Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos

by William James Burroughs

• ISBN13: 9780521824095
• ISBN10: 0521824095
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

How did humankind deal with the extreme challenges of the last Ice Age� How have the relatively benign post-Ice Age conditions affected the evolution and spread of humanity across the globe� By setting our genetic history in the context of climate change during prehistory, the origin of many features of our modern world are identified and presented in this illuminating book. It reviews the aspects of our physiology and intellectual development that have been influenced by climatic factors, and how features of our lives - diet, language and the domestication of animals - are also the product of the climate in which we evolved. In short: climate change in prehistory has in many ways made us what we are today. Climate Change in Prehistory weaves together studies of the climate with anthropological, archaeological and historical studies, and will fascinate all those interested in the effects of climate on human development and history.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
1 Introduction	1	(17)
1.1 Cave paintings	2	(6)
1.2 DNA sequencing	8	(2)
1.3 Archaeological foundations	10	(1)
1.4 Where do we start?	11	(1)
1.5 What do we cover?	12	(4)
1.6 Climate rules our lives	16	(1)
1.7 The interaction between history and climate change	17	(1)
2 The climate of the past 100,000 years	18	(56)
2.1 Defining climate change and climatic variability	19	(3)
2.2 The emerging picture of climate change	22	(4)
2.3 Proxy data	26	(5)
2.4 Do ice-core and ocean-sediment data relate to human experience?	31	(6)
2.5 Changes during the last ice age	37	(6)
2.6 The end of the last ice age	43	(4)
2.7 The Holocene	47	(4)
2.8 Changes in climate variability	51	(5)
2.9 Just how chaotic is the climate?	56	(1)
2.10 Changes in sea level	57	(6)
2.11 Causes of climate change	63	(7)
2.12 The lunatic fringe	70	(2)
2.13 Conclusion: a climatic template	72	(2)
3 Life in the ice age	74	(61)
3.1 The climatology of the last ice age	75	(7)
3.2 The early stages of the ice age	82	(4)
3.3 Oxygen Isotope Stage Three (OIS3)	86	(7)
3.4 The last glacial maximum (LGM)	93	(6)
3.5 The implications of greater climatic variability	99	(3)
3.6 Lower sea levels	102	(2)
3.7 Genetic mapping	104	(5)
3.8 Walking out of Africa	109	(6)
3.9 The transition to the Upper Palaeolithic	115	(4)
3.10 Settling on the plains of Moravia	119	(1)
3.11 Life on the mammoth steppes of Asia	120	(4)
3.12 Shelter from the storm	124	(1)
3.13 The first fishermen of Galilee	125	(2)
3.14 Wadi Kubbaniya and the Kom Ombo Plain	127	(2)
3.15 Three-dog nights	129	(3)
3.16 Of lice and men	132	(3)
4 The evolutionary implications of living with the ice age	135	(34)
4.1 Bottlenecks	136	(5)
4.2 The Upper Palaeolithic Revolution	141	(3)
4.3 Europeans' palaeolithic lineage	144	(3)
4.4 Physique	147	(1)
4.5 The broad spectrum revolution	148	(3)
4.6 Concerning tortoises and hares	151	(2)
4.7 Gender roles	153	(7)
4.8 Anthropomorphisation: a pathetic fallacy or the key to survival?	160	(5)
4.9 The importance of networks	165	(2)
4.10 Did we domesticate dogs or did dogs domesticate us?	167	(2)
5 Emerging from the ice age	169	(67)
5.1 The North Atlantic Oscillation	170	(5)
5.2 Europe, the Middle East and North Africa	175	(4)
5.3 East and South Asia	179	(2)
5.4 Africa and the southern hemisphere	181	(1)
5.5 North America	182	(2)
5.6 Mass extinctions of big game	184	(4)
5.7 The origins of agriculture	188	(5)
5.8 Natufian culture	193	(1)
5.9 Çatalhöyük	194	(3)
5.10 People and forests move back into northern Europe	197	(7)
5.11 The spread of farming into Europe	204	(3)
5.12 The peopling of the New World	207	(7)
5.13 Concerning brown bears and hairless dogs	214	(1)
5.14 A European connection?	215	(2)
5.15 Flood myths	217	(5)
5.16 The formation of the Nile Delta	222	(1)
5.17 The lost Saharan pastoral idyll	223	(9)
5.18 The Bantu expansion	232	(1)
5.19 ENSO comes and ENSO goes	233	(3)
6 Recorded history	236	(25)
6.1 Climatic conditions in Europe during the mid-Holocene	237	(2)
6.2 East Asia in the mid-Holocene	239	(1)
6.3 Agricultural productivity: the abundance of Mesopotamia	240	(4)
6.4 Egypt: a paradigm for stability	244	(4)
6.5 The price of settling down	248	(2)
6.6 The first great 'dark age'	250	(5)
6.7 The demonisation of the pig	255	(1)
6.8 The Sea Peoples	256	(2)
6.9 The continuing catalogue of 'dark ages'	258	(3)
7 Our climatic inheritance	261	(24)
7.1 Did we have any choice?	262	(3)
7.2 Regaining our palaeolithic potential	265	(5)
7.3 Warfare	270	(6)
7.4 Climatic determinism: the benefits of temperate zones	276	(6)
7.5 Ambivalence to animals	282	(1)
7.6 Updating of gender roles	283	(2)
8 The future	285	(18)
8.1 Climate change and variability revisited	286	(5)
8.2 Are we becoming more vulnerable to climatic variability?	291	(2)
8.3 Can we take global warming in our stride?	293	(2)
8.4 Which areas are most vulnerable to increased variability?	295	(3)
8.5 The threat of the flickering switch	298	(4)
8.6 Supervolcanoes and other natural disasters	302	(1)
Appendix: Dating	303	(9)
Glossary	312	(11)
References	323	(18)
Bibliography	341	(6)
Index	347