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How did humankind deal with the extreme challenges of the last Ice Age? How have the relatively benign post-Ice Age conditions affected the evolution and spread of humanity across the globe? By setting our genetic history in the context of climate change during prehistory, the origin of many features of our modern world are identified and presented in this illuminating book. It reviews the aspects of our physiology and intellectual development that have been influenced by climatic factors, and how features of our lives - diet, language and the domestication of animals - are also the product of the climate in which we evolved. In short: climate change in prehistory has in many ways made us what we are today. Climate Change in Prehistory weaves together studies of the climate with anthropological, archaeological and historical studies, and will fascinate all those interested in the effects of climate on human development and history.
457 pages, Paperback
First published June 13, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 28, 2022
An interesting read.
On an amusing note, a person came up to me whilst I was reading this in a coffee shop and said, “see that proves it, modern day fears about global warming are just wonkish alarmism.”
To paraphrase P.T. Barnum, “there is indeed a fool born every minute.”
🤪
On an amusing note, a person came up to me whilst I was reading this in a coffee shop and said, “see that proves it, modern day fears about global warming are just wonkish alarmism.”
To paraphrase P.T. Barnum, “there is indeed a fool born every minute.”
🤪
June 23, 2010
Burroughs brings together a lot of information to make the case that the development of human culture has been tied to, if not dependent upon, climatic change. He takes the long-term view; his work surveys geological, paleo-anthropological, archaeological and climate records of various types during the past 100,000 years. He explains the various sources of climate information (ice and mud cores, tree and coral growth rings, etc.) and also explains what the analysis of DNA sequences of various groups in various regions of the world tells us about early human migrations. The book is a summary of the research on the evolution and development of early man during and since the ice ages.
I learned that the ice age was marked by tremendous variability and that this inconstancy hindered human development even more than the cold. After the last ice age, the climate became more stable. "Once the climate had settled down into a form that is in many ways recognizable today, all the trappings of our subsequent development (agriculture, cities, trade, etc.) were able to flourish." (pg. 13)
A second thesis is that many recent findings push intellectual development by humans further back in time. There is "greater evidence of the greater antiquity of many of the aspects of human intellectual development." (14) This means that human development began during, and may have been elicited by, extremely harsh climatic conditions.
If you like dogs, you will appreciate his pages on the symbiotic relationship that developed between men and wolves. If you wonder why some cultures avoid pork, read his section on pigs in a warming climate. If you want to know why hunter-gatherers adopted agriculture and why agriculture was not always beneficial to them, read this book.
I learned that the ice age was marked by tremendous variability and that this inconstancy hindered human development even more than the cold. After the last ice age, the climate became more stable. "Once the climate had settled down into a form that is in many ways recognizable today, all the trappings of our subsequent development (agriculture, cities, trade, etc.) were able to flourish." (pg. 13)
A second thesis is that many recent findings push intellectual development by humans further back in time. There is "greater evidence of the greater antiquity of many of the aspects of human intellectual development." (14) This means that human development began during, and may have been elicited by, extremely harsh climatic conditions.
If you like dogs, you will appreciate his pages on the symbiotic relationship that developed between men and wolves. If you wonder why some cultures avoid pork, read his section on pigs in a warming climate. If you want to know why hunter-gatherers adopted agriculture and why agriculture was not always beneficial to them, read this book.
April 12, 2012
This book was really thought-provoking and yet I was also grateful that the author took the time to go over the background for his arguments since I know little about the topic. I learned a great deal about how we study the last 100kya. Engaging, well-reasoned, and exactly the right balance between detail and covering many aspects of the topic. Quite possibly the best thing I've read yet this year, and I've been on a roll.
June 23, 2010
A fascinating and well-constructed volume only slightly let down by the complete lack of proof-reading. Spelling errors, missing words and repeated sentences occur with incredible regularity, pretty bad for a University Press.
December 12, 2021
Before commenting in the social media on Environment and voting for 'lesser pollutant' politicians please read this book! because of its back ground research, comprehensiveness and elaborate subdivisions its a must read for an honest cosmopolitan!
May 22, 2021
This book was a bit of a slog in some places and quite entertaining in others. The unevenness was perhaps due to the author's own background. The late William J. Burroughs was an atmospheric scientist with degrees in physics, so when it came to describing the deep-sea research—with which I have more familiarity—he was occasionally unclear. Given his background, I was surprised that his explanation of the North Atlantic Oscillation was so difficult to understand (and I am pretty sure I know how it works). His editor at Cambridge University Press definitely needed a holiday; there are more typographical errors in this book than I've ever seen before in an academic press product.
The thesis of the book is that the transition from the ice age to the balmier Holocene had a lasting impact on the development of human societies. Modern humans appeared after 200,000 BP (before present) during an interglacial, but were then subjected to two glacial-interglacial cycles, the most recent ending between 18 and 11 kya (kilo-years ago). The subtitle of this book refers to the relative climatic calm that is the Holocene Epoch, which began ~11.5 kya and continues to the present day.
Burroughs describes the ups and downs of natural climate change through the last glacial maximum (LGM) and into the deglacial period (Bølling/Allerod) and the retrenchment of the Younger Dryas cold snap just before the beginning of the Holocene. The author carefully lays out coinciding human events, such as the exodus from Africa into the rest of the world, the development of agriculture, and the rise (and fall) of city-states.
The first three chapters layout the climate phenomena and climate history, including the various sources of data, explanations of the proxy measurements of paleoenvironmental parameters, and some information about other biota. These, for me, were the most problematic chapters because they had very much the feel of an outsider summarizing several specialized fields, but without the facility of a journalist. That said, the breadth of his understanding is impressive.
My primary difficulty with the rest of the book is the shagginess of the organization. Because Burroughs is interested in everything, he takes a very kitchen-sink approach and it becomes difficult to absorb it all. Perhaps a better way to read the book would be to go through it more selectively, skipping parts that are of no interest to you on the face of them. Burroughs makes this easy by subdividing every chapter into sections with pithy, descriptive headings.
Because the book was published in 2005, it is already out of date. The final chapter about the future is particularly dated. Burroughs has carefully distinguished between climate change (a trend through time) and climate variability (oscillating patterns), and his take on the latter is that variability is not as bad as some "gloom merchants" fear. A decade's worth of increasingly weird weather now calls that opinion into question.
The thesis of the book is that the transition from the ice age to the balmier Holocene had a lasting impact on the development of human societies. Modern humans appeared after 200,000 BP (before present) during an interglacial, but were then subjected to two glacial-interglacial cycles, the most recent ending between 18 and 11 kya (kilo-years ago). The subtitle of this book refers to the relative climatic calm that is the Holocene Epoch, which began ~11.5 kya and continues to the present day.
Burroughs describes the ups and downs of natural climate change through the last glacial maximum (LGM) and into the deglacial period (Bølling/Allerod) and the retrenchment of the Younger Dryas cold snap just before the beginning of the Holocene. The author carefully lays out coinciding human events, such as the exodus from Africa into the rest of the world, the development of agriculture, and the rise (and fall) of city-states.
The first three chapters layout the climate phenomena and climate history, including the various sources of data, explanations of the proxy measurements of paleoenvironmental parameters, and some information about other biota. These, for me, were the most problematic chapters because they had very much the feel of an outsider summarizing several specialized fields, but without the facility of a journalist. That said, the breadth of his understanding is impressive.
My primary difficulty with the rest of the book is the shagginess of the organization. Because Burroughs is interested in everything, he takes a very kitchen-sink approach and it becomes difficult to absorb it all. Perhaps a better way to read the book would be to go through it more selectively, skipping parts that are of no interest to you on the face of them. Burroughs makes this easy by subdividing every chapter into sections with pithy, descriptive headings.
Because the book was published in 2005, it is already out of date. The final chapter about the future is particularly dated. Burroughs has carefully distinguished between climate change (a trend through time) and climate variability (oscillating patterns), and his take on the latter is that variability is not as bad as some "gloom merchants" fear. A decade's worth of increasingly weird weather now calls that opinion into question.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews