Bloomsbury USA
Available: 02/02/08
6.13 x 9.25 · 304 pages
978-1-59691-392-9
CDN $29.95 · cl

The Great Warming

Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

Brian Fagan

From a leading authority on the interaction of climate and human society, The Great Warming is a wide-ranging history of how the earth’s previous global warming phase reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara, with sobering lessons for our own time.

As he did in his bestselling The Little Ice Age anthropologist and historian Brian Fagan reveals how subtle changes in the environment had far-reaching effects on human life. From the 10th to 15th centuries the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide, a preview of today’s global warming. In some areas, 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 remote islands. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies collapsed, and the vast complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatan were left empty.

The history of that Great Warming suggests that we may be underestimating the power of climate change to change our lives today. Our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the “silent elephant in the room.”

“Could do for the historical study of climate what Michel Foucault’s classic Madness and Civilization did for the historical study of mental illness.” (Scientific American on The Little Ice Age)

BRIAN FAGAN is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and lectures frequently worldwide. He is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology and the author of many books, including Fish on Friday, The Little Ice Age and The Long Summer.