Insignificant World Cup playoff? Moroccans think otherwise

Both sides will go home without the trophy, but finishing third in World Cup 2022 will mean a lot for Moroccans.

Thousands have travelled to Qatar to watch Morocco in action

 [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

By Faras Ghani

Published On 17 Dec 2022

Doha, Qatar – It is the first of the three Ms in action on the penultimate day of World Cup 2022, the one that the world, football fans and those plotting the moves up there least expected to still be among the call-outs.

Messi and Mbappe can wait. Morocco will be taking centre stage on Saturday, hoping to finish the fairytale run in Qatar with achievements unprecedented.

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Morocco will take on Croatia at Khalifa International Stadium in the third-place playoff at Qatar 2022.

Croatia failed to match, or better, their 2018 outing where they lost in the final to France.

Morocco, meanwhile, have reached unprecedented heights, won millions of hearts and gained followers more rapidly than a new pop sensation on Instagram in the historical run to the last four.

For a team that was not used to winning much, especially at a World Cup, the sight of downing Belgium, Canada, Spain and Portugal gave its followers hope.

Moroccan players were dejected after their loss to France in the semifinal

 [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

Since beating Belgium, Morocco hoped for a last-16 slot. Expectations grew when they beat Spain. Fantasy gave way to belief after beating Portugal. For a team that, at first, annoyed their opposition, then alarmed them, had finally left them aghast, gaining as much momentum as rolling down a hill as they eyed the final.

Until they faced France. At Al Bayt Stadium on Wednesday, the dream did not materialise in the way Morocco wanted, perhaps due to the introduction of a new football, the occasion or just the gulf in skills between the two sets of players.

Despite the heartbreak, Morocco fans are hoping for a winning end to their World Cup, one that has already been an extension of a dream of a lifetime.

“Whatever happens now, it’ won’t take away from what they’ve done, they made history,” Omer, visiting Doha from Casablanca for the World Cup, told Al Jazeera.

“It [the World Cup campaign] started with Croatia, it will end with Croatia. I hope we beat them this time [the group stage match ended 0-0]. I hope we finish well. But whatever happens, we’re super proud of the team; we’re fully behind them and we’re supporting them.”

Morocco fans have enjoyed every minute of their team’s show at Qatar 2022 

[Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

A French masterclass on the pitch ensured the Atlas Lions will not finish higher than third in the World Cup. But they can take third, a final position that was unthinkable by most at the start of the tournament for the 22nd-ranked side.

“Winning matters. The team didn’t make it to the final but it won’t give up,” Amine, also visiting Qatar from Morocco, said. “The team’s performance has changed mindsets everywhere. There’s a winning mentality now and it’s refreshing to see that. A win on Saturday will make a massive difference back home.”

For Imane, a Moroccan living in Paris, a win on Saturday “holds a lot of meaning”.

“It might not seem like much, but getting third place is actually important for us and it holds a lot of meaning because it shows that Morocco’s journey at the World Cup, as historical as it was, was not just luck but the result of the players’ effort and the supporters’ faith,” she said.

“It does matter to me,” Ilham, a Moroccan citizen residing in Qatar, said. “I want to see them win third place. They deserve it. They’ve made us so happy and I want them to be happy.”

For some, the loss against France failed to take the gloss off Morocco’s run to the last four where they became the first team from Africa to reach the semifinals of the World Cup.

“This is football, that’s how it works,” Fatima, a Moroccan supporter, said after the 2-0 loss on Wednesday. “But we’re really proud of the team. Moroccan football has totally changed now. This is not a loss, no way. We are the champions.”

Morocco fans celebrating in the stands [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

Yasmina, a Qatar resident from Morocco, thinks winning third place would be “amazing and honourable”.

“We’ve already won a lot during this World Cup: pride, unity, solidarity and momentum,” she said.

“But I think the pressure is less and the stress is way smaller on Saturday. I’d love Morocco to beat Croatia but no matter what happens they are my champions.”

With the amount of football, competitions and other happenings in life, most tend to forget the losing finalists of a World Cup let alone the team that finishes third. Losing a semifinal is shattering enough but to park away the memories and prepare for one more match, which will not allow you to relive your dreams, can be demanding for the mind and the body.

For Moroccan fans though, a win on Saturday will be the year-end bonus that nobody had asked their bosses for.

Precious Māori artefacts on display in Stuttgart museum

An exhibition of precious Māori taonga, curated by Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis from the University of Auckland and an expert team, is going on display at a German museum for six months.

Business Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

 

IMAGE: A KAIRAKA PAEPAEROA (DRESS CLOAK) AT THE LINDEN MUSEUM view more 

CREDIT: KAITAKA PAEPAEROA (DRESS CLOAK). IMAGE: LINDEN MUSEUM, STUTTGART. CREDIT: DOMINIK DRASDOW

A rare wharenui (meeting house) made by Te Arawa (Rotorua), hei-tiki, pounamu, wooden and bone carvings, cloaks and other textiles will all be part of Across Time, Place and People, Whakawhananaungatanga Connecting tāonga Maori, an exhibition opening on 11 December at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.

Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou), an art historian specialising in Māori art, says the museum has a permanent collection of more than 100 Māori treasures, of which the earliest would be from around the late 18th century through to some contemporary pieces, so the chance to curate an exhibition of this kind is “phenomenal”.

“This is an extremely exciting opportunity for us which happened as a result of the Oceanic curator at the museum, who I met through another event, saying he had funding from the German government to do a project on provenance [a record of ownership of a piece of art or antique] and would like to have a coffee with me when he visited New Zealand on other museum business.”

And they met pre-Covid around late 2019, where they discussed the museum’s plan to create eight exhibitions from around the world called the Linden Lab, each focused on a different aspect of the museum’s collection and to be curated by the people whose cultural heritage the pieces represented.

The team from Aoteaora is led by Dr Ellis and comprises Awhina Tamarapa (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Pikiao) a museum curator and writer in the field of museum studies, Dougal Austin (Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu, Waitaha) a senior curator Matauranga Māori at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and University of Auckland doctoral student Justine Treadwell, whose PhD is on 18th century Māori cloaks in European collections.

Mere pounamu (greenstone cleaver). Image: Linden Museum, Stuttgart. Credit: Dominik Drasdow

CREDIT

Mere pounamu (greenstone cleaver). Image: Linden Museum, Stuttgart. Credit: Dominik Drasdow

Working within the overarching theme of whakawhananaungatanga [process of establishing relationships], each Aotearoa-based curator has a different area in the exhibition assigned according to their expertise. Associate Professor Ellis will oversee a selection of whale bone carving, hei-tiki and waka huia (treasure boxes), Awhina Tamarapa's focus is connections between leading cultural practitioners and practice, greenstone expert Dougal Austin is looking at pounamu and Justine Treadwell's focus is cloaks and connections to the natural world.

How these taonga came to be in European collections in the first place is the subject of “lots of stories” and some controversy, says Dr Ellis.

“We don't know much about what is in collections of countries that don’t have English as a first language; we know very little about what’s in France, Germany or Italy for instance, and so there needs to be a lot of work done there.”

However Dr Ellis says it was common practice, before the Māori Antiquities Act of 1901 (amended in 1904, and created to stop the trade in Māori antiquities by insisting they be given to the New Zealand government or attract a fine of up to £100) for European collectors to go on worldwide expeditions for artefacts, acquiring them in deals that seldom reflected their true value.

“When the Prince of Wales (later to become King George V) came to New Zealand in 1901 on a royal tour, for example, people were surprised at the number of taonga that Māori were giving him to take back to England, and they said, ‘Hang on what's happening here? This needs to be regulated’, and that led to the passing of the Act.”

At the turn of the 20th century, she says museums were just getting their Māori collections together and curators and collectors from places like Germany were coming to New Zealand looking for pieces because prices were becoming exorbitant in Europe and they knew how precious these items were.

“Collectors also realised Māori culture was changing very rapidly and the number of taonga from pre-European times was limited,” says Dr Ellis.

From her point of view, the most exciting piece in the Linden exhibition is the wharenui. “This meeting house was made in the late 19th century by carvers from Te Arawa who are known for their carving and weaving skills, as well as being traders and entrepreneurs.”

About the Linden Museum

The Linden Museum is a public, ethnological museum in Stuttgart, Germany which houses
cultural treasures from around the world, including South and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Islamic world from the Near East to Pakistan, China and Japan, as well as artefacts from North and Latin America and Oceania.

The museum traces its origins to the collection of objects amassed by the Verein für Handelsgeographie (Association for Trade Geography) in the 19th century. The museum’s namesake is Karl Graf von Linden (1838–1910) who, as president of the Stuttgart Verein für Handelsgeographie, took an interest in assembling and organising the collection and invited explorers like Sven Hedin and Roald Amundsen to Stuttgart.

“Te Arawa sold the house to collectors knowing their master carvers could always create another one. The same iwi also created the wharenui in Hamburg at the museum there, and another Hinemihi in southern England which is coming home soon.”

Dr Ellis says there’s “a lot of willingness” by European curators and museums to welcome Indigenous researchers into their collections, but they often don't know who to contact.

“Up until the last couple of weeks [when three of the four curators from New Zealand have been flown to Stuttgart to oversee the exhibition’s installation] we’ve been working remotely with a team of designers, curators and conservators who’ve been very welcoming. However due to Covid-related delays, what was meant to be a two-year process has been squashed into five months!”

 

Philosopher awarded Royal Society medal on what we owe people in the future

What do we owe people in the future? This question has been the focus of Professor Tim Mulgan's distinguished research career.

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

A professor of philosophy in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland, Dr Mulgan is the 2022 recipient of the Humanities Aronui Medal from the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

He says thinking about how we can extend current ethical thinking, which focuses on what we owe to one another to cover the many new ways in which we can influence the lives of future people involves “fascinating philosophical puzzles” driven by the fact that the very existence and identity of future people depend on our present decisions.

“Can you harm someone by your actions if they would otherwise never have existed at all, for example? And there is also the pressing, practical question of how we should balance the interests of people in the present against the interests of those in the future.”

His research on cosmic purpose arose indirectly from a teaching experience at the University of Auckland. “In 2003 I was teaching a course on the existence of God in our first-year metaphysics course (PHIL 100). We worked our way through a series of arguments for and against the existence of God that have been central to Western philosophy for much of the last 2000 years.

“Looking at these arguments in quick succession, I was struck by the thought that, even if they succeed, most traditional theist arguments only enable us to conclude that there is a God of some kind, while these same arguments would also only prove there is not a God who cares about us.

“This leaves open a third alternative: that there is a God (or other source of cosmic purpose), but that we are irrelevant to that purpose. This thought eventually led to my 2015 book Purpose in the Universe.”

He says the connection between the two projects is that a particular challenge in the field of future ethics is motivation. “How can we motivate present people to make the sacrifices that we owe to future people? My tentative answer is that we need the human future to link our own lives in meaningful ways to the purpose of the universe.”

One strand of his research imagines possible futures – damaged by climate change or facing imminent extinction – and asks how philosophers living in those futures might respond to our current philosophy and behaviour.

U.S. firearm death trends revealed over four decades

Firearm deaths jumped between 2019 and 2020, with Black men most affected by homicide and white men by suicide

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: YEARLY FIREARM-RELATED AGE-ADJUSTED DEATH RATES BY RACE. AGE-ADJUSTED DEATH RATES PER 100,000 FOR FIREARM-RELATED DEATHS BY RACIAL GROUPS FROM 1981 TO 2020. view more 

CREDIT: YOUNG AND XIANG, 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

A new analysis of firearm death rates from 1981 to 2020 shows that the people most heavily impacted by firearm deaths were Black men and white men, and that rates of firearm-related homicides and suicides jumped between 2019 and 2020. Lindsay Young of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Ohio, and Henry Xiang of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Ohio, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 14, 2022.

In the U.S. firearms are involved in 60 percent of suicides and 36 percent of homicides. Understanding historic trends and disparities in firearm death rates is necessary to inform efforts to reduce deaths. However, most previous research on firearm death trends has focused on relatively short timelines or considered homicide or suicide alone.

To gain new insights into firearm death trends, Young and Xiang analyzed U.S. firearm death rate data collected between 1981 and 2020, comparing rates between racial groups and sexes. They sourced the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s WISQARS database for fatal injury and violence.

The researchers found that Black people were most heavily affected by firearm homicide. Firearm homicide rates for Black people were nearly seven times those for white people. Between 2019 and 2020, firearm homicide deaths spiked, and this increase was largest for Black people, at 39 percent. Homicide rates for men were five times higher than for women.

Firearm suicide rates were highest for white people, and for all racial groups except Asian/Pacific Islander, and suicide rates rose between 2019 and 2020. The suicide rate for men was seven times higher than the suicide rate for women.

Between 2011 and 2020, minority populations were most heavily impacted by homicide and suicide in terms of years of potential life lost before age 75—a measure reflecting premature death.

These findings suggest that efforts to prevent firearm suicides and homicides should account for the demographics of people most impacted. The researchers also note that their study highlights the urgency of such efforts and that dismantling structural racism in the U.S. is necessary to address the disparities they found.

The authors note that “over the past 4 decades, firearm injuries disproportionally affect[ed] certain demographic groups in US society,” and add: “United States must treat violence and firearm-related injuries as [a] national health priority.”

#####

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278304

Citation: Young LJ, Xiang H (2022) US racial and sex-based disparities in firearm-related death trends from 1981–2020. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0278304. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278304

Author Countries: USA

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278304 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

US racial and sex-based disparities in firearm-related death trends from 1981–2020

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Dec-2022

Gorillas and orangutans may be economically rational but also have pre-existing cognitive biases, according to risk-based decision making experiments

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: ORANGUTAN TRAINING view more 

CREDIT: M. TORBEN WEBER, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Gorillas and orangutans may be economically rational but also have pre-existing cognitive biases, according to risk-based decision making experiments.

####

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278150

Article Title: Rationality and cognitive bias in captive gorillas’ and orang-utans’ economic decision-making

Author Countries: Scotland, Switzerland, Taiwan

Funding: This work was supported with funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant PZ00P3_154741 (CDD), 310030_185324 (KZ), and NCCR Evolving Language (Agreement #51NF40_180888 (KZ)), and the Taipei Medical University (Startup-funding, grant 108-6402-004-112 (CDD)). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278150 

ARTICLE TITLE

Rationality and cognitive bias in captive gorillas’ and orang-utans’ economic decision-making

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Dec-2022

Early humans may have first walked upright in the trees

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Human bipedalism – walking upright on two legs – may have evolved in trees, and not on the ground as previously thought, according to a new study involving UCL researchers.

In the study, published today in the journal Science Advances, researchers from UCL, the University of Kent, and Duke University, USA, explored the behaviours of wild chimpanzees - our closest living relative - living in the Issa Valley of western Tanzania, within the region of the East African Rift Valley. Known as ‘savanna-mosaic’ - a mix of dry open land with few trees and patches of dense forest - the chimpanzees’ habitat is very similar to that of our earliest human ancestors and was chosen to enable the scientists to explore whether the openness of this type of landscape could have encouraged bipedalism in hominins.

The study is the first of its kind to explore if savanna-mosaic habitats would account for increased time spent on the ground by the Issa chimpanzees, and compares their behaviour to other studies on their solely forest-dwelling cousins in other parts of Africa.

Overall, the study found that the Issa chimpanzees spent as much time in the trees as other chimpanzees living in dense forests, despite their more open habitat, and were not more terrestrial (land-based) as expected.

Furthermore, although the researchers expected the Issa chimpanzees to walk upright more in open savanna vegetation, where they cannot easily travel via the tree canopy, more than 85% of occurrences of bipedalism took place in the trees.

The authors say that their findings contradict widely accepted theories that suggest that it was an open, dry savanna environment that encouraged our prehistoric human relatives to walk upright – and instead suggests that they may have evolved to walk on two feet to move around the trees.

Study co-author Dr Alex Piel (UCL Anthropology) said: “We naturally assumed that because Issa has fewer trees than typical tropical forests, where most chimpanzees live, we would see individuals more often on the ground than in the trees. Moreover, because so many of the traditional drivers of bipedalism (such as carrying objects or seeing over tall grass, for example) are associated with being on the ground, we thought we’d naturally see more bipedalism here as well. However, this is not what we found.

“Our study suggests that the retreat of forests in the late Miocene-Pliocene era around five million years ago and the more open savanna habitats were in fact not a catalyst for the evolution of bipedalism. Instead, trees probably remained essential to its evolution – with the search for food-producing trees a likely a driver of this trait.”

To establish their findings, the researchers recorded more than 13,700 instantaneous observations of positional behaviour from 13 chimpanzee adults (six females and seven males), including almost 2,850 observations of individual locomotor events (e.g., climbing, walking, hanging, etc.), over the course of the 15-month study. They then used the relationship between tree/land-based behaviour and vegetation (forest vs woodland) to investigate patterns of association. Similarly, they noted each instance of bipedalism and whether it was associated with being on the ground or in the trees.

The authors note that walking on two feet is a defining feature of humans when compared to other great apes, who “knuckle walk”. Yet, despite their study, researchers say why humans  alone amongst the apes first began to walk on two feet still remains a mystery.

Study co-author Dr Fiona Stewart (UCL Anthropology) said: “To date, the numerous hypotheses for the evolution of bipedalism share the idea that hominins (human ancestors) came down from the trees and walked upright on the ground, especially in more arid, open habitats that lacked tree cover. Our data do not support that at all.

“Unfortunately, the traditional idea of fewer trees equals more terrestriality (land dwelling) just isn’t borne out with the Issa data. What we need to focus on now is how and why these chimpanzees spend so much time in the trees - and that is what we’ll focus on next on our way to piecing together this complex evolutionary puzzle.”
 

Notes to editors

For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact:

Evie Calder, UCL Media Relations. T: +44 (0)7858 152 143 / +44 20 7679 8557 E: e.calder@ucl.ac.uk

Rhianna C. Drummond-Clarke, Tracy L. Kivell, Lauren Sarringhaus, Fiona A. Stewart, Tatyana Humle and Alex K. Piel (2022) Wild chimpanzee behavior suggests that a savanna-mosaic habitat did not support the emergence of hominin terrestrial bipedalism will be published in Science Advances on Wednesday 14 December 2022 19:00 UK time / 14:00 US Eastern Time and is under a strict embargo until this time.

The DOI for this paper will be http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add9752.

Additional materials

Dropbox to images with credits and captions: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/k8gf0r2jjwblna92t3z6t/h?dl=0&rlkey=h5c6kvxhterx83ufmxxti3z38

About UCL – London’s Global University

UCL is a diverse global community of world-class academics, students, industry links, external partners, and alumni. Our powerful collective of individuals and institutions work together to explore new possibilities.

Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world's best minds. Our community of more than 43,800 students from 150 countries and over 14,300 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.

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For almost 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.

We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.

www.ucl.ac.uk | Follow @uclnews on Twitter | Read news at www.ucl.ac.uk/news/ | Listen to UCL podcasts on SoundCloud | Find out what’s on at UCL Minds

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add9752 

ARTICLE TITLE

Wild chimpanzee behavior suggests that a savanna-mosaic habitat did not support the emergence of hominin terrestrial bipedalism

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Dec-2022

Climate change belief not split along political divide

QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR TAN YIGITCANLAR AND DR MD GOLAM MORTOJA. view more 

CREDIT: QUT

QUT researchers have found that climate change belief is not uniform in relation to political orientation.

Professor Tan Yigitcanlar from QUT’s School of Architecture and Built Environment and City 4.0 Lab  his former doctoral student  Dr Md Golam Mortoja - who now works for the Queensland Government’s Department of Resources - found that 64 per cent of climate change believing southeast Queensland peri-urban dwellers are made up of people of right and left-wing persuasion.

Professor Yigitcanlar said a survey for their research paper published in the Land Use Policy journal found that on the other hand, climate change deniers predominantly have right-wing political views and are more likely to be older and relatively less educated.

“Climate change deniers are highly rigid in their denial of ‘anthropogenic climate change’ which is environmental changes attributed to human activity,” Professor Yigitcanlar said.

“The survey - conducted in a region experiencing highly destructive impacts of climate change - also found that climate change deniers’ views do not generally moderate or change with exposure to climate risk events.

The results are drawn from 659 responses to an April 2021 survey of southeast Queensland peri-urban dwellers (those who live on the outskirts of, or close to major cities) for their study.

“Managers, manufacturers, and business owners are in fact more sceptical on climate risk beliefs,” Professor Yigitcanlar said.

“Climate risk concerns of the ‘least concerned/mostly disagreed group’ do not influence significantly in guiding their voting decisions.

“Public stances about climate risk knowledge in the case study area are rigid and simply distributed between the two groups - i.e., ‘least concerned/mostly disagreed group’ and ‘highly concerned/mostly disagreed group’,” Professor Yigitcanlar said.

The paper highlights climate change is here, and it is disrupting every country on every continent, and urgent, effective government action is needed to sustain our existence on the planet.

Despite the clear scientific evidence, the paper cites that there are still significant numbers of people who deny the climate change reality.

Dr Mortoja said it is assumable that concerns about climate change should be dependent upon the level of knowledge someone possesses on the issues that trigger climate risk impacts.

“Thus, a plethora of studies have investigated public perceptions on the climate risk issue,” Dr Mortoja said.

“Against this backdrop, this paper aims to identify distinct groups of respondents based on their level of knowledge concerning climate risk against their political orientation. This in return helps in understanding political bias in forming a climate change belief.”

“The findings generated from this study provide valuable insights to overcome the knowledge gaps between climate risk believers and deniers,” Dr Mortoja said.

The researchers found no significant gender differences in climate change perception.

“But the survey certainly found that climate change believers tend to be younger, highly educated people, who have limited self-motivation for behaviour change for climate change mitigation,” Dr Mortoja said.

Further these believers see government policy and action highly inadequate for climate change mitigation.

“The insights generated help in overcoming the knowledge gaps between climate risk believers and deniers, and thereby inform decision-makers in taking adequate measures to address climate risks and develop appropriate land use decisions.”

“The recent Federal election results gave hope for positive move towards climate action in Australia,” Dr Mortoja said

However, the political polarisation is still a significant issue in Australia, particularly in the context of urban vs. regional Australia according to Dr Mortoja.

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JOURNAL

Land Use Policy

DOI

10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106350 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Understanding political bias in climate change belief: A public perception study from South East Queensland

Drought encouraged Attila’s Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

University of Cambridge media release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire, a new study argues.

Hungary has just experienced its driest summer since meteorological measurements began, devastating the country’s usually productive farmland. Archaeologists now suggest that similar conditions in the 5th century may have encouraged animal herders to become raiders, with devastating consequences for the Roman empire.

The study, published today in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, argues that extreme drought spells from the 430s – 450s CE disrupted ways of life in the Danube frontier provinces of the eastern Roman empire, forcing Hunnic peoples to adopt new strategies to ‘buffer against severe economic challenges’.

[The research paper can be accessed here]

The authors, Associate Professor Susanne Hakenbeck from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Professor Ulf Büntgen from the University’s Department of Geography, came to their conclusions after assessing a new tree ring-based hydroclimate reconstruction, as well as archaeological and historical evidence.

The Hunnic incursions into eastern and central Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE have long been viewed as the initial crisis that triggered the so-called ‘Great Migrations’ of ‘Barbarian Tribes’, leading to the fall of the Roman empire. But where the Huns came from and what their impact on the late Roman provinces actually was unclear.

New climate data reconstructed from tree rings by Prof Büntgen and colleagues provides information about yearly changes in climate over the last 2000 years. It shows that Hungary experienced episodes of unusually dry summers in the 4th and 5th centuries. Hakenbeck and Büntgen point out that climatic fluctuations, in particular drought spells from 420 to 450 CE, would have reduced crop yields and pasture for animals beyond the floodplains of the Danube and Tisza.

Büntgen said: “Tree ring data gives us an amazing opportunity to link climatic conditions to human activity on a year-by-year basis. We found that periods of drought recorded in biochemical signals in tree-rings coincided with an intensification of raiding activity in the region.”

Recent isotopic analysis of skeletons from the region, including by Dr Hakenbeck, suggests that Hunnic peoples responded to climate stress by migrating and by mixing agricultural and pastoral diets.

Hakenbeck said: “If resource scarcity became too extreme, settled populations may have been forced to move, diversify their subsistence practices and switch between farming and mobile animal herding. These could have been important insurance strategies during a climatic downturn.”

But the study also argues that some Hunnic peoples dramatically changed their social and political organization to become violent raiders.

From herders to raiders

Hunnic attacks on the Roman frontier intensified after Attila came to power in the late 430s. The Huns increasingly demanded gold payments and eventually a strip of Roman territory along the Danube. In 451 CE, the Huns invaded Gaul and a year later they invaded northern Italy.

Traditionally, the Huns have been cast as violent barbarians driven by an “infinite thirst for gold”. But, as this study points out, the historical sources documenting these events were primary written by elite Romans who had little direct experience of the peoples and events they described.

“Historical sources tell us that Roman and Hun diplomacy was extremely complex,” Dr Hakenbeck said. “Initially it involved mutually beneficial arrangements, resulting in Hun elites gaining access to vast amounts of gold. This system of collaboration broke down in the 440s, leading to regular raids of Roman lands and increasing demands for gold.”

The study argues that if current dating of events is correct, the most devastating Hunnic incursions of 447, 451 and 452 CE coincided with extremely dry summers in the Carpathian Basin.

Hakenbeck said: “Climate-induced economic disruption may have required Attila and others of high rank to extract gold from the Roman provinces to keep war bands and maintain inter-elite loyalties. Former horse-riding animal herders appear to have become raiders.”

Historical sources describe the Huns at this time as a highly stratified group with a military organization that was difficult to counter, even for the Roman armies.

The study suggests that one reason why the Huns attacked the provinces of Thrace and Illyricum in 422, 442, and 447 CE was to acquire food and livestock, rather than gold, but accepts that concrete evidence is needed to confirm this. The authors also suggest that Attila demanded a strip of land ‘five days’ journey wide’ along the Danube because this could have offered better grazing in a time of drought.

Hakenbeck said: “Climate alters what environments can provide and this can lead people to make decisions that affect their economy, and their social and political organization. Such decisions are not straightforwardly rational, nor are their consequences necessarily successful in the long term.”

“This example from history shows that people respond to climate stress in complex and unpredictable ways, and that short-term solutions can have negative consequences in the long term.”

By the 450s CE, just a few decades of their appearance in central Europe, the Huns had disappeared. Attila himself died in 453 CE.

 

Reference

S.E. Hakenbeck & U. Büntgen, ‘The role of drought during the Hunnic incursions into central-east Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE’, Journal of Roman Archaeology (2022). DOI: 10.1017/S1047759422000332

 

Media contact

Tom Almeroth-Williams, Communications Manager (Research), University of Cambridge: researchcommunications@admin.cam.ac.uk / tel: +44 (0) 7540 139 444

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JOURNAL

Journal of Roman Archaeology

DOI

10.1017/S1047759422000332 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The role of drought during the Hunnic incursions into central-east Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE’

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Dec-2022

Japan turns back to nuclear power to tackle energy crisis

An aerial view shows the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following a strong earthquake, in Okuma town
1
Fri, December 16, 2022

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan confirmed a major nuclear power policy shift on Friday to tackle an energy crisis more than a decade after the 2011 Fukushima disaster prompted it to idle most of its reactors.

Public opinion has been hostile towards nuclear energy since a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, but the mood has shifted due to soaring energy costs amid the prolonged war in Ukraine and repeated power crunches in both summer and winter.

Quake-prone Japan, which previously said it had no plans to build new reactors, will now seek to replace decomissioned ones and extend the lifespan of others, the industry ministry said.

The stark policy turnaround comes after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in August that Japan would look at developing next-generation reactors, instructing the industry ministry to set up a policy plan to widen use of nuclear energy by the end of this year.

Governments across Europe and Asia are also extending the life of their aging nuclear fleets, restarting reactors and dusting off plans to resume projects shelved after the Fukushima disaster.

Under a strategic energy plan approved by the Cabinet last year, Japan aimed to reduce its dependence on nuclear power as much as possible.

But the new policy, which was approved by an expert panel under the industry ministry on Friday, would allow existing nuclear reactors to operate beyond the current limit of 60 years as well as support the development of new ones.

Further details will be discussed in parliament next year, an official at the industry ministry said.

In the financial year to March 2021, nuclear accounted for 3.9% of Japan's power mix, with the government aiming to boost it to as much as 22% by 2030.

(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi and Miho Uranaka; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

Contested natural gas pipeline granted permanent certificate

Thu, December 15, 2022 

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Federal officials on Thursday granted Spire Inc. a permanent certificate to operate a natural gas pipeline in Missouri and Illinois, angering the environmental group that had sued over the project.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission first granted approval for the Spire STL Pipeline in 2018 and it became fully operational in 2019. It connects with another pipeline in western Illinois and carries natural gas to the St. Louis region, where Spire serves around 650,000 customers.

But the Environmental Defense Fund sued in 2020, raising concerns that the pipeline was approved without adequate review. Last year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that FERC had not adequately demonstrated a need for the project, vacating approval of the pipeline.

For the past year, the pipeline had been operating under a temporary certificate while FERC conducted a court-ordered review.

Scott Smith, president of the Spire STL Pipeline, said in a statement that he was pleased with the decision. He described the review the project underwent as “thorough."

But Ted Kelly, an Environmental Defense Fund attorney, disagreed, saying that FERC had “again failed to fulfill its obligation," alleging that some landowners, ratepayers and stakeholders were shut out of the review.

He said that FERC should reverse its decision to grant the permanent certificate and reopen the process with a temporary certificate in place so there is no disruption in service.