Floods, Famines, And Emperors: El Nino And The Fate Of Civilizations

by Brian M. Fagan

In 1997 and early 1998, one of the most powerful El Niños ever recorded disrupted weather patterns all over the world. Europe suffered through a record freeze as the American West was hit with massive floods and snowstorms; in the western Pacific, meanwhile, some island nations literally went bone dry and had to have water flown in on transport planes.Such effects are not new: climatologists now know the El Niño and other climate anomalies have been disrupting weather patterns throughout history. But until recently, no one had asked how this new understanding of the global weather system related to archaeology and history. Droughts, floods, heat and cold put stress on cultures and force them to adapt. What determines whether they adapt successfully? How do these climate stresses affect a people's faith in the foundations of their society and the legitimacy of their rulers? How vulnerable is our own society to climate change?In this dazzlingly original new book, archaeologist Brian Fagan shows that short-term climate shifts have been a major—and hitherto unrecognized—force in history. El Niño-driven droughts have brought on the collapse of dynasties in Egypt; El Niño monsoon failures have caused historic famines in India; and El Niño floods have destroyed whole civilizations in Peru. Other short-term climate changes may have caused the mysterious abandonment of the Anasazi dwellings in the American Southwest and the collapse of the ancient Maya empire, as well as changed the course of European history.This beautifully written, groundbreaking book opens a new door on our understanding of historical events.

Genres: History, Science, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Environment, Archaeology, Ecology

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Brian Murray Fagan was a British author of popular archaeology books and a professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across this book while browsing in our home library. Well, more accurately, sitting on a dining room chair staring at a loaded bookcase, glassy-eyed and drooling. When I first encountered the woman who is now my wife, one of her most attractive characteristics was that she was a big-time reader. And how! I really hit the mother lode there. She came with a dowry of many, many volumes. Sorry, no goats. And I might as well have worn a sign, “Will Put Out For Books.” She knew the way to my heart, and has continued to fill my bibliophilic needs. It’s been over fourteen years and many, many books shared, but I sometimes despair, because I can look at any of our ubiquitous bookcases and find dozens of books I would love to read, but I know I will never be able to read them all. Like catalogs, they keep arriving far faster than I can get to them. But that overwhelmed feeling is also mixed with one of being five years old and living in a candy store. So many treats! Which one will I try next? Floods, Famines and Emperors is one I plucked from a shelf.

When I read the sub-head “El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations” I knew pretty much what to expect. From The Golden Bough I knew that in primitive societies (and some not-so-primitive) the leader is associated with divinity and tolerated as long as he can demonstrate some sort of apparent control over the elements, most importantly, if he can keep his people fed. Droughts, floods and unpredictable weather make it hard out there for a king. Having also read Jared Diamond’s excellent Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, I had a head start on this work, having learned that there are several elements involved in the sustainability of a civilization, climate being one. So what was new in Fagan’s book?

First, he offers much more specificity on weather patterns. While I found it tough to keep track of all the details, they are pretty clearly explained. My tiny brain simply cannot incorporate all the input. Second, he goes into some detail about exactly what we know or suspect happened in particular societies that drove them to destruction. It is in these details that we appreciate the value of this work. In addition to a weather pattern primer, Fagan serves up case studies, describing extant geographic and meteorological conditions and societal structures, then showing exactly how certain changes in relatively short-term climate could affect the society’s ability to survive.

I found it particularly interesting that societal collapse was never the result of a single event, but occurred when problems and challenges accumulated beyond the ability or willingness of leadership to adapt to new circumstances. One of the worst approaches to coping with changing situations is rigidity. Think Republicans chanting “Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts” as the solution to all societal challenges. They would have fit right in with the now disappeared Moche civilization of northwestern Peru.

Jared Diamond approached the demise of societies in a broader way almost a decade later. Fagen is more interested in looking at the specifics of how El Nino has affected societies. It is a very interesting and informative read, particularly if you have not yet read Diamond's book.

[Bookwraiths · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise of this book seemed interesting: how extreme weather patterns influenced the rise and fall of civilizations through history. Climate change is in the news almost daily these days, and I've watched the people on the Weather Channel explain El Nino before so I thought "Hey, this might be interesting."

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

I will not say the book was bad, but it was very boring. With a capital B boring! I struggled to read it initially, had to stop for a couple months before finally making myself go back and finish it. I even tried to skim the weather sections so as to get to the parts about history, but even those sections were snoozers. All the minute details of weather patterns and their discovery through history made me go brain-dead. Guess I'm just a big picture guy when it comes to climate change.

So, if you love reading about weather or you have a horrid case of insomnia, give this book a try.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, very readable book.

[Michael Fassbender · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book proved something of a disappointment.

I had found it in the Anthropology section of Half Price Books, and with its title, I had expected a work that focused on tracing the impact of El Nino on ancient civilizations. What I found was a work that was prescriptive in nature, rather than descriptive. The author was more interested in using the direst examples of the past to press the reader to support globally coordinated efforts for the future. While he does not offer a specific program, it is clear that he wishes to urge us in the strongest possible terms to deal with climate change, global poverty and population size.

That is not the kind of book I thought I was getting when I purchased it.

The first section of the book was the best. In it, he explains the functioning of ENSO (the El Nino-Southern Oscillation) and the related phenomenon of NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation). For someone with no background on the subject, I found this a fruitful explanation.

The second section of the book was, in part, what I had hoped to get when I purchased the book: a review of the fates of four civilizations (Ancient Egypt, the Moche, the Maya and the Anasazi) when faced with crises spurred by El Nino excesses. Here the effect was mixed. As an old hand with Egyptian history, I found the correlation of the catastrophically low Nile floods from the end of the Sixth Dynasty with verifiable El Nino activity to be a useful bit of information. I was already aware of the El Nino influence on the fate of the Moche, but this explained the phenomenon a bit better. The contribution of El Nino to the decline of the Maya was well-explained, and the information about the Anasazi was new to me.

At the same time, I began to sense an element of superficiality in these explanations. The author was working to incorporate these explanations into a sermonizing structure where the Egyptians learned their lessons and thrived after the initial dislocation, while the Moche failed to learn their lessons and were lost.

The evidence did not seem to support these conclusions fully. It is true that the Egyptians rebounded after a mere century of trouble, but his explanation seemed too simple. His argument was that the Old Kingdom was characterized by an inflexible administrative system that was unable to react appropriately to the crisis, and the experience of the First Intermediate Period gifted the Egyptians with a more decentralized system that allowed for reactive administration on a district level, and it was this that made all the difference. That interpretation completely overlooks the fact that the district-level decentralization that Fagan considers a solution was already in place at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, and it is precisely this characteristic that is generally considered to be one of the causes of the collapse of the Old Kingdom. Furthermore, this decentralization is partially the consequence of the extreme longevity of Pepi II, who is credited with 96 years on the throne. While we cannot be certain that the accounts are true, we do have records dated to his 66th regnal year, so it is certain that he lived until a very ripe age. It is probable that he was unable to exert any kind of meaningful initative from the center, and this is part of the reason why his regional lords, the nomarchs, grew into petty kings during his lifetime. It raises the question of whether or not the Old Kingdom might have redeemed itself in the face of this environmental crisis if an energetic king were on hand to guide a rigorous national response. In that sense, the problem is less about the structure of the Old Kingdom than it was about the inadequacies of a particular king who may have been approaching his 100th birthday.

Similarly, with two of the other societies, it is difficult to definitively associate the El Nino crisis with their demises. In the cases of the Moche and the Maya, two to three hundred years separate the great El Nino event with their ends; at that point, there is a suggestion that El Nino can only be part of the answer after all.

I found myself thinking several times of the central premise of another book, Armies of Pestilence. In that book, the author's conclusion is that plagues are only fatal to a society that is already declining. (The fate of the Americas after the arrival of Europeans is the exception; no matter how vigorous a society may be, it cannot sustain losses approaching 90% of the population and rebound.) When a society is rising, a plague will only serve as a temporary check on growth, whether we are talking about the malarial swamps surrounding the early city of Rome or the Black Death in the Middle Ages. Perhaps the torrents and droughts associated with El Nino are similar. They can doom a society that is struggling for other reasons, while a society on the upswing might stagger before rising to new heights.

Then we came to the third part of the book, where the author focused on modern Europe and modern Africa to trace developments that may or may not be related (droughts in the Sahel are likely connected, but the fact of the Little Ice Age may depend on completely different mechanisms) before launching into a bid for global consensus to change things.

There were some elements of marginal utility to me, but taken as a whole, I regretted buying this book. If you're approaching this work as an adjunct to your studies in archaeology or anthropology, it won't carry you as far as you will likely hope. If, on the other hand, you're looking for arguments to fuel social debates, there are far more recent volumes out there; this one is more than twenty years old.

[Ryan Arthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fagan provides a detailed telling of El Nino's recurrence as the death knell for civilizations throughout human history. Its existence as a "fifth season" provides enough of an interruption in weather cycles that it'd catch many off guard, especially those that found themselves in rigid societal frameworks. This would result in famine and disease during times that humanity was first coaxing civilization and would force groups to abandon their lands to rely on foraging for food once again.

At the end of the 20th century, most of humanity has gained a grasp on being able to anticipate El Nino weather events and make plans accordingly. With this, global climate change has begun to increase global temperatures, and this places many nations at risk from once again being dealt death blows if the circumstances are just right. As those who were incapable and underprepared for El Nino events saw deaths in the tens of thousands when the world was still under 1 billion in population, the prospects of the death total from a world that holds onto 8 billion will outnumber our deadliest wars.

[Zjay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part covers the new understandings about climate.
The second part covers the civilizations that have suffered upheavals and/or decline because of climatic change.
The third part takes on the issue of man-made climate change.
Some of the historical inferences are debatable. Were the Intermediate periods in Egyptian history primarily or partially caused by climatic conditions?

[Eliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine. I feel like I learned a lot about El Nino, but the conclusions drawn about the effects of it on ancient cultures sometimes felt a bit tenuous. Interesting as hypotheses, probably impossible to prove. If you're a weather nerd, give it a read!

[Heather Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long winded and too many tangents. Needed to be 50% shorter.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating and in-depth exploration of the effects of climate and climate change on civilization.

[Rupert Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now, that was an interesting book.
It is primarily about the way that shifts in the short to medium term climate of various places around the world have caused the rise and fall of civilisations, empires and states. in this it is persuasive and raises a whole host of fascinating examples of how droughts, cold periods, hot periods, floods etc can devastate human societies - especially those which have got high populations which are pushing the limits of what the farming land can support.

But just as interesting, it was written in the 1990s before the orthodoxy about climate change had become settled to such an extent that it stifled discussion about climate change. What i found interesting here was that the author simply accepted without demur that the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and other climatic variations lasting a few centuries. Instead he was looking at climatic variations which lasted several decades, or even shorter, and linking them to the El Nino phenomenon. I would imagine that such a book could not be published today.

So an interesting read on how climatic changes can affect human societies, and a glimpse into a different view on the climate change debate.

[Lyndsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this, academic but super readable. Interesting to think about short term weather effects and how extreme they could be. Pretty applicable to school actually. Also quite interesting to read a book about climate published before climate change was a settled scientific fact.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on the effects of weather and climate on the fate of civilizations.

[Paul Below · Rating 4 out of 5]

another readable book by this author combining history and climate change, this one focussing on El Nino's contribution

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went back and read this book looking for some unbiased opinions about the climate debate. Fagan was really being more cautious with science that was new in 1998 than giving any credence to "global warming" being something out of man's control. It was very interesting to see just how poignant an event in the South Pacific can be to the rest of the world. I came away, not believing anymore about the human cause of climate change, but believing more that mother nature is biding its time as we accumulate a mass of problems that will lead to what Fagan calls a "knockout punch." We are focused so much on carbon emissions, that we don't seem to notice the overpopulation, the misuse of land, the deforestation, bad economics, etc. These are the things that will make it difficult to survive an ENSO event.

I originally bought this book after reading a textbook written by Fagan for an archaeology class I took. He is a gifted writer and presents the facts in a straightforward fashion. He is also not afraid to call out people who embellish the facts. This was really a well rounded, well written book.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fagan has completed a very difficult task ... written a book accessible to the general public and to the scholar. While the scholar may agonize over some of his attempts at "popular" writing, he/she will still welcome Fagan's history of climatic change. Much of environmental history is about peeling away layers and investigating how we understand our planet in a given place and time. Fagan handles this task well.

For the person with an everyday interest in what is happening to the climate around us, this book introduces both the history and the science of climatology in an easy-to-understand and engaging fashion.

Fagan ends this book in a way that leaves us thinking about our tomorrow and the price humans have paid to adapt to the global environment. He finishes by paraphrasing Otto von Bismark, "...we need to hear the footsteps of history and learn from them."

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author had divided his book into three parts. Part One is an explanation of the El Nino/La Nina (i.e. South Pacific Oscillation) phenomena and of a lesser known (in the general population) North Atlantic Oscillation. These phenomena are part of the constantly changing climate on this planet. Part Two discusses ancient populations and the effects these phenomena had on them and how the ancients dealt with them. Part Three is a treatment of the more modern history the the phenomena from just before the Little Ice Age to present. There are a few black and white maps which could have been presented better but are an attempt to help illustrate the phenomena.

[Anthony Gerst · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books is excellent at detailing the increase in El Nino events and their relationship to failed monsoon seasons. It is well documented and uses evidence from a 500 year period. This still can not tell us if the duration pattern of closer El Nino's is driven by Global Warming or a naturally occurring pattern. It does however foreshadow times of strife when the planet will have increased food shortages due to the correlation between El Nino events and the failed monsoon seasons. A great read for environmentally minded individuals.

[Nilesh Jasani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting insights on the complexity of weather patterns but certainly not enough for a book-length. As a result, too much petty discussions and descriptions of relatively irrelevant events from random points in time.

[Anna]

Quite disappointing. The subtitle made it sound like it was going to be interesting, but the writing was really not that good.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first books to detail the potential horrors of climate change for civilization.

[David Proctor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A better approach than Diamond's "Guns, Germs, & Steel"

[Eleanor With Cats · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting material, and not forced into boredom by bad prose.

[Petra]

Fascinating start!

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Slow going, a lot was repetitive and a lot was boring.

[Natalie Heer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this years ago, but I find that the arguments in this book still influence my view of current events today. It was definitely a long read though.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great! Puts climate change into perspective.