Page 209 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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McClure (1976, 1978) relates the Early Holocene moisture changes in Saudi
Arabia to northward displacement of monsoonal systems. This interpretation is
supported by Bryson and Swain (1981) for northwestern India. Monsoonal patterns
varied during the past 10,000 years, with maximum rainfall occurring in the Early
Holocene, but decreasing to the present. Similar changes in atmospheric
circulation patterns over Africa during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene have
also been reported by Nicholson and Flohn (1980). Wittstanley (1973) uses
monsoonal shifts to explain historic changes in rainfall in the region. He claims
northern migration of the monsoon belt into the southern Sahara and southern
Arabia at intervals when polar high pressure systems are waning, thus allowing
greater rainfall in these normally arid zones. Rather than submit a rigid
interpretation or mechanism, it is better, at this juncture, to use the various
paleoenvironmental data shown as an indication of a complex system fluctuating at
a similar scale, but not necessarily in phase. The important comparisons to be
derived here are with the eastern Arabian moisture patterns, and the Holocene
land-use patterns on Bahrain. Each of the noted peaks in land use expansion took
place in concert with prominent periods of greater moisture.
TTiis similarity points more clearly to a complex paleoecological
interaction between human groups and their contemporary environmental settings
than has been recognized. For example, land use fluctuation was discussed from an
economic view in the previous chapter. Recognition of different natural variables
displaying similar rhythms calls for a reexamination of this view and especially
Polanyi’s paradigm for external trade. Rather than calling for a natural
environmental explanation, these patterns put BahrainTs land use patterns into a
better perspective and suggest additional reasons why specific periods of maritime
trading did not seem to result in extensive land use. For example, the lack of
Sasanian development on Bahrain in the first millennium A.D. may be factually
related to arid conditions that Tabari described for the fourth century A.D.
(Noldecke 1879).