From the Earth Institute, this drought in the Southwest U.S. is likely to be worse than the one that destroyed an entire advanced civilization in the same spot.

During the second half of the 21st century, the U.S. Southwest and Great Plains will face persistent drought worse than anything seen in times ancient or modern, with the drying conditions “driven primarily” by human-induced global warming, a new study predicts.

The research says the drying would surpass in severity any of the decades-long “megadroughts” that occurred much earlier during the past 1,000 years—one of which has been tied by some researchers to the decline of the Anasazi or Ancient Pueblo Peoples in the Colorado Plateau in the late 13th century. Many studies have already predicted that the Southwest could dry due to global warming, but this is the first to say that such drying could exceed the worst conditions of the distant past. The impacts today would be devastating, given the region’s much larger population and use of resources…

“The results … are extremely unfavorable for the continuation of agricultural and water resource management as they are currently practiced in the Great Plains and southwestern United States,” said David Stahle, professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas and director of the Tree-Ring Laboratory there.

Discarding the theories about alien abduction, the Anasazi most likely just walked away from their urban lifestyles, which the surrounding ecosystem could no longer support, spread out, and resumed earlier, lower-impact ways of life. Although there was probably significant suffering and loss of life, that entire group of people did not “vanish” – their descendants can still be found in the same general region. Drawing parallels to the modern world, the southwest U.S. is obviously part of an interconnected national and global system, and people, water, materials, and food can be moved around a lot easier than in the 13th century. On the other hand, the world is crowded and there isn’t much space left to spread out in. We can’t have billions of people just walking out of their cities, into the surrounding woods, and resuming a hunting and gathering lifestyle.