The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization

by Brian Fagan Narrated by Michael Langan

Overview

For more than a century we've known that much of human evolution occurred in an Ice Age. Starting about fifteen thousand 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.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178030035
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	08/09/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,227,465

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