The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization

by Brian Fagan

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465022823
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	12/29/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he has written many internationally acclaimed popular books about archaeology, including The Little Ice Age, The Great Warming, and The Long Summer. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
	Author's Note	xvii
1	The Threshold of Vulnerability	1
Part I	Pumps and Conveyor Belts
2	The Late Ice Age Orchestra, 18,000 to 13,500 B.C.	13
3	The Virgin Continent, 15,000 to 11,000 B.C.	35
4	Europe During the Great Warming, 15,000 to 11,000 B.C.	59
5	The Thousand-Year Drought, 11,000 to 10,000 B.C.	79
Part II	The Centuries of Summer
6	The Cataclysm, 10,000 to 4000 B.C.	99
7	Droughts and Cities, 6200 to 1900 B.C.	127
8	Gifts of the Desert, 6000 to 3100 B.C.	147
Part III	The Distance Between Good and Bad Fortune
9	The Dance of Air and Ocean, 2200 to 1200 B.C.	169
10	Celts and Romans, 1200 B.C. to A.D. 900	189
11	The Great Droughts, A.D. 1 to 1200	213
12	Magnificent Ruins, A.D. 1 to 1200	229
	Epilogue: A.D. 1200 to Modern Times	247
	Notes	253
	Acknowledgments	271
	Index	273

Editorial Reviews

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 Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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