The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization

Anthropologist Fagan engagingly presents an abundance of geological and archaeological evidence supporting the idea that human civilization has been shaped by significant climate change to a greater extent than previously thought. As in his other books, including The Little Ice Age, Fagan cushions his scientific data with absorbing historical narrative. The ""long summer"" of the title is the Holocene warming trend of the last 15,000 years, which has coddled humanity throughout recorded history. While scientists have always known that cycles of cooling and warming within this era have affected humans, only in the last part of the 20th century did they have detailed ice and sediment cores to provide evidence for specific events. Fagan uses the new information to authoritatively walk readers through the major climatic changes in human history, including droughts that led to the formation of the first cities, rainfall increases connected to the spread of bubonic plague, and volcanic eruptions that triggered disastrous cooling trends. Although often repetitive, these examples serve to prove without a doubt that humans have been increasingly vulnerable to climate change ever since we left a nomadic lifestyle for an agriculture-based one. Part cautionary tale and part historical detective story, this book encourages readers to appreciate the increasingly clear links between great weather changes and human society, politics and survival.