Considerations of hegemonic decline as a world historical process most often attempt to discuss the pulsative descent along social, political, and economic constraints (see for ex. Gills and Frank1992).  As we increasingly question  whether there are physical/environmental limits that exist beyond the control of the world historical system itself that would affect the reproduction of the system, the aforementioned political, economic and social dimensions might not necessarily be sufficient to account for hegemonic declines and shifts. To this extent -- and this is especially the case for the time period (2200B.C. - 700 B.C.)we have chosen to examine -- consideration of environmental and climatological factors needs to be included with socioeconomic relations in our understanding of hegemonic declines and shifts.  This initiative assumes that the world system is one in which humans seek to transform Nature in an expansive manner, and amass ceaselessly in the form of surpluses this expansion.  In the evolution of the world system, it seems that there are certain periods in world history which exhibit circumstances at the world systemic level of economic and social crises leading to hegemonic decline.  Such long-term periods of economic and social stresses have been identified commonly as the dark ages.  Writing over a decade ago, Gills and Frank (1992:632-636) in trying to account for hegemonic shifts over the course of five thousand years of world history repeatedly used the term dark ages to describe certain B-phases of the world system when there were periods of hegemonic shifts.  Their innovative attempt to periodize long-term hegemonic shift however, did not establish the length of these dark ages, and the frequency of recurrences other than noting their existence. Because their research problematique focused primarily on the social, political and economic dimensions for the production of surplus they were not concern with the source of the basis of this materialistic production, i.e., the relationship between Culture and the environment.  As a result, they did not ponder further the implications and importance of dark ages for world history other than assuming the social historian's interpretation of these periods as durations of socioeconomic distress.  Logically for them, since dark ages are periods of socioeconomic stress, these periods offer a back-drop for precipitating hegemonic shifts.  For the purpose of this paper, we will consider that dark ages are more than just periods of depressed socioeconomic conditions.  Dark ages are also characterized  by environmental and climatological changes (Chew 2001, 2002).  Such being the case, in my view, these environmental and climatological changes do condition the rhythms and processes of the world system over the long term, and therefore have implications for our understanding of hegemonic shifts and declines.

Given the theme of this conference, the argument to be developed here is that our understanding of hegemonic decline need to be placed within a wider context beyond (but also including) the dimensions of social, political, and economic considerations; for underneath the superficial currents of public/social events and the actions of historically important agents, there are deeper swells of world systemic connections underlying expansions and collapses, and of environmental and climatological changes that need to be measured and analyzed not in decades but in centuries and/or millennia.

The longer duration in terms of time scale is especially important when we are considering outcomes arising from the relationship between Culture and Nature.  The impact of  socioeconomic activity on the natural environment, and hence the length of ecological cycles of crisis,  I believe, is of a longer duration than, for example, the 300-year economic cycles of boom and bust that are believed to be pulsations of the world system. Not only the duration, the frequency of the occurrences does not cycle rhythmically over 300 years or 50 years in length as we would find with economic cycles.  The disruption of natural rhythms of the ecological landscape via the process of the degradation of the environment extend over a longer term such as 500-600 years.

Given this, whatever socioeconomic and political changes that are triggered by the Culture-Nature relations appear only after very long periods of ecological stress. What this further means is that political economic changes need also to be framed within a longer duree of ecological time.  The same can also be considered of climatological changes that are either human or non-human induced.  It does not mean however, that political economic changes occur only over longer cycles of ecological time.  For there are political economic changes that occur over shorter durations of social time.  The harmonizing of social time measuring, for example, each 300 year political economic shift, with ecological time which is based on natural processes and mechanisms, and hence of a longer duration (though measured on socially constructed time scale) is complicated by this characteristic.  What this means is that every political economic shifts periodized along the social time continuum cannot always be correlated with signs of ecological degradation because ecological crisis and climatological changes operate on a longer time duration.  Because of this, it is difficult at times to draw a link between political economic changes with ecologically degradative and climatological changes, and to suggest that the latter changes could have triggered historical sequences of political economic changes that followed.

Furthermore, the sparse information available on ecological degradation caused by specific social systems, and the limited data on climatological changes during the early eras, complicate our attempt.  In light of this, periodizing hegemonic shifts conditioned by environmental degradation and climatological changes between 2200 B.C. and 700 B.C. is thus handicapped by limited data, and as well, by the characteristic that natural processes have its own ecological time rhythm, and when placed within a social time continuum would extend over a longer duration.  This further means that my analysis would not dovetail necessarily, on most occasions, with periodization of hegemonic shifts which based its evaluation on anthropocentrically constructed economic and political cycles and wars.  Notwithstanding this, in the end, it is the consideration of all factors and conditions whether they are or are not anthropocentric in nature that impact on political economic changes must ultimately be the goal of this endeavor.