A recent study by German scientists partly attributing the collapse of the T’ang Dynasty to shifting weather patterns between AD700 and AD900 has been rubbished by Chinese meteorologists.
The erudite findings, by the University of Potsdam’s Institute for Geosciences, posited that strong winter monsoons and decreased rainfall during those crucial two centuries brought on drought and famine, which combined with military defeats at the hands of the Arabs to critically weaken the T’ang.
However, Professor Zhang Deer of the Chinese Meteorological Association has dismissed the scientific evidence and instead blamed the dynasty’s collapse on “a weakened central government and a split in the nation.”
Of course. There had to be subversion at work. What would Mother Nature have to do with anything?
By extraordinary coincidence, “a weakened central government and a split in the nation” are the very same things that China’s present administration goes to extreme lengths to guard against.
Even more remarkably, the People’s Daily was able to declare that the German researchers were mistaken at a time when “we didn’t have much evidence against them” (in Professor Zhang’s words).
One wonders what startling historical insights Chinese meteorologists will offer next. That ancient floods were caused by Tibetan separatists, perhaps?
Go Ask a Weatherman
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