地貌是许多文化兴衰的家园。最著名的是米诺斯人，他们在整个青铜时代都在岛上蓬勃发展。众所周知，米诺斯文明在青铜时代(公元前1315-1190年)末期(德雷克2012)崩溃。宫殿系统的崩溃被归因于许多不同的因素，既有人的因素，也有环境的因素(Drake 2012)。一些故意的原因包括大量人口迁移、经济体系崩溃、导致该地区一系列地震的构造不稳定，以及气候变化，例如青铜时代末期拟议的干旱事件，这可能导致该地区的干旱加剧(Drake 2012)。尽管青铜时代末期的崩溃受到了最多的关注，因为它标志着克里特岛最重要的文化之一的终结，但在随后的时期里，我们继续看到各种文化和遗址的成长和遗弃。总体而言，在研究文化崩溃时，有许多不同的因素需要考虑，但最受关注的范式往往是环境崩溃(Middleton 2012)。虽然气候变化和多样性会对人类社会产生影响是理所当然的，但整个克里特岛过去所看到的社会崩溃可以等同于气候变化的程度可能有些夸张。目前，我们有克里特岛的古气候记录，记录了过去10,000年来的重大气候变化和事件。同样，我们也知道，人类对该岛的占领在塑造该区域的生态系统方面发挥了重要作用。然而，仍然需要该地区准确的、高分辨率的和空间分布的古气候记录。在社会变迁和气候之间得出的结论往往是以具有很大年代性不确定性的古气候重建为基础的，或者由于克里特岛目前存在的古气候数据不足而使用低分辨率的记录。因此，为了更好地了解社会变迁和气候变迁之间的联系，以及我们在多大程度上可以将克里特岛的社会崩溃与环境因素等同起来，我们必须进一步研究整个地区的气候变化。该项目的目标是：利用克里特岛过去10,000年的洞穴记录产生高分辨率、年代准确的气候记录。抑制更有可能影响克里特岛人类社会的季节性到十年尺度的极端气候事件(干旱、野火)。综合该岛现有的气候和考古数据。研究问题：气候在塑造克里特岛文明方面发挥了作用吗？

The Cretan landscape is a result of complex geological processes that resulted in the island's emergence from the sea some three to four million years ago, during the Pliocene era (McEnroe, 2010). The topographic, climate, and floral diversity of the island is immense. This is exemplified by the fact that the entire range of Mediterranean topography can be found condensed on its land mass that spans around 250 km long and only 60 km wide (McEnroe 2010).Moreover, during the last few millennia, the Cretan landscape has been home to both the growth and decay of many cultures. Most famously the Minoans, who flourished on the island throughout the Bronze Age. As is widely known, the Minoan civilization collapsed at the end of the Bronze age (1315-1190 BCE) (Drake 2012). This collapse of the palatial system has been attributed to many different factors both human and environmentally driven (Drake 2012). Some purposed causes include large population migrations, economic system collapse, tectonic instabilities that led to a series of earthquakes throughout the region, and shifts in the climate such as the proposed drought event at the end of the Bronze Age that could have led to heightened aridity in the region (Drake 2012). Although the collapse at the end of the Bronze Age is given most of the attention as it marked the end of one of the most important cultures of Crete, in the subsequent periods we continue to see the growth and abandonment of various cultures and sites. Overall, there are a lot of different factors to consider when investigating the collapse of cultures, but the paradigm that tends to receive the most focus is environmental collapse (Middleton 2012). While it is a given that climate change and diversity would have had an impact on human societies, the extent to which societal collapse seen throughout Crete's past can be equated to shifts in the climate might be somewhat exaggerated.As of right now, we have palaeoclimate records from Crete that document significant climate shifts and events during the last 10,000 years. Likewise, we also know that human occupation on the island played an important role in shaping the ecosystem of the region. However, there is a still a need for well-dated, high-resolution, and spatially distributed palaeoclimatic records for the region. Often conclusions drawn between societal shifts and climate are based on palaeoclimate reconstructions with large chronological uncertainties or using low-resolution records due to the deficiency of the paleoclimate data that currently exists for Crete. So, in the pursuit to better understand the connection between societal shifts and climatic shifts and to what extent we can equate societal collapse in Crete to environmental factors, we must further investigate climate variations throughout the region.Project Aims:Produce high-resolution, well-dated climate records using speleothems from Crete that cover the last 10,000 years.Constrain the seasonal to decadal-scale extreme climate events (droughts, wildfires) that are more likely to have impacted human societies on Crete.Synthesizing the existing climatic and archaeological data for the island.Research question: Did climate play a role in shaping Cretan civilization?