As the world struggles to cope with human-caused climate change that threatens modern society, Climate Chaos surveys climate disruptions over the past 30,000 years and how they affected ancient cultures. Noted archaeologist Brian Fagan and his colleague Nadia Durrani examine the archaeological record to give us valuable insights on how climate change has shaped history and what this teaches us about the current crisis.
Fagan, an archaeologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Durrani, who edits Past Worlds magazine, are uniquely suited to explore this complicated and divisive topic. During the past fifteen years, Fagan has written a series of books about the impact of ancient climate change on human civilizations and how they were affected by the Little Ice Age, El Niños, and rising sea levels.
This story begins at the beginning of the late ice age, some 30,000 years ago, when much of the earth was covered by glaciers and so much of the earth’s water was isolated in ice and snow that sea levels dropped by more than 300 feet. Despite severe weather, humans, who had recently migrated out of tropical Africa, adapted to the cold and survived. By 15,000 years ago, the ice was retreating, and by 10,000 years ago the last ice age was at an end. Human populations exploded as modern civilizations developed in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Climate instability did not end, but instead moved into a more localized and limited time frame. The resulting wildfires, megadroughts, cataclysmic cyclones and floods, decades-long heat waves, and sudden regional ice ages catastrophically affected even the most advanced cultures of their time. The authors mine the archaeological record to bring us a number of case studies documenting the disastrous effects of climate on ancient Egypt, Rome, Angkor Wat, and others. In the New World the Maya declined, and important centers like Chaco Canyon in the Southwest and Cahokia in the Mississippi Valley collapsed, in large part due to climatic events.
The thesis of Climate Chaos is that we can learn from past climatic events to better cope with the contemporary crisis. The authors leave us with six lessons about adapting to climate change gleaned from past experience. They challenge the world to use these lessons to deal with the current global condition. Climate Chaos is a very thoughtful and readable commentary on perhaps our greatest contemporary challenge.
