Climate Change, Religious Change

In his contribution to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions, Noel Robertson argues that “Archaeology and epic poetry both fix on climate change as a fundamental cause of the Mycenaean collapse.” As the climate cooled and became wetter, the population shifted east, adopted warmer types of clothing, abandoned cultivated land.

He finds this reflected in legends and myths: “The same conditions appear in legends as caused by Zeus and Athena – the sky god Zeus and the maiden Athena who sprang from his head, then dropped from the sky as a wooden image, to become an object of worship representing both” (204). The legend of Jason has the same background, and Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women actually traces the origins of the Trojan War to “a sudden drastic weather change that leads to trafficking overseas, the abduction of Helen, and the Trojan War – and thereafter to the separation of the race of heroes and the race of men” (204).

An examination of calendrical evidence leads Robertson to the conclusion that this same climate change touched off a religious shift: “These calendar months reflect a fundamental change in belief, reflected also in Hesiod’s new pantheon of Olympic gods. The sky god Zeus with his far-seeing purpose becomes the new ruler of nature and society, displacing the irascible weather god Poseidon who was foremost in the Mycenaean period, the counterpart of other weather gods in cities and empires throughout the Near Wast. In city calendars Poseidon receives the nominal tribute of giving his name to December, the bleakest month of all, but the festival in question is virtually unknown. Poseidon’s worship everywhere declined and legend depicts him as obsessed with resentment of Zeus” (205).