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First link between climate patterns and civil conflict
Conflict appears more likely in warmer years
Because you’re worth it when you’re dead ANCIENT Egyptians wouldn’t be caught dead without hair gel. Style in the afterlife was just as important as it was during life on Earth – and coiffure was key. To this end, men and women alike had their tresses styled with a fat-based “gel” when they were embalmed. The evidence has been found in a community cemetery dating back 3000 years. Tomb paintings depict people with cone-shaped objects sitting on their heads, thought to be lumps of scented animal fat. “Once we started
bridgeman art library/getty
THE Peruvian highlands were countries rose from 3 per cent hit hard by El Niño in 1982, during La Niña years to 6 per and crops were destroyed. The cent during El Niño years. The same year, guerrilla attacks by effect was absent from countries the Shining Path movement only weakly affected by these erupted into a civil war that climate cycles (Nature, DOI: would last 20 years. Random 10.1038/nature10311). coincidence? Possibly not. “I was surprised by the strength The first study to link global of the effect,” says Halvard Buhaug climate patterns to the onset of the Peace Research Institute of civil conflict places El Niño Oslo in Norway. “Doubling on a par with factors like poverty of risk is a large increase, about and social exclusion. on a par with poverty and Solomon Hsiang, a researcher in international affairs at Princeton “Doubling the risk of conflict University, and colleagues looked is a large increase, about on a par with poverty and at data on conflicts between 1950 ethno-political exclusion” and 2004 that killed more than 25 people in a year. They compared El Niño years, which happen ethno-political exclusion.” roughly every five years, with La Buhaug has been sceptical of Niña years. El Niño tends to bring similar studies, and though he hotter, drier conditions – and La finds the statistics convincing, Niña cooler ones – to tropical he says he is puzzled, as the study countries, but both have less of an offers no explanation for how influence on temperate countries. El Niño might exert an influence The analysis included over stressed human societies. 175 countries and 234 conflicts, Hsiang’s team found that El Niño over half of which caused more appeared to have an immediate than 1000 deaths. It found that effect – in their analysis, conflicts the risk of conflict in tropical erupted within months of the
looking [for these], we found interesting hairstyles,” says Natalie McCreesh of the University of Manchester, UK. “The hair was styled and perfectly curled.” She and her colleagues examined hair samples from 15 mummies from
enrique castro-menoivil/reuters/corbis
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
–Peru’s civil war started in an El Niño year–
onset of El Niño events – but the correlation was independent of local weather events like drought, which can bring famine and increased tension. Hsiang cannot yet explain what is causing the link. One possibility is that international markets spread climate signals around the world. For instance, widespread drought in an El Niño year could cause global food prices to rise.
But as Andrew Solow of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts points out, “People do not start wars simply because they are hot.” And until we know what it is about El Niño that increases the likelihood of conflict, it will be impossible to say whether this means we should expect more unrest due to climate change. Catherine Brahic n
Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2011.08.004). When examined with light and electron microscopes, it became clear that the hair of most mummies was coated with a fatty substance. The team determined the hair coatings’ chemical composition and found that they were different to products commonly used to embalm bodies. By contrast, two mummies whose heads had been shaved carried the same –Try this hair gel, it lasts forever– embalming materials on their scalps as were found on the bandages the Kellis 1 cemetery in Dakhla oasis, around the body. Egypt, and a further three samples It seems, says McCreesh, that from mummies in foreign museums. when a body was being coated in The bodies were of both sexes, resinous materials, the hair would be between 4 and 58 years old when covered, or washed and restyled, in they died, and dated from 3500 years order to preserve the dead person’s to 2300 years ago (Journal of identity. Cian O’Luanaigh n 27 August 2011 | NewScientist | 9
Because you’re worth it when you’re dead ANCIENT Egyptians wouldn’t be caught dead without hair gel. Style in the afterlife was just as important as it was during life on Earth – and coiffure was key. To this end, men and women alike had their tresses styled with a fat-based “gel” when they were embalmed. The evidence has been found in a community cemetery dating back 3000 years. Tomb paintings depict people with cone-shaped objects sitting on their heads, thought to be lumps of scented animal fat. “Once we started
bridgeman art library/getty
THE Peruvian highlands were countries rose from 3 per cent hit hard by El Niño in 1982, during La Niña years to 6 per and crops were destroyed. The cent during El Niño years. The same year, guerrilla attacks by effect was absent from countries the Shining Path movement only weakly affected by these erupted into a civil war that climate cycles (Nature, DOI: would last 20 years. Random 10.1038/nature10311). coincidence? Possibly not. “I was surprised by the strength The first study to link global of the effect,” says Halvard Buhaug climate patterns to the onset of the Peace Research Institute of civil conflict places El Niño Oslo in Norway. “Doubling on a par with factors like poverty of risk is a large increase, about and social exclusion. on a par with poverty and Solomon Hsiang, a researcher in international affairs at Princeton “Doubling the risk of conflict University, and colleagues looked is a large increase, about on a par with poverty and at data on conflicts between 1950 ethno-political exclusion” and 2004 that killed more than 25 people in a year. They compared El Niño years, which happen ethno-political exclusion.” roughly every five years, with La Buhaug has been sceptical of Niña years. El Niño tends to bring similar studies, and though he hotter, drier conditions – and La finds the statistics convincing, Niña cooler ones – to tropical he says he is puzzled, as the study countries, but both have less of an offers no explanation for how influence on temperate countries. El Niño might exert an influence The analysis included over stressed human societies. 175 countries and 234 conflicts, Hsiang’s team found that El Niño over half of which caused more appeared to have an immediate than 1000 deaths. It found that effect – in their analysis, conflicts the risk of conflict in tropical erupted within months of the
looking [for these], we found interesting hairstyles,” says Natalie McCreesh of the University of Manchester, UK. “The hair was styled and perfectly curled.” She and her colleagues examined hair samples from 15 mummies from
enrique castro-menoivil/reuters/corbis
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
–Peru’s civil war started in an El Niño year–
onset of El Niño events – but the correlation was independent of local weather events like drought, which can bring famine and increased tension. Hsiang cannot yet explain what is causing the link. One possibility is that international markets spread climate signals around the world. For instance, widespread drought in an El Niño year could cause global food prices to rise.
But as Andrew Solow of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts points out, “People do not start wars simply because they are hot.” And until we know what it is about El Niño that increases the likelihood of conflict, it will be impossible to say whether this means we should expect more unrest due to climate change. Catherine Brahic n
Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2011.08.004). When examined with light and electron microscopes, it became clear that the hair of most mummies was coated with a fatty substance. The team determined the hair coatings’ chemical composition and found that they were different to products commonly used to embalm bodies. By contrast, two mummies whose heads had been shaved carried the same –Try this hair gel, it lasts forever– embalming materials on their scalps as were found on the bandages the Kellis 1 cemetery in Dakhla oasis, around the body. Egypt, and a further three samples It seems, says McCreesh, that from mummies in foreign museums. when a body was being coated in The bodies were of both sexes, resinous materials, the hair would be between 4 and 58 years old when covered, or washed and restyled, in they died, and dated from 3500 years order to preserve the dead person’s to 2300 years ago (Journal of identity. Cian O’Luanaigh n 27 August 2011 | NewScientist | 9