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Wherever the researchers looked throughout the area, they found the same story: abandoned buildings and layers of volcanic ash and debris from fierce wind storms. After 300 years, when the rains returned, so did the people. The telltale scars of scarcity eventually were buried under 15 feet of new dirt. A new empire, whose capital was Babylon, arose and fell. Today the region is flush once again with wheat fields.
Did the volcano cause the ancient drought? "That's unlikely," Weiss says. "Volcanos are not known to generate climatic changes of this duration or intensity." So, with one mystery solved, researchers find themselves trying to explain how a drought can persist for three centuries. At least one thing seems certain. The ancient Mesopotamians did not cause the heavens to dry up. That raises the ominous possibility that it could happen again. And that modern humanity, by dumping pollutants into the atmosphere, is tinkering with a climatic system more complex and random than humans have realized.