Climate Chaos
Description
A thirty-thousand-year history of the relationship between climate and civilization that teaches powerful lessons about how humankind can survive.
"A rich survey of the past." ¿Nature
Human-made climate change may have begun in the last two hundred years, but our species has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty. From Ancient Egypt to Rome to the Maya, some of history's mightiest civilizations have been felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought.
The challenges are no less great today. We face hurricanes and megafires and food shortages and more. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: the past. Our knowledge of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the last decade, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years and see just how people and nature interacted. The lesson is clear: the societies that survive are those that plan ahead.
Climate Chaos is a book about saving ourselves. Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani show in remarkable detail what it was like to battle our climate over centuries and offer us a path to a safer and healthier future.
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Persons
Brian Fagan (1936-2025) was one of the world's leading archaeological writers. He was a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of numerous books, including The Little Ice Age and the New York Times bestseller The Great Warming.
Nadia Durrani is a Cambridge University-trained archaeologist and writer, with a PhD in Arabian archaeology. She is the editor and founder of Past Worlds magazine, and is co-author, with Brian Fagan, of several books including What we Did in Bed and Bigger Than History.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Table of Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Authors' Note
- Chronological Table
- Prolegomenon: Before We Begin: Fires, Ice Ages, and More
- 1. A Frozen World (c. 30,000 to c. 15,000 Years Ago)
- 2. After the Ice (Before 15,000 Years Ago to c. 6000 BCE)
- 3. Megadrought (c. 5500 BCE to 651 CE)
- 4. Nile and Indus (3100 to c. 1700 BCE)
- 5. The Fall of Rome (c. 200 BCE to the Eighth Century CE)
- 6. The Maya Transformation (c. 1000 BCE to the Fifteenth Century CE)
- 7. Gods and El Niños (c. 3000 BCE to the Fifteenth Century CE)
- 8. Chaco and Cahokia (c. 800 to 1350 CE)
- 9. The Disappeared Megacity (802 to 1430 CE)
- 10. Africa's Reach (First Century BCE to 1450 CE)
- 11. A Warm Snap (536 to 1216 CE)
- 12. "New Andalusia" and Beyond (1513 CE to Today)
- 13. The Ice Returns (c. 1321 to 1800 CE)
- 14. Monstrous Eruptions (1808 to 1988 CE)
- 15. Back to the Future (Today and Tomorrow)
- Acknowledgments
- Discover More
- About the Author
- Notes
