Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 551.6 FAG | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
For more than a century we've known that much of human evolution occurred in an Ice Age. Starting about 15,000 years ago, temperatures began to rise, the glaciers receded, and sea levels rose. The rise of human civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, known as the Holocene.Until very recently we had no detailed record of climate changes during the Holocene. Now we do. In this engrossing and captivating look at the human effects of climate variability, Brian Fagan shows how climate functioned as what the historian Paul Kennedy described as one of the "deeper transformations" of history--a more important historical factor than we understand.
Author Notes
Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Anthropologist Fagan engagingly presents an abundance of geological and archaeological evidence supporting the idea that human civilization has been shaped by significant climate change to a greater extent than previously thought. As in his other books, including The Little Ice Age, Fagan cushions his scientific data with absorbing historical narrative. The "long summer" of the title is the Holocene warming trend of the last 15,000 years, which has coddled humanity throughout recorded history. While scientists have always known that cycles of cooling and warming within this era have affected humans, only in the last part of the 20th century did they have detailed ice and sediment cores to provide evidence for specific events. Fagan uses the new information to authoritatively walk readers through the major climatic changes in human history, including droughts that led to the formation of the first cities, rainfall increases connected to the spread of bubonic plague, and volcanic eruptions that triggered disastrous cooling trends. Although often repetitive, these examples serve to prove without a doubt that humans have been increasingly vulnerable to climate change ever since we left a nomadic lifestyle for an agriculture-based one. Part cautionary tale and part historical detective story, this book encourages readers to appreciate the increasingly clear links between great weather changes and human society, politics and survival. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Guardian Review
The more you find out about global warming, the more you realise there are two characteristics of climate change: immense complexity and terrible inevitability. The complexity is perhaps the harder of the two to comprehend. Climate change has major relevance to widely differing areas of our lives. Science, business, agriculture, politics, tourism, society, nature and so on, and even within these fields there are gulfs of divided opinion, conflicting evidence, setting of priorities, clashings of vested interests, nay-saying, jeremiads and ruthless indifference. The world's largest polluter (the US) not only refuses to ratify the Kyoto protocol, but Alaska, one of its largest states and a major oil-producer, is losing its icefields, sinking into its melting permafrost, allowing its wildlife to be destroyed, and pumping millions of barrels of crude. None of the oil is exported: it all goes to fuel the greenhouse emissions from the profligate American use of cars, air conditioners, ice-makers and jet aircraft. Meanwhile, the world's second largest polluter (China) is losing immense tracts of land to desert as drought takes hold, while expanding its industrial base faster than any other country in the world. With dread cause and effect, every unit of energy burned adds to the problem. The task of unravelling either of those two most obvious problems would seem to be beyond most present agencies. Too much is at stake for too many groups, lobbies, investors, generals, corporations - and millions of consumers. The US and China are just the most obvious, but by no means the only, problems. Brian Fagan's description of the archaeology of global warming reveals that the Earth has been warming up and cooling down for thousands of years, in most cases for reasons beyond the efforts of man. The cycles are slow, but can be measured from seabed core samples, pollen traces, tree rings and carbon dating. Our planet is basically a huge heat-pump, absorbing a steady blast of radiated heat from the Sun, and efficiently emitting that energy into space again. The result is thermal equilibrium, maintained by an almost unimaginably complicated pattern of reflection, scattering, absorption and redistribution. The engines of this pump are the ocean currents and the many levels of atmosphere, with clouds, gaseous layers and jetstreams all playing a part. Fagan shows that the biosphere has in the past kept a steady hand on the tiller. The Earth is a self-correcting mechanism, and if we can afford to reckon its prospects in the long term (thousands or hundreds of thousands of years), things will probably turn out all right. The problem is that our present civilisation, for the first time in known history, is forcing the pace of change with its carbon emissions, greenhouse gases and apparently endless destruction of the natural habitat. The Earth will no doubt regulate the changes we force on it, but its means of compensation will almost certainly not be to our liking. Nor do we have the luxury of thousands of years: planetary self-regulation is going to start kicking in within our lifetimes. Of immediate concern to those in western Europe is the state of health of the Gulf Stream. Once, about 13,000 years ago, a vast frozen lake in north America melted and, in a remarkably short period of time (in geological terms), dumped its freshwater contents into the Sea of Labrador. The Gulf Stream, which is only a small part of the planet-girdling "conveyor belt" of ocean currents, came to a halt. An icy chill hit Europe, and drought settled on the Middle East. This incident, known as the Younger Dryas, was a mere blip in the Earth's gradual recovery from the Ice Age, but it lasted for 1,000 years. At present, the icecap on Greenland is leaking cold meltwater into the north Atlantic at the same rate as the Nile empties into the Mediterranean. This alone should concentrate the minds of the politicians, economists and farmers. Halting the Gulf Stream might be Earth's compensatory way of restoring an icecap to the North Pole, but in the process it will be farewell to everything and everybody north of Morocco. Christopher Priest's novel The Separation won the 2003 Arthur C Clarke award. To order The Long Summer for pounds 17 plus p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875. Caption: article-warming.1 [Brian Fagan]'s description of the archaeology of global warming reveals that the Earth has been warming up and cooling down for thousands of years, in most cases for reasons beyond the efforts of man. The cycles are slow, but can be measured from seabed core samples, pollen traces, tree rings and carbon dating. Our planet is basically a huge heat-pump, absorbing a steady blast of radiated heat from the Sun, and efficiently emitting that energy into space again. The result is thermal equilibrium, maintained by an almost unimaginably complicated pattern of reflection, scattering, absorption and redistribution. Of immediate concern to those in western Europe is the state of health of the Gulf Stream. Once, about 13,000 years ago, a vast frozen lake in north America melted and, in a remarkably short period of time (in geological terms), dumped its freshwater contents into the Sea of Labrador. The Gulf Stream, which is only a small part of the planet-girdling "conveyor belt" of ocean currents, came to a halt. An icy chill hit Europe, and drought settled on the Middle East. This incident, known as the Younger Dryas, was a mere blip in the Earth's gradual recovery from the Ice Age, but it lasted for 1,000 years. - Christopher Priest.
Choice Review
In this fascinating and engaging work, Fagan (emer., anthropology, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) depicts the effects of climatological change on civilizations over the past 15,000 years of the Holocene, particularly, how civilizations have responded to these changes in the environment. Fagan leads readers through major climatic changes in human history, including droughts, floods, and volcanic eruptions. His historical narrative softens the hard scientific data and quickly captivates the reader. For the last 15,000 years there has been a general warming trend and, in part, this book is a cautionary tale illuminating the startling links between great weather changes and human society. The figures, tables, and maps are very helpful in explaining the ideas being conveyed, and there is a good chapter-by-chapter listing of references. An excellent subject index makes the book a useful reference tool to revisit time and again. Though upper-division undergraduates in geography will benefit greatly from this book, the book translates very well to all levels of readership. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels. W. Weston University of New Orleans
Library Journal Review
Fagan (anthropology, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) is an author with many books to his credit, including two that focus on the impact of climatic conditions upon historical developments. In his latest exploration of this subject, Fagan looks at the effect of rising temperatures over the past 15,000 years and how this has influenced human civilizations. While most of human evolution occurred during the Ice Age, it is only when glaciers started to recede and temperatures and sea levels started to rise that humans invented agricultural techniques, which led them to build permanent cities and communities. Recent analysis of climate records during this warm period (the Holocene) provides the framework against which historical transitions are now being studied. Fagan postulates that changes due to warming led to the cattle-herding culture among ancient Egyptians and the Masai; Middle Eastern droughts spawned plant cultivation; rising sea levels created the Persian Gulf and Fertile Crescent, which generated the rise of Mesopotamia. Extremely readable and thought-provoking, this book should appeal to many people, including those concerned with global warming and its implications for the future. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Gloria Maxwell, Penn Valley Community Coll. Lib., Kansas City, MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xi |
| Author's Note | p. xvii |
| 1 The Threshold of Vulnerability | p. 1 |
| Part I Pumps and Conveyor Belts | |
| 2 The Late Ice Age Orchestra, 18,000 to 13,500 B.C. | p. 13 |
| 3 The Virgin Continent, 15,000 to 11,000 B.C. | p. 35 |
| 4 Europe During the Great Warming, 15,000 to 11,000 B.C. | p. 59 |
| 5 The Thousand-Year Drought, 11,000 to 10,000 B.C. | p. 79 |
| Part II The Centuries of Summer | |
| 6 The Cataclysm, 10,000 to 4000 B.C. | p. 99 |
| 7 Droughts and Cities, 6200 to 1900 B.C. | p. 127 |
| 8 Gifts of the Desert, 6000 to 3100 B.C. | p. 147 |
| Part III The Distance Between Good and Bad Fortune | |
| 9 The Dance of Air and Ocean, 2200 to 1200 B.C. | p. 169 |
| 10 Celts and Romans, 1200 B.C. to A.D. 900 | p. 189 |
| 11 The Great Droughts, A.D. 1 to 1200 | p. 213 |
| 12 Magnificent Ruins, A.D. 1 to 1200 | p. 229 |
| Epilogue: A.D. 1200 to Modern Times | p. 247 |
| Notes | p. 253 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 271 |
| Index | p. 273 |
