The 8.2 kiloyear event
The last great meltwater flood cools the world for two centuries, and early farmers feel it.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 400 years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Around 6200 BCE the final drainage of glacial Lake Agassiz-Ojibway into the North Atlantic weakens overturning circulation and cools the Northern Hemisphere by several degrees for two to four centuries, with drought across the Near East and North Africa. Fat residues in Anatolian pottery record the shift directly, and several Near Eastern settlements are abandoned or reorganised. It is the sharpest climate disruption of the Holocene, and the first to hit societies that could not simply move.