The Great Warming Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

by Fagan, Brian

• ISBN13: 9781596916012
• ISBN10: 159691601X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-03-03
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Summary

A breakout bestseller on how the earth's previous global warming phase reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Saharaa wide-ranging history with sobering lessons for our own time.From the tenth to the fifteenth century the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwidea preview of today's global warming. In some areas, including western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatan were left empty. The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the "silent elephant in the room."

Author Biography

Brian Fagan is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Born in England, he did fieldwork in Africa and has written about early man, forensic archaeology, and many other topics. His books on the interaction of climate and human society have established him as a leading authority on the subject; he lectures frequently around the world. He is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology and the author of Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World; The Little Ice Age; and The Long Summer, among many other titles.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Author's Note	p. xix
A Time of Warming	p. 1
"The Mantle of the Poor"	p. 22
The Fail of God	p. 46
The Golden Trade of the Moors	p. 66
Inuit and Qadlunaat	p. 87
The Megadrought Epoch	p. 106
Acorns and Pueblos	p. 120
Lords of the Water Mountains	p. 138
The Lords of Chimor	p. 155
Bucking the Trades	p. 173
The Flying Fish Ocean	p. 194
China's Sorrow	p. 213
The Silent Elephant	p. 228
Acknowledgments	p. 243
Notes	p. 245
Index	p. 263
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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