(pp33-64 missing; pp65-96 repeated)
In western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering: we may have the Great Warming to thank for the great cathedrals. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles, trading precious iron goods. In the Pacific, Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth.
But in many parts of the globe, the warm centuries brought drought, famine, and misery. In North and Central America, elaborate societies collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatán were left desolate.
As he did in his bestselling The Little Ice Age, Fagan unfolds both a scientific detective story, showing how centuries-old weather patterns can be reconstructed from scattered clues, and a vivid and timely historical narrative. A study of the first Great Warming suggests we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today. And our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the “silent elephant in the room.”
This book covers the earliest civilizations in Eurasia and the Americas, from Egypt and the Sumerians to the Indus Valley, Shang China, and the Maya. It also addresses subsequent developments in Southwest Asia, moving on to the first Aegean civilizations, Greece and Rome, the first states of sub-Saharan Africa, divine kings and empires in East and Southeast Asia, and the Aztec and Inka empires of Mesoamerica and the Andes. It includes a number of features to support student learning: a wealth of images, including several new illustrations; feature boxes which expand on key sites, finds, and written sources; and an extensive guide to further reading. With new perceptions of the origin and collapse of states, including a review of the issue of sustainability, this fifth edition has been extensively updated in the light of spectacular new discoveries and the latest theoretical advances.
Examining the world’s pre-industrial civilizations from a multidisciplinary perspective and offering a comparative analysis of the field which explores the connections between all civilizations around the world, this volume provides a unique introduction to pre-industrial civilizations in all their brilliant diversity. It will prove invaluable to students of Archaeology.