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95 collapse of Sumer & Akkad at the end of the third millennium B.C.E. A trend-setting study was one by an international group of seven scientists from different disciplines titled “Climate Change and the Collapse of the Akkadian Empire: Evidence from the Deep Sea,” published in the scientific journal Geol- ogy in its April 2000 issue. Their research used radiological and chemical analysis of ancient dust layers from that period obtained from various Near Eastern sites, but primarily from the bottom of the Gulf of Oman; their conclusion was that an unusual climate change in the areas adjoining the Dead Sea gave rise to dust storms and that the dust—an unusual “atmospheric mineral dust”—was carried by the prevailing winds over southern Mesopotamia all the way beyond the Persian Gulf (Fig. 37)—the very pattern of Sumer’s Evil Wind! Carbon dating of the unusual “fallout dust” led to the conclusion that it was due to an “uncommon dramatic event Gone with the Wind FIGURE 37