Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The Clovis culture (named after distinctive fluted stone spear points first found near Clovis, New Mexico) is the earliest widely recognized and widespread archaeological culture in North America. It dates to roughly 13,050- 12,750 calibrated years before present (about 13,000- 12,750 years ago).
For much of the 20th century, the “Clovis First” model held that these people were the first humans to enter the Americas south of the ice sheets, arriving via the Bering land bridge and an ice- free corridor.
Some sites push the date further back (White Sands footprints in New Mexico ~21,000- 23,000 years ago; Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico possibly ~30,000 and more years; a few others even older).
These remain more controversial, with ongoing debates about dating, context, or whether the materials are truly human made.
In short: Clovis people were important and widespread, but they were not the first.
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The Clovis culture (named after distinctive fluted stone spear points first found near Clovis, New Mexico) is the earliest widely recognized and widespread archaeological culture in North America. It dates to roughly 13,050- 12,750 calibrated years before present (about 13,000- 12,750 years ago).
For much of the 20th century, the “Clovis First” model held that these people were the first humans to enter the Americas south of the ice sheets, arriving via the Bering land bridge and an ice- free corridor.
That model has been largely abandoned. Multiple lines of evidence show people were already present earlier:
Well- accepted pre- Clovis evidence
Monte Verde II (Chile): ~14,500 years ago: house structures, tools and other remains. A key site that helped overturn Clovis First.
Paisley Caves (Oregon): human coprolites (fossilized feces) with DNA dating to ~14,200- 14,500 years ago, plus Western Stemmed Tradition tools that appear roughly contemporaneous with or older than Clovis.
Cooper’s Ferry (Idaho): stone tools and other artifacts dated to ~15,000- 16,000 years ago (Western Stemmed Tradition).
Page- Ladson (Florida): tools associated with mastodon remains ~14,550 years ago.
Debra L. Friedkin / Gault (Texas, Buttermilk Creek Complex): artifacts in layers dating ~15,500- 13,500 years ago.
These sites indicate people were living as generalized hunter-gatherers and fishers (not just specialized big- game hunters like classic Clovis) and had already reached both North and South America by at least ~14,500- 16,000 years ago.
Older and more debated claims
Some sites push the date further back (White Sands footprints in New Mexico ~21,000- 23,000 years ago; Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico possibly ~30,000 and more years; a few others even older).
These remain more controversial, with ongoing debates about dating, context, or whether the materials are truly human made.
Genetic evidence generally points to ancestral populations related to modern Native Americans entering or expanding in the Americas sometime after the Last Glacial Maximum peak, with major diversification around or after ~15,000- 20,000 years ago. Extremely early claims (e.g., >40,000 or 130,000 years) are not widely accepted.
In short: Clovis people were important and widespread, but they were not the first.
Humans were already living in the Americas for at least 1,000- 3,000 years (and possibly longer) before the classic Clovis points appeared. The peopling process was more complex and multi- phase than the old “Clovis First” story suggested.
The oldest confirmed human remains in the Americas are the human coprolites (fossilized feces) from Paisley Caves in Oregon, directly dated to about 14,300- 14,500 calendar years ago.
These contain authentic Native American mitochondrial DNA (haplogroups A2 and B2) and have been confirmed by multiple methods, including fecal biomarker analysis. They represent the earliest direct biological evidence of people in the Western Hemisphere.
Oldest skeletal remains
Human skeletons are rarer and generally younger than the earliest archaeological sites or the Paisley coprolites. The best- supported examples include:
Remains
Location
Approximate Age (cal BP)
Notes
Arlington Springs Man and Woman
Santa Rosa Island, California (Channel Islands)
~13,000- 12,700
Partial remains (mainly femurs). Among the oldest reliably dated adult skeletal remains in North America; supports early coastal migration by boat.
Anzick- 1
Near Wilsall, Montana
~12,990- 12,560
Partial skeleton of a ~1-2- year- old Clovis-associated infant, covered in red ochre and buried with tools. First ancient Native American genome fully sequenced; closely related to many modern Indigenous peoples (especially Central and South American groups).
Naia (Hoyo Negro)
Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico
~12,900- 12,000
Nearly complete skeleton of a ~15-16-year- old girl. One of the oldest and most complete skeletons in the Americas; genetically linked to Native American founding populations.
Luzia
Lapa Vermelha, Brazil
~11,700- 11,200
Partial skeleton of a young woman. One of the oldest in South America.
Other early skeletons (e.g., from Upward Sun River in Alaska, ~11,500 years ago) are slightly younger.
Important context
No widely accepted human skeletons older than ~13,000 years are known. Claims of much older human bones are rare and not broadly confirmed.
Older evidence of people exists (tools, footprints at White Sands, sites like Monte Verde or Cooper’s Ferry), but these are not human remains themselves.
Preservation is poor for very early skeletons due to the age, climate, and acidic soils in many areas, which is why coprolites, tools, and footprints often provide the earliest signals.
In short, the Paisley Caves coprolites hold the current record for the oldest confirmed human biological remains, while Arlington Springs and Anzick-1 represent the oldest well- dated skeletal evidence in North America.
Oldest confirmed human remains in the Americas and the climate of that time
Oldest confirmed human remains
Oldest biological remains: Human coprolites (fossilized feces) from Paisley Caves (Oregon), directly dated to roughly 14,300-14,500 calendar years ago. These contain authentic Native American mitochondrial DNA and have been confirmed by multiple independent methods (including fecal biomarkers). They are currently the oldest widely accepted direct human biological evidence in the Americas.
Oldest skeletal remains:
Arlington Springs Man and Woman (Santa Rosa Island, California Channel Islands), partial remains (mainly femurs) dated to about 13,000-12,700 years ago. Among the oldest reliably dated adult skeletal remains in North America.
Anzick- 1 (Montana), partial skeleton of a 1- 2- year-old Clovis-associated infant, dated to roughly 12,990- 12,560 years ago.
Naia (Hoyo Negro cave, Yucatán, Mexico), nearly complete skeleton of a teenage girl, dated to about 12,900–12,000 years ago.
No widely accepted human skeletons older than ~13,000 years are known. Older evidence of people (tools, footprints, sites) exists, but those are not human remains.
Climate at the time (~14,500- 12,500 years ago)
This period falls in the late Pleistocene during the final stages of the last Ice Age (deglaciation), specifically spanning the end of Heinrich Stadial 1 into the Bølling- Allerød interstadial (a major rapid warming phase that began around 14,700-14,600 years ago), followed later by the Younger Dryas cold snap (~12,900-11,700 years ago).
Key climate features:
Temperatures were still several degrees Celsius colder than today overall (estimates for the Americas during the broader Last Glacial Maximum were roughly 4- 8°C cooler on average), but the Bølling- Allerød brought abrupt warming.
Ice sheets: Massive Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets still covered most of Canada and parts of the northern U.S., blocking or restricting interior routes. Sea levels were much lower (~100- 120 m lower than today during the peak of the Ice Age, still significantly lower by 14- 13 ka), exposing broad coastal shelves.
Regional environments:
Near Paisley Caves (Great Basin, Oregon): The area was near the high shorelines of large pluvial Lake Chewaucan. Conditions supported wetlands, fish, waterfowl, and megafauna (camels, horses, bison). Lakes were high during the Bølling- Allerød due to a northward shift in the winter storm track, then declined later.
Channel Islands (Arlington Springs): Cooler and moister than today. The four northern Channel Islands formed one larger island (“Santarosae”). Pygmy mammoths were still present.
Broader Americas: Mosaic landscapes with steppe- tundra, grasslands, woodlands, and expanding forests in places as temperatures rose. Precipitation patterns varied strongly by region.
Climate impacts on early humans (and human impacts on the environment)
Facilitated migration and settlement: Warming after the Last Glacial Maximum (~19 ka onward) and especially the Bølling- Allerød opened coastal routes (kelp highways) and later the ice- free corridor. Lower sea levels created more land and productive coastal environments. People arrived at a landscape still rich in megafauna.
Resource opportunities and challenges: Early groups were broad-spectrum foragers and hunters who exploited wetlands, fish, small game, plants, and large mammals. Rapid climate shifts created patchy, dynamic environments that required mobility and flexible adaptations.
Stress and extinctions: The transition involved abrupt swings (warming then the Younger Dryas cooling). These changes, combined with human hunting, are linked to the extinction of many North American megafauna species around 13,000-12,700 years ago. In some regions (e.g., southern California), warming, drying, and increased fire activity coincided with population declines of large mammals.
Human environmental impact: Even small human populations could influence landscapes through hunting and fire use. Climate- driven vegetation shifts and fire regimes interacted with human presence.
In summary, the people who left the Paisley Caves coprolites and the slightly later skeletal remains lived during a period of rapid deglacial warming and environmental upheaval. The climate both enabled their spread across the continents and presented significant adaptive challenges as ecosystems transformed at the end of the Ice Age.
The BBC reports that Antarctica’s gentoo penguins are “flourishing with climate change,” while CBS News reports that an iconic chinstrap penguin colony has suffered a “population collapse” driven by climate change. This bipolar framing is highly misleading.
The BBC reports that Antarctica’s gentoo penguins are “flourishing with climate change,” while CBS News reports that an iconic chinstrap penguin colony has suffered a “population collapse” driven by climate change. This bipolar framing is highly misleading. The observations show different penguin species responding differently to local environmental conditions, food availability, habitat, competition, and their own biological adaptability, while the evidence for attributing individual population changes specifically to human-caused climate change is considerably less certain than the headlines suggest.
Then, on October 7, CBS News published an AFP report titled “Iconic penguin colony sees ‘population collapse’ driven by climate change, study finds.” That article reports that the chinstrap penguin population on Zavodovski Island in the South Sandwich Islands declined from approximately 1.09 million breeding individuals in 2011 to 402,000 in 2025, a decline of about 63 percent.
So, there you have it. Penguins are flourishing because of climate change, and penguins are collapsing because of climate change. Apparently, whatever happens to a penguin, climate change gets the diagnosis.
The BBC describes gentoo penguins as successful “climate-change winners,” citing their ability to tolerate warmer and wetter conditions, change prey, replace lost egg clutches, and adjust breeding schedules.
CBS presents a much darker picture. British Antarctic Survey researcher Norman Ratcliffe told AFP concerning the chinstrap decline:
“We think that climate change operating through food webs is probably the main driver.”
The key word is “probably.”
That is an appropriate scientific qualification. CBS’s headline, however, transforms “probably” into a population collapse “driven by climate change.” The difference matters because observing a decline is not the same scientific task as determining its cause.
The proposed mechanism involves ocean conditions affecting krill availability, which then affects penguin feeding, breeding, survival, and ultimately population size. That is plausible, but it is a chain of ecological relationships, not a thermometer directly killing penguins.
And then there are the penguins that apparently didn’t read the climate script.
On the very same Zavodovski Island where chinstrap penguins declined 63 percent, CBS reports that macaroni penguins increased from approximately 338,000 in 2011 to 433,000 in 2025, an increase of about 28 percent.
The chinstraps and macaronis inhabit the same island. They are surrounded by the same ocean and exposed to the same broad climatic conditions. Yet one population declined dramatically while the other increased substantially.
Researchers offer a perfectly reasonable biological explanation. Macaroni penguins have a broader diet than chinstraps and therefore can exploit alternative food sources when conditions change.
Exactly.
That demonstrates why simplistic climate attribution is so unrealistic. Species-specific diet, competition, prey abundance, breeding behavior, habitat, predation, migration, volcanic activity, and adaptability all influence wildlife populations. Climate may influence some of those factors, but simply observing a population change does not establish climate change as its dominant cause.
The BBC’s gentoo story reinforces that point. Gentoos are highly adaptable. They eat a variety of prey, alter breeding behavior, and tolerate a broader range of environmental conditions than some other Antarctic penguins. Their success is a reminder that living organisms are not passive objects waiting helplessly for environmental conditions to change.
Adaptation is one of the most fundamental features of biology.
There is also an important historical warning against treating every disappearing penguin colony as evidence of catastrophe. In 2016, alarming headlines claimed that roughly 150,000 Adélie penguins at Cape Denison might have died after the giant B09B iceberg grounded nearby and greatly increased the distance birds had to travel to open water. Subsequent reporting raised an obvious alternative: many of the missing penguins may simply have relocated.
A reduction in penguins counted at one breeding colony is not necessarily equivalent to that number of dead penguins. Birds can skip breeding, disperse, or establish themselves elsewhere.
Then came an extraordinary discovery. In 2018, researchers reported a previously unknown “supercolony” of more than 1.5 million Adélie penguins in Antarctica’s Danger Islands. Satellite imagery showing extensive guano stains led researchers to the remote colonies, which had escaped scientific surveys for years.
Those birds were not proven to be the missing Cape Denison penguins, an important distinction. But the episode demonstrated something equally important: scientists cannot confidently describe continent-wide population changes if substantial populations remain undiscovered.
Penguin movement has also been directly documented elsewhere. The British Antarctic Survey reported in 2019 that the Halley Bay emperor penguin colony experienced catastrophic breeding failures when unstable sea ice broke apart before chicks were ready to survive in the ocean. Yet researchers simultaneously observed a large increase at the nearby Dawson-Lambton colony, indicating that adult birds had moved to another breeding site.
That does not erase the genuine chick mortality at Halley Bay, but it demonstrates that penguin populations are dynamic and that colony counts can reflect movement as well as mortality.
Scientists themselves have learned from this. A 2017 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution study acknowledged that earlier emperor penguin models had inadequately represented movement among colonies and incorporated dispersal into later modeling.
The BBC’s story provides another reminder of how complicated Antarctic ecology actually is. Its headline suggests gentoo penguins are “flourishing” inside an active Antarctic volcano on Deception Island. Yet the article acknowledges that penguins do not presently breed inside the caldera. The photographed birds are visiting the area while molting, taking advantage of its warmth and shelter.
Even more interestingly, the British Antarctic Survey reported in 2017 that eruptions near Deception Island repeatedly devastated local gentoo populations during the past 7,000 years.
Apparently volcanoes can be good for penguins when they’re providing geothermal heating and bad for penguins when they’re erupting.
Different biological responses to environmental change are entirely possible, of course. But if every possible population outcome can be presented as confirmation of the same hypothesis, journalists should be especially careful about distinguishing observations from attribution.
“Collapse” describes what happened to the number of chinstraps counted on Zavodovski Island. “Flourishing” describes the increasing gentoo population reported by the BBC. Neither word establishes why those changes occurred.
Antarctica is enormous. The Antarctic Peninsula, South Sandwich Islands, East Antarctica, Ross Sea, and other regions have substantially different ecological conditions. Gentoo, chinstrap, macaroni, Adélie, and emperor penguins have different diets, breeding strategies, relationships with sea ice, habitats, and abilities to adapt.
It would be remarkable if all of them responded identically to environmental change.
Indeed, the observations being reported by the BBC and CBS paint a much more interesting picture than either headline suggests. Some penguin populations are declining. Others are increasing. Some move. Some exploit different food sources. Some tolerate changing conditions better than others. Volcanoes, sea ice, prey availability, breeding habitat, predation, competition, and weather all matter.
Climate change may be one factor influencing those systems, but attributing an individual population increase or decrease specifically to anthropogenic warming requires evidence demonstrating the causal chain and weighing competing explanations. The CBS researcher’s careful use of the word “probably” reflects that uncertainty, and then the headline largely eliminates it.
The real lesson from these stories isn’t that penguins are simultaneously being saved and destroyed by climate change. It is that Antarctic ecosystems are complicated, penguins are adaptable, population monitoring remains imperfect, and wildlife populations have never been static.
The media should report that complexity instead of forcing every population change into the same climate narrative. Otherwise, the formula becomes absurdly predictable: Penguins thriving? Climate change. Penguins declining? Climate change. Penguins missing? Climate change. Penguins discovered somewhere else?
Who knows? It seems the media makes it up as they go along.
A global study led by researchers at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that urban vegetation recovers faster from climate- related disturbances than surrounding rural vegetation in most cities, and that this urban- rural resilience gap has widened over the past two decades.
The urban- rural resilience gap refers to the finding that vegetation in urban areas recovers more quickly (and often with less damage) from climate- related disturbances than vegetation in surrounding rural areas.
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A global study led by researchers at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that urban vegetation recovers faster from climate- related disturbances than surrounding rural vegetation in most cities, and that this urban- rural resilience gap has widened over the past two decades.
The paper, titled “Global divergence in urban- rural vegetation resilience driven by broken ecological trade-offs,” was led by Professor Jin Wu (School of Biological Sciences) and Professor Yuyu Zhou (Department of Geography), with Dr. Zhengfei Guo as first author. It analyzed satellite observations (primarily Landsat and MODIS greenness data) from 2001 to 2022 covering 751 large cities across 109 countries. Resilience was defined as the capacity of vegetation to recover (return to baseline greenness) following disturbance.
Key findings
Urban- core vegetation was more resilient than nearby rural vegetation in 78% of cities (higher rates, e.g., 91%, appeared in some MODIS- based checks). The advantage was strongest in hot and arid regions, where water limitation is severe.
The urban- rural gap widened over time (in about 67% of cities). This was driven mainly by declining rural resilience (slower recovery), while urban vegetation stayed relatively stable or improved slightly. Rural slowdowns were clearest in dry regions.
In 32% of cities (mostly arid), urban vegetation showed a “dual advantage”: smaller greenness losses during disturbances plus faster recovery afterward. This is consistent with management helping relax the usual ecological trade- off between resistance (withstanding stress) and resilience (recovering from it).
The strongest statistical correlate of the urban advantage was a proxy for urban water subsidy and irrigation (urban- rural difference in evapotranspiration), followed by canopy structure.
This points to human management (watering, maintenance of green spaces) as a key factor, though the study does not claim direct causation from irrigation alone. City cores generally recovered fastest, followed by urban edges, then rural areas. The average urban recovery- time advantage is modest in absolute terms (on the order of days for typical greenness fluctuations).
Implications
The results challenge the idea that cities are uniformly harmful to ecosystem stability. Well- managed urban green spaces can act as “managed refugia” that buffer vegetation against intensifying climate stress, particularly valuable in water- limited regions. However, this depends on sustainable practices; reliance on irrigation raises questions about long- term equity and resource availability under climate change.
The work draws on multi- decadal satellite records rather than ground plots, so it captures broad patterns of greenness recovery rather than species- level or individual- tree details. Complementary coverage appears in outlets such as Earth.com, Mirage News, and Bangor University (a co- author institution).
Credit: The University of Hong Kong
The urban- rural resilience gap refers to the finding that vegetation in urban areas recovers more quickly (and often with less damage) from climate- related disturbances than vegetation in surrounding rural areas.
This pattern holds in the majority of large cities worldwide and has been widening over the past two decades.
What “resilience” means here
In this research, resilience is defined as the capacity of vegetation to recover its greenness after a disturbance (such as drought, heat stress, or other climate shocks).
It is measured from satellite records (mainly Landsat and MODIS) of vegetation indices that track how fast greenness returns to baseline after a dip. Faster recovery = higher resilience. Resistance (how much greenness is lost during the disturbance itself) is also considered in some analyses.
Core findings from the global analysis (2001- 2022)
Across 751 large cities in 109 countries, urban- core vegetation was more resilient than nearby rural vegetation in 78% of cities.
The urban advantage was especially pronounced in hot and arid regions, where water limitation is severe.
The gap has widened over time (observed in roughly two- thirds of the cities). The main driver is declining rural resilience (slower recovery), while urban vegetation has remained comparatively stable or improved slightly.
In 32% of cities (mostly arid ones), urban vegetation showed a “dual advantage”: smaller greenness losses during disturbances plus faster recovery afterward.
City cores typically recovered fastest, followed by urban edges, then rural surroundings. The average urban recovery- time edge is modest in absolute terms (on the order of a few days for typical month- to- month greenness fluctuations), but the consistent direction and temporal widening are significant.
Why the gap exists
The strongest statistical correlate of the urban resilience advantage is a proxy for urban water subsidy and management, specifically, the urban- rural difference in evapotranspiration (a sign of extra water availability, often from irrigation or other human watering of green spaces). Canopy structure is the next most important factor.
These patterns are consistent with human management relaxing the usual ecological trade- off between resistance (withstanding stress) and resilience (recovering from it). Rural vegetation, by contrast, is more exposed to intensifying climate stress without the same level of supplemental water or care.
Broader implications
The results challenge the assumption that cities are uniformly detrimental to ecosystem stability. Well-managed urban green spaces can function as “managed refugia” that help vegetation buffer climate stress, particularly valuable in water -limited regions. However, this advantage depends on sustained, equitable management (including water use), which may face future constraints under climate change and resource pressures.
In short, the urban- rural resilience gap shows that cities are not just places of vegetation loss; under the right management, they can currently outperform nearby rural landscapes in recovery capacity, and that edge has been growing as rural areas become more vulnerable.
Credit: The University of Hong Kong
Global divergence in urban–rural vegetation resilience driven by broken ecological trade-offs
This is the official PNAS page for the paper “Global divergence in urban- rural vegetation resilience driven by broken ecological trade- offs” (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2606997123).
Abstract (from available sources)
While urban environments are known to extend growing seasons and enhance vegetation growth, whether these benefits also improve resilience to climate stress or instead create productive but vulnerable ecosystems remains uncertain. Using satellite observations from 2001 to 2022 across 751 large cities in 109 countries, the authors find that urban vegetation is more resilient than surrounding rural vegetation in 78% of cities. This urban-rural resilience gap has widened over time, driven by declining rural resilience alongside slightly improving urban recovery dynamics, particularly in arid regions where rural vegetation shows progressively slower recovery. Among the factors examined, the urban irrigation proxy (quantified as the urban-rural difference in evapotranspiration) was the strongest correlate of the urban resilience advantage, followed by canopy structure. In 32% of cities, predominantly located in arid regions, urban vegetation exhibited a dual advantage, combining smaller disturbance-related greenness losses with faster recovery than rural vegetation, consistent with management-mediated relaxation of the resistance-resilience trade-off. These findings challenge the view of cities as uniformly detrimental to ecosystem stability and suggest that, when supported by sustainable and equitable management, urban green spaces may serve as managed refugia for vegetation resilience under climate change
Direct full- text retrieval from the PNAS site was blocked (common for subscription and paywalled content).
Secondary summaries (Mirage News, Bangor University, Earth.com, etc.) and abstract aggregators confirm the above details and expand on the same core results: stronger urban advantage in hot and arid regions, widening gap mainly from rural decline, and the management water and subsidy interpretation.
As Kevin Rees jailed for 15 years for blowing up a Ulez camera with a homemade bomb, we see why London’s anti-motorist money-making ‘clean air’ scheme is so widely hated.
Last Friday, a retired appliance engineer named Kevin Rees was jailed for 15 years at the Old Bailey for blowing up a Ulez camera in a London street in December 2023.
The human toll is then expressed in deaths. Public Health England put the figure at around 4,000 premature deaths a year in London, and City Hall’s latest Imperial study claims attributable deaths fell by roughly 40% between 2019 and 2024. These are not bodies counted in a morgue with coroners’ reports but outputs of a model.
As Kevin Rees jailed for 15 years for blowing up a Ulez camera with a homemade bomb, we see why London’s anti- motorist money- making ‘clean air’ scheme is so widely hated.
Last Friday, a retired appliance engineer named Kevin Rees was jailed for 15 years at the Old Bailey for blowing up a Ulez camera in a London street in December 2023. The judge found that the offence was motivated by terrorism; the blast damaged cars and property up to 100 metres away, including a child’s bedroom. Of course, building a bomb and detonating it on a residential street is a grave crime, and nothing below excuses it.
But it is fair to ask how a roadside charging scheme became a cause that drove one man to explosives, and why as many as 1,500 cameras are said to have been attacked in some way. Despite an FOI request for an update on how many cameras and other sensors had been attacked or removed, the authorities withheld year-by-year vandalism counts and repair costs, citing public safety and criminal investigations in February 2026.
The extension of the zone to all 32 boroughs in 2023 was imposed on millions of people who had no meaningful say in it. Labour’s loss of the Uxbridge by-election that July was widely blamed on it, and London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan himself has acknowledged that when the original zone was launched, “all the mainstream political parties, including my own, were opposed”. What we are looking at is less a public-health measure than a moral crusade with a revenue stream.
Moving goalposts and modelled deaths
The standard defence is that Ulez and related measures (such as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods) have worked; London’s air has indeed improved. In 2024, for the first time, London recorded no breach of the UK’s legal annual limit for nitrogen dioxide, and compliance with Ulez standards has risen from 39% to 97%. One might think this the moment to declare victory. Instead the goalposts have moved. In 2021 the World Health Organisation cut its annual guideline for nitrogen dioxide from 40 to 10 micrograms per cubic metre, and for fine particulates from 10 to five, and Imperial College’s Frank Kelly has welcomed Khan’s commitment to bring London into line. But a target that recedes as one approaches it is not a target but a treadmill.
Driving the treadmill is the linear no-threshold assumption that harm falls in proportion to exposure all the way down to zero. Thus, only when exposure is zero can we know that harms are fully avoided. Hence the Labour Assembly Member declaration that “no level of air pollution is safe”. It is a doctrine no policy can ever satisfy, since any residual exposure is by definition a residual harm; cost-benefit analysis is replaced by a liturgy of pristineness. Paracelsus knew better: the dose makes the poison. So, London’s own fine-particle levels, halved since the early 2000s, still remain a problem by this standard.
The human toll is then expressed in deaths. Public Health England put the figure at around 4,000 premature deaths a year in London, and City Hall’s latest Imperial study claims attributable deaths fell by roughly 40% between 2019 and 2024. These are not bodies counted in a morgue with coroners’ reports but outputs of a model. These models multiply estimated exposure by a “concentration-response coefficient” and, under the no-threshold assumption, finds victims wherever there is a pollutant. Nor is it obvious how much credit the zone deserves. Defra’s count of UK zones breaching the nitrogen dioxide limit fell from 33 in 2019 to five in 2024, in a country where by one count only 10 zones charge motorists at all. Vehicle fleets turn over everywhere, and internal combustion cars keep improving their pollutants emission performances. The honest question is how much of London’s improvement Ulez can claim, and at what price.
In August, the Mayor produced his trump card: a Lancet Public Healthstudy reporting that London schoolchildren’s lung growth caught up with that of children in Luton after the zone arrived, published alongside an op-ed by Khan himself in the Guardian. This deserves scrutiny before cheers. It rests on a single comparison town; its follow-up, from 2018 to 2022, spans the pandemic years when traffic collapsed everywhere; and it does not measure the London-wide expansion that provoked the Ulez revolt. The same Queen Mary-led team’s earlier study, in 2019, found no improvement in children’s respiratory health from London’s original low emission zone.
Nor is the research ecosystem a disinterested one. Emails obtained by Conservatives under freedom of information show that in November 2021 the Mayor’s deputy for the environment, Shirley Rodrigues, wrote to Imperial’s Professor Kelly calling a study by his Imperial colleagues – which found only small improvements at launch – “misleading”, and asked him to set the record straight. Kelly’s Environmental Research Group has been paid more than £800,000 by Khan’s office since 2021, and he agreed to issue a statement, partly written by Rodrigues, saying Ulez had “dramatically reduce[d] air pollution”. City Hall called this “standard practice”. It probably is, and that is precisely the problem: the umpire is paid by one side.
Bootleggers, Baptists and the mayor’s purse
In 1983 the economist Bruce Yandle offered a parable that explains more about modern regulation than most textbooks. Sunday alcohol bans, he observed, were backed by two unlikely allies: Baptists, who thought drink sinful, and bootleggers, who profited when the legal trade was shut. The Baptists supply the moral cover; the bootleggers supply the booze, get the profits and make the necessary payoffs to interested parties to keep the status quo. Khan’s Ulez is a textbook case. The Baptists are the clean-air campaigners and the professional classes of inner London, sincere in their conviction that tailpipes are poisoning their children. The bootlegger is Sadiq Khan and City Hall.
The sums involved are not insubstantial. In 2025 the zone raised £57 million in fines and £123 million in fees, against a running cost TfL puts at £100 million. Over the full 2024-25 year, TfL’s own figures put gross Ulez income at £219 million and Congestion Charge income at £271 million; add in the Low Emission Zone and the combined road-charging income in the statutory accounts was about £940 million, against passenger income (bus and rail fares) of about £5.3 billion (TfL freedom-of-information reply; 2024-25 quarterly report). By law the net proceeds must be reinvested in London’s transport network, which is true but beside the point. Money is fungible, and a transport budget fattened by motorists’ penalties is one City Hall need not source from elsewhere. Set against the budget of the whole Greater London Authority of roughly £15.5 billion, the gross take is about 6%.
With compliance at 97% (remember those cameras and sensors everywhere?), the rational response of a revenue-hungry administration is to widen the net, and on cue Khan has said he will remove the congestion charge exemption for electric vehicles, the very cars motorists were urged to buy to escape the zone. My colleague Richard Eldred examined the leaked TfL documents on this war on motorists in the Daily Sceptic last year and I covered the class war on motorist in these pages previously.
The Mayor’s office yearly revenue is about £900 million, with a capital programme dominated by housing and policing. Spending on woke causes such as equality, diversity and inclusion, gay parades, carnivals, Pride grants and the Shared Endeavour Fund (against hate, intolerance, radicalisation and extremism – read Islamophobia) are of course small in the scheme of things. The scandal is not that a LGBTQ rainbow pedestrian crossing in Trafalgar Square is paid by Ulez fines. It is that a scheme of punitive fines, taxes and charges on white van tradesmen and the working class family with an older car is sold in the name of public health.
City Hall is not an austere place. The Mayor himself drew £160,976 in 2024, when he and at least 13 of his staff were reported to be out-earning the Prime Minister, while his deputy mayors’ salaries had risen to roughly £148,000. A mayor’s remit of buses, policing and housing should occupy anyone fulltime. Yet Khan has found the time to chair (and jet around the world for) C40 Cities, the global climate network. Khan, is no mere city mayor. He is a key Labour party figure reported to have backed a pledge to rejoin the EU, a cause Prime Minister Burnham has just put on the table. A 2019 C40 report set out an “ambitious target” of no meat and dairy by 2030. The direction is plain. Brussels and the climate summits are fine hobbies, but the people paying for them are the van drivers and working families in the poorer, outer boroughs of London.
The irony is rich. As mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham scrapped his city-region’s charging clean air zone, arguing that even a small one would be “a considerable financial burden” for businesses in a cost-of-living crisis, and promising to hit legal limits by investments instead. Londoners, under a far larger zone, were offered no such clemency. And the burden falls hardest where capacity to absorb it is least. A haulier whose lorry fails the standard has faced £100 to £200 a day in London’s low emission zone since 2008, and a £50 daily charge for non-compliant lorries in Birmingham. The tax’s incidence ends up in freight rates and, in due course, on the supermarket shelf.
Rousseau in the boroughs
When my wife and I moved to Britain from Singapore to be nearer our daughter’s family, a close friend invited me to Edinburgh. He could not drive up to the train station: his old car fell foul of the city’s low emission zone, so he had to arrange a meeting point outside its boundary. I was baffled. Singapore, where life expectancy reached 83.9 years in 2025, among the longest in the world, rations cars too, through certificates of entitlement and road pricing, but chiefly to keep traffic moving on a small island.
Why do so many otherwise sensible people embrace purity as policy? Rousseau – whom Voltaire famously teased in 1755 for making readers of his Noble Savage discourse long to walk on all fours – bequeathed the notion that modernity is a fall from grace and nature a lost Eden. His angst over Western modernity combined with Malthus’s profoundly wrong prophecy of limits to growth. Karl Popper, in The Open Society and its Enemies, showed us where the pursuit of Plato’s utopia ends: in coercion. Rupert Darwall traces the evolution of green tyranny in our times, in part from the irrationality of the German Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries. Attach that tradition to a child’s health and it becomes unimpeachable, for what could be a stronger lever than the fear that your toddler is inhaling the fumes of dirty cars and buses?
A saner settlement
None of this is an argument against clean air, so long as real trade-offs are weighed appropriately. In an objective cost-benefit analysis, the preferences of the privileged lanyard classes should play no role. It is an argument against treating air as a sacrament. A sane policy would begin from the fact that London already meets its legal limits, and that further tightening must pass the test applied to any other public spending: what does it cost per life-year saved, and who pays? It would freeze the outer-London expansion until its benefits are assessed by researchers who are not on City Hall’s payroll. It would target genuine hotspots, such as busy roadsides beside schools or even poorly ventilated subway stations, rather than fining a plumber for a van he paid off years ago.
The Baptists will keep preaching and the bootleggers will keep going ker-ching on their cash registers. Londoners, who must drive, deliver and pay, are entitled to ask for the one thing neither will supply, which is proportion and reasonable trade-offs. This certainly needs no explosive devices to get it. We have a ballot box, and the next mayoral election falls in 2028.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic’s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former (cancelled) contributor to Forbes. Follow him onSubstackandX.
The Nazca Lines (or Nasca geoglyphs) are a vast collection of large- scale designs etched into the desert floor of southern Peru’s Nazca Desert (Pampa Colorada and Pampa de Jumana), northwest of the modern city of Nazca.
The Paracas culture was an ancient Andean society that flourished on the arid southern coast of present- day Peru (primarily the Ica Region, including the Paracas Peninsula and valleys such as Chincha, Pisco, Ica, and parts of the Río Grande de Nasca drainage) roughly between 800 BCE and 100– 200 CE.
The Nazca (Nasca) civilization did not vanish suddenly or mysteriously.
The Nazca region receives almost no rainfall (often less than 1- 2 cm per year in the pampa).
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The Nazca Lines (or Nasca geoglyphs) are a vast collection of large- scale designs etched into the desert floor of southern Peru’s Nazca Desert (Pampa Colorada and Pampa de Jumana), northwest of the modern city of Nazca.
They include hundreds of straight lines (some running for many kilometers), geometric shapes (trapezoids, triangles, spirals, rectangles), and figurative designs of animals, plants, and human-like forms.
The figures range from tens to hundreds of meters long (e.g., a hummingbird ~50 m / 165 ft, a spider ~46 m / 150 ft, a monkey ~110 m / 360 ft, larger birds up to ~285- 370 m). The combined length of the lines exceeds 1,300 km, covering roughly 50- 500 km² depending on how the area is defined.
They were created mainly between about 500 BCE and 500- 600 CE (with the bulk associated with the Nazca period roughly 200 BCE- 600/700 CE). Some earlier examples are attributed to preceding cultures.
The Civilizations Behind Them
The primary creators were the Nazca (or Nasca) culture, which flourished on Peru’s southern coast between roughly 200 BCE and 600 CE in the river valleys of the Río Grande de Nasca drainage and the Ica Valley.
They were skilled agriculturalists in an extremely arid environment, relying on sophisticated underground aqueduct systems known as puquios to access and distribute water from Andean sources and aquifers. Their major ceremonial center was Cahuachi (a complex of adobe mounds and plazas), with Ventilla as a notable urban site. They produced distinctive polychrome pottery and fine textiles, and lacked a writing system.
Earlier groups contributed as well:
The Paracas culture (roughly 700/800 BCE- 1 CE or slightly later) is linked to some of the older geoglyphs, especially human- like or different stylistic figures, some on hillsides, and is seen as a cultural predecessor or strong influence on the Nazca.
Possible limited earlier involvement from groups related to the Chavín culture has also been suggested for some lines.
Newer designs sometimes overlap older ones, indicating creation and use over many centuries by successive groups rather than a single coordinated project.
The Nazca people were the main builders of the most famous animal and geometric figures.
How They Were Built
The method was simple, low- technology, and highly effective given the local geology, no advanced tools, wheels, metal, or aerial views were required. The desert surface consists of a layer of dark reddish- brown pebbles coated in iron- oxide “desert varnish.” Beneath this lies lighter yellowish- gray or white clay and sandy subsoil rich in lime.
Construction process (subtractive technique):
Workers cleared the dark surface pebbles (typically to a shallow depth of 10- 15 cm / 4- 6 inches, though some descriptions note up to ~30- 40 cm in places), exposing the contrasting lighter soil.
The removed stones were often piled or aligned along the edges of the lines and figures, creating a raised border that enhanced the visual contrast.
For filled areas (e.g., interiors of trapezoids), stones were cleared from the whole surface and heaped at the margins.
This created high- contrast “drawings” that are best appreciated from the air or nearby hills but were made and used at ground level. The hyper- arid climate (minimal rain, little wind erosion at surface level) and the lime content (which hardens with moisture from mist) have preserved them for ~2,000 years.
Planning and precision techniques:
Designs were likely planned first at small scale (sketches, models, or possibly textile and grid patterns).
Wooden stakes, ropes and cords were used for layout. Stakes have been archaeologically recovered at the ends of some lines and radiocarbon- dated to the relevant period. Straight lines were made by stretching taut ropes between stakes (or successive stakes for long distances) and clearing along the guides; sighting along stakes helped maintain straightness over kilometers.
Curves, circles, and spirals used a central stake as a pivot with a rope of fixed or adjustable length (like a giant compass), releasing slack for expanding spirals.
Larger figurative designs could be scaled up proportionally from small models by measuring distances from centerlines or using grids and points, then connecting them. Experiments (including modern recreations of large figures like the condor using only stakes, rope, and a simple T- square by small teams) have demonstrated that this works efficiently without needing an overall aerial view.
Organized group labor under direction was involved, which may have reinforced social cohesion. The process did not require specialized engineering beyond basic geometry and surveying knowledge available to the culture. A minority view suggests some lines involved compacting/pressing the surface rather than full removal, but the consensus is the pebble- clearing method.
Purpose
The exact purpose remains debated and was likely multi- functional, evolving over time. Leading scholarly views emphasize ritual and ceremonial use in a water- scarce environment: processional paths for walking during religious rites (pottery offerings and compacted surfaces support this), connections between sacred sites (e.g., linking Cahuachi and other centers), and associations with water, fertility, mountain worship, and agriculture.
Some geometric lines may relate to water sources or puquios. Astronomical calendar theories (popularized by early researchers like Paul Kosok and María Reiche) have largely been weakened by later analyses showing limited alignments beyond chance. Fringe ideas (e.g., alien runways) lack evidence.
In short, the Nazca Lines are a remarkable achievement of the Nazca people (building on Paracas foundations) using straightforward desert-surface clearing guided by basic stakes- and-ropes geometry, demonstrating sophisticated planning, communal effort, and cultural continuity in one of Earth’s driest places.
The animal mounds were found in a region famous for a series of ancient geolyphs, called the Nazca Lines, which are now considered a World Heritage Site in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. Here, Nazca Lines resembling a hummingbird, as viewed from a plane. Nazca Lines Are a Labyrinth | Live Science
The Paracas culture was an ancient Andean society that flourished on the arid southern coast of present- day Peru (primarily the Ica Region, including the Paracas Peninsula and valleys such as Chincha, Pisco, Ica, and parts of the Río Grande de Nasca drainage) roughly between 800 BCE and 100– 200 CE.
It belongs mainly to the Early Horizon period and is named after the Paracas Peninsula (from a Quechua term meaning something like “sand falling like rain” or referring to sandstorms). The culture was first systematically investigated in the 1920s by Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello (with Toribio Mejía Xesspe), who excavated major burial sites on the peninsula.
Chronology and Phases
Dates vary slightly by source and region, but a common range is c. 800- 700 BCE to 100- 200 CE. Traditional divisions include:
Paracas Cavernas (earlier phase): Characterized by bottle-shaped shaft tombs (“caverns”) cut into rock or earth, often reused over time, containing multiple burials with ceramics featuring post- fired resin paints, incised designs, and Chavín- influenced motifs.
Paracas Necropolis (later phase, associated with the Wari Kayan site): Larger subterranean chamber tombs or mausoleums with hundreds of elaborate individual mummy bundles. Some scholars link aspects of this phase more closely to the related Topará tradition.
Radiocarbon studies refine phases in some areas (e.g., Early, Middle, and Late Paracas), and there was regional variation across valleys.
Society and Economy
Paracas society consisted of local chiefdoms rather than a centralized state. Communities shared religious ideas, trade networks, and cultural practices but retained political and economic autonomy. There is evidence of conflict (weapons, trophy heads, battle wounds).
They adapted to an extremely dry desert environment next to a rich Pacific coastline by practicing agriculture (supported by irrigation and water management in river valleys), fishing, and gathering marine resources. Cotton was grown locally, and they engaged in reciprocal trade with highland groups, notably those linked to the Chavín culture (whose religious iconography influenced early Paracas art).
Key Achievements and Material Culture
Textiles: Paracas is renowned for some of the finest pre- Columbian Andean fiber arts. Mummy bundles were wrapped in multiple layers of cotton and camelid (llama, alpaca and vicuña) wool textiles featuring complex techniques: embroidery (linear and block- color styles), tapestry, gauze, twining, looping, braiding, featherwork, and more. Designs often depict mythological beings, anthropomorphic figures, animals, and geometric patterns. Elite bundles could be massive and highly elaborate.
Ceramics: Early styles used post- firing resin paints applied within incised lines; later ones included slipped and burnished wares. Motifs often featured felines, birds, and other creatures.
Burial practices: Strong belief in the afterlife is evident in carefully prepared mummy bundles (bodies seated and flexed, often with false heads, grave goods like food, ceramics, tools, weapons, and musical instruments). Some tombs were reused; cranial modification (intentional head shaping in infancy into tabular or bilobate forms) was practiced, possibly for status or identity. Trepanation (skull surgery) also occurred.
Other: They produced basketry, pyro- engraved gourds, and items reflecting musical performance. Some early geoglyphs in the broader region (including hillside figures and the Paracas Candelabra) are attributed to them and predate the classic Nazca Lines.
Relation to the Nazca Culture
The Paracas culture is widely regarded as the direct predecessor (or cultural foundation) of the Nazca (Nasca) culture.
Nazca society (c. 200 BCE- 600/700 CE) inherited and developed Paracas traditions in textiles, religion, iconography, head- related rituals, and adaptation to the desert environment (including later advances in underground aqueducts). The transition involved continuity in some areas alongside innovations (especially in pottery techniques, with Nazca developing pre- fired polychrome slips) and possible influences or population movements involving the Topará tradition. Some of the earliest Nazca Lines and geoglyphs show Paracas stylistic links.
In summary, the Paracas people created a sophisticated coastal culture known especially for extraordinary textiles and complex mortuary rituals in one of the world’s driest environments. Their legacy provided the cultural and artistic foundation for the better-known Nazca civilization that followed.
The Nazca (Nasca) civilization did not vanish suddenly or mysteriously.
It declined gradually over centuries, primarily between roughly 500 and 750 CE, due to a combination of environmental degradation (partly self- inflicted), climate stresses, social changes, and eventual absorption or displacement by later groups such as the Wari. The people themselves did not disappear; their distinct cultural complex transformed and faded as a recognizable entity.
Environmental Self-Sabotage and Climate Events
A key factor was the progressive clearing of native huarango trees (Prosopis pallida, also known as algarrobo).
These deep- rooted, long- lived trees acted as a keystone species in the arid river valleys: they stabilized soil against erosion, helped retain moisture, protected against winds, and supported fertile floodplains. Pollen records from sites like the lower Ica Valley show that as Nazca agriculture expanded (for maize, cotton, beans, and other crops), huarango pollen declined sharply while crop pollen rose, especially from about 200- 400 CE onward. By around 500 CE, woodland clearance had crossed an ecological tipping point in the fragile desert environment.
This left the landscape highly vulnerable. A major El Niño event (or series of extreme floods) around 500- 600 CE then caused severe damage: rivers cut deeply into unprotected floodplains, irrigation systems (including canals and possibly puquios) were wrecked or left high and dry, soil eroded, and agricultural land was degraded or salinized.
What might have been manageable replenishment of water tables instead became catastrophic because the natural buffers were gone.
Some research also points to increasing aridity, drought periods (possibly multi -decade), and other stresses like earthquakes or moderate debris flows contributing to progressive environmental pressure, particularly affecting ceremonial centers like Cahuachi (largely abandoned earlier, around the end of Early Nazca phases).
After these events, settlements fragmented, evidence of conflict and warfare imagery increased in art, health indicators worsened in some populations (higher infant mortality, shorter lifespans), and large- scale communal projects (including geoglyph construction) became harder to sustain.
Social and Political Transitions
The Nazca were never a highly centralized state but a collection of related chiefdoms with shared culture, religion, and iconography.
Environmental stress weakened social cohesion and the authority of ceremonial centers. In the Middle Horizon (roughly 600- 1000 CE), the expanding highland Wari (Huari) culture exerted influence or control over the region. Some Nazca groups appear to have been incorporated, with Wari adopting or adapting certain Nazca artistic traits; other areas saw abandonment or migration (possibly to higher elevations or better- watered zones). Later, the region was reoccupied in the Late Intermediate Period by societies with highland immigrant influences.
There is no strong evidence of a single military conquest that wiped them out overnight, nor of mass extinction. Population levels dropped in core areas, settlements shifted, and the distinctive Nazca pottery styles, textile traditions, and ritual practices gradually blended into or were replaced by successor cultures.
Summary of the Process
Gradual environmental damage (deforestation for farmland) reduced resilience.
Climate shocks (El Niño floods, aridification and drought) damaged agriculture and infrastructure.
Social fragmentation followed, with reduced ceremonial activity and increased conflict.
Cultural absorption and transition into the Wari sphere and later societies completed the transformation of the “Nazca civilization” as a distinct archaeological culture by around 750 CE.
The famous Nazca Lines and other achievements endured precisely because of the hyper- arid conditions that both challenged and preserved them. Modern studies of this history often highlight lessons about sustainable land use in fragile ecosystems facing climate variability.
The Nazca civilization developed and ultimately declined in one of the world’s driest environments, the hyper- arid coastal desert of southern Peru, where climate and water availability were central to daily life, agriculture, religion, and long- term survival.
The Climate Context
The Nazca region receives almost no rainfall (often less than 1- 2 cm per year in the pampa).
Life depended on seasonal river flow from Andean snowmelt and rainfall higher in the mountains, plus groundwater. The people engineered sophisticated responses, including the famous puquios (underground aqueducts and filtration galleries) that tapped aquifers and minimized evaporation, allowing agriculture of maize, cotton, beans, squash, and other crops in river oases.
Climate was never stable. Paleoclimate records (pollen, sediments, desert loess, ice cores from Quelccaya, and other proxies) show fluctuations between relatively more humid and more arid phases, influenced by the El Niño- Southern Oscillation (ENSO), shifts in monsoonal moisture from the east, and broader Andean patterns.
Key Climate Impacts on the Nazca
Gradual aridification and desertification: Starting around 150 CE (and intensifying 350- 400 CE), a progressive drying trend began. The eastern margin of the Atacama Desert shifted inland and up-valley. Settlement centers moved upstream into higher valleys to follow remaining water sources. Periods of multi- decade water scarcity (up to ~80 years in some reconstructions) occurred, yet the culture continued to produce fine pottery and maintain ceremonial centers like Cahuachi for a time.
Droughts: Stronger drought episodes, including one in the 5th century CE and a more extreme phase around or after 600 CE, stressed agriculture and water systems. These contributed to reduced productivity, settlement shifts, and the eventual decline of the classic Nazca cultural complex. Some researchers link the construction or expansion of puquios partly to adaptive responses to these drier conditions.
El Niño events and floods: El Niño typically brings heavy rains and flooding to the Peruvian coast. A major (or “mega”) El Niño event around 500- 600 CE is documented in some valleys (especially the lower Ica). Floods damaged irrigation infrastructure and farmland. However, the impact was greatly amplified by prior human deforestation of huarango trees, which had stabilized soils and floodplains. Without that natural buffer, erosion intensified and systems failed more catastrophically. Some earlier catastrophic-flood theories for the complete burial of sites like Cahuachi have been challenged; evidence points more toward progressive environmental stress, moderate floods, earthquakes, and increasing aridity rather than single mega- floods wiping everything out.
Increased climate variability: Toward the end of the Early Intermediate Period (~600 CE) and into the Middle Horizon, precipitation became less predictable (more frequent droughts mixed with occasional flash floods). This reduced agricultural reliability and contributed to social stress, possible conflict over water, abandonment of lower valleys, and population movements (including some migration toward higher elevations).
Adaptation and Limits
The Nazca showed significant resilience: they expanded irrigation, shifted settlements, intensified ceremonial activities (possibly related to water and fertility rituals, including geoglyph construction during drier periods), and maintained complex society for centuries under difficult conditions. Their cultural peak occurred despite ongoing aridification.
However, the combination of long- term drying, extreme events, and human modifications of the landscape (especially tree clearance for farmland) eventually exceeded adaptive capacity.
By roughly 600- 750 CE the distinctive Nazca cultural pattern declined, with many areas abandoned or absorbed into the expanding Wari sphere. Later (Late Intermediate Period) more humid conditions allowed reoccupation of some zones.
In short: Climate, particularly progressive aridification, drought, and ENSO- related extremes, was a major driver of both the Nazca’s impressive adaptations (irrigation, water rituals) and their eventual transformation as a civilization. Modern researchers often study these dynamics for insights into resilience and vulnerability in dryland societies facing climate variability today.
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