Intermediate Bronze Age in Southern Levant (4200–4000 BP) – Why Did Four Cities in Transjordan Survive Urban Collapse?

Abstract The first urban culture of southern Levant collapsed and the first period of urbanisation of Canaan (Early Bronze Age I-III) terminated at around 4200 yrs BP. The Canaanites abandoned their walled cities, dispersed and underwent pastoralisation. However, the urban centres of southern Canaan were not destroyed. This fact may point to responsibility of the environmental factor and makes influence influence of anthropogenic factors uncertain, along with the most popular Amorite invasion/destruction hypothesis. A tremendous climatic change occurred at that time in many regions, affecting cultures and civilisations of the Ancient Near East and resulting in abandonment of cities, migrations and great civilizational changes. In southern Levant, virtually all cities were left in ruins with a mysterious exception in Transjordan where four cities: Aroer, Ader, Khirbet Iskander and Iktanu survived and existed throughout the period. Most probably when climatic conditions in Cisjordan excluded possibility of urban life, the ones in Transjordan conditions remained unchanged or altered in a very limited scale. It is now clear that after a period with quite humid and warm climate, the precipitation greatly diminished after 4200 yrs BP in a littoral zone of eastern Mediterranean. A part of Transjordan, probably due to presence of the Dead Sea that somehow created conditions that influenced precipitation, remained a climatic niche with decent rainfall that enabled concentration of population in and around big urban centres and continuation of urban civilisation. Warming in a littoral zone changed dew point temperature preventing formations of clouds above western slopes of Judean and Samarian Hills. Moist air, prevented from condensation was transported eastwards where it could reach ascending currents appearing over the Dead Sea. Masses of air with water vapour moving upwards could form rainy clouds in Transjordan.