The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
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Product Description
How the earth’s previous global warming phase, from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara—a wide-ranging history with sobering lessons for our own time. From the tenth to the fifteenth centuries the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide—a preview of today’s global warming. In some areas, including Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatan were left empty. As he did in his bestselling The Little Ice Age, anthropologist and historian Brian Fagan reveals how subtle changes in the environment had far-reaching effects on human life, in a narrative that sweeps from the Arctic ice cap to the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that 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.”
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
A well written narrative
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Comment:
Mr. Fagan has written an easily read account of climate and its effects on history. He makes the story interesting and wanting the reader to forge ahead into the book. He unfortunately starts off the prologue and spottily throughout the book with a false premise. He believes that man has caused much of the global change in climate since 1860, which is of course completely false. If he had only followed the logic he uses throughout the book, an opposite conclusion would be more appropriate, that climate change is just that-change and will happen whether man is on the earth or not. With this notable exception, the book is a good read. Don't get drowned by all the numbers thrown around from chapter to chapter. Skip over the decimals surrounded by numerals and enjoy the book.
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Summary:
Impact of Nature and Human Beings on Climate Change
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Comment:
Brian Fagan explores the story of climate change between 800 and 1300 C.E. and the impact of that climate change on different regions of the world. Unlike Europe, most other regions of the world suffered from drought, not bountiful harvests during that period. Understandably, Fagan is inclined to rename the so called Medieval Warm Period into the Medieval Drought Period.
Fagan usually does a good job of explaining how proxies such as tree rings, ice borings, and deep-sea and lake cores can be used to deduce the climatic evolution during a given period in a certain area. Direct methods (instrument records and historical documents), climatic forcings (such as volcanic eruptions), and computer modeling are other techniques used to study ancient climatic change. Today's world can particularly benefit from the lessons that Fagan draws from the implosion of both lowland Maya civilization and Angkorian empire.
Unfortunately, Fagan's narration is at times confusing due to the use of side stories that slows down reading without adding too much value to his narration. Worse, Fagan makes bold, controversial statements at the beginning and end of his book that are apparently built on his exploration of climate change between 800 and 1300 C.E. and its impact on different regions of the world.
For example, Fagan states that global warming since the end of the Little Ice Age (from roughly 1300 to 1860 C.E.) is caused in large part by human activity (pp. xvi-xvii, 230). That statement flies in the face of what Fagan explores in the rest of his book. Many non-human made factors play a significant role in influencing climate change. Furthermore, Fagan quotes Al Gore and his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" on global warming as an impartial authority on the subject without mentioning at the same time the nine significant errors found in that documentary. Fagan could benefit from reading the ruling rendered by High Court Judge Michael Burton in 2007 in London on that subject if he has not yet done it. Similarly, Fagan could find another perspective on global warming by watching the hard-hitting documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which is on sale on Amazon.com.
To summarize, what the international community needs, is impartial facts instead of propaganda, and workable, economically feasible solutions instead of undue pessimism about the future of humanity.
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Summary:
Great Unfulfilled Promise
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Comment:
Brian Fagan has written an interesting, very readable book. Those who are concerned about global climate change will love it. Those who are unconcerned will hate it. Those who are looking for a well-reasoned scientific argument will come away disappointed.
In 1992, Al Gore published a political treatise on global warming called Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Gore's argument was much the same as the Prophet Jonah's argument to the Assyrians: change your evil ways or perish. Gore supported his argument with statistics and with examples of earlier civilizations that outstripped their resources and perished. Although Gore did not claim to be writing a book of science, his book was highly acclaimed in its time.
Sixteen years later, the debate has moved on and the Great Warming adds very little to it. Fagan claims to be conducting a scientific inquiry, yet his conclusions are based more on politics and less on science than Gore's political treatise. If footnotes water the garden of knowledge, this book is an arid desert. Fagan's poor choice of where to irrigate does not help.
Here is one example: "Violence was a fact of life in medieval Europe and an integral part of politics." (P. 23.) It seems rather obvious that in a society where rent and taxes are paid by providing military service to an overlord, there will be violence. Fagan overstates his case here though. He does footnote that but not his sweeping statement that the Medieval Warm Period was less warm than today. (P. 16-17.) It does not help his credibility when he later contradicts himself, admitting that this question "is still a matter of much debate." (P. 232.) If medieval agriculture was possible during the Medieval Warm Period in places that are too cold to support crops today, such as the Swiss Alps, Trondheim (which is well north of Oslo in Norway), and even Greenland, as he notes, then why is global warming necessarily harmful? He cites numerous contrary examples from other parts of the world, but one is tempted to recall an old adage: it is an ill wind that blows no good. Whatever the change in climate, it seems to help some and hurt others. His book is full of examples.
Fagan has a tendency to make sweeping statements without proof. Some of them are clearly wrong. His lack of footnotes hurts him seriously because it causes one to question other facts within his realm of expertise that might be correct. For example, he claims that the "Capetian kings (of France), whose dynasty began in 987. . . created an ideology that proclaimed they were chosen by God." (P. 24.) This is a ridiculous statement and it is easily disproved. Hugh Capet did indeed found the Capetian dynasty when he became king in 987 but he and his heirs hardly invented the concept of the divine right of kings to rule. The preceding dynasty, the Carolingians, were named for Charlemagne, who had been crowned by the Pope in 800 as the first Holy Roman Emperor. That is as good as it gets for divine right in medieval Christendom. The Carolingians' predecessors, the Merovingian kings of the Franks, also claimed divine right. It took papal sanction for the first Carolingian king to depose the last Merovingian king. In many cultures of the ancient world as far back as the Pharaohs and perhaps even before them, rulers often claimed either to be gods or to have been descended from the gods.
Fagan speaks glowingly of expanding trade in the ninth century and how Charlemagne controlled important trade routes across the North Sea. This claim no doubt would come as news to the Vikings, who sacked Paris twice in the ninth century before unsuccessfully laying siege to it in 885-886. In the ninth century, the Vikings sacked coastal cities all over the North Sea, in the Irish Sea, and even as far south as Spain. They were strong enough to settle in many of the places they attacked, such as England, Scotland, and Ireland (and later, Normandy). Dublin was actually founded by the Norsemen in the middle of the ninth century. There was little trade across the North Sea in the ninth century. If anyone controlled such trade as there was, it was the Norsemen and not Charlemagne or his successors.
Fagan's French geography is questionable: "Some parts of France, such as Brittany, were in shambles. . . . Only the western, Celtic-speaking regions escaped invasion. . ." (P. 24.) Brittany is of course both the westernmost part of France. In the ninth and tenth centuries, it was perhaps the most Celtic part.
Fagan also gets into trouble by overemphasizing climate in English history after the Medieval Warm Period: "the greatest fear of England's Tudor monarchs was urban unrest caused by grain shortages." (P. 32.) Henry VII founded the Tudor dynasty by defeating his predecessor in battle and thereby ending the Wars of the Roses. His greatest fear appears to have been a renewal of civil war after his death. That may have been true also for his son and successor, Henry VIII, who left detailed instructions in his will about the succession. Henry VIII is well-known for founding the Protestant Church of England and for his many marriages. Although he concerned himself deeply in all the affairs of his realm, grain shortages do not seem to have been his biggest concern. His son, Edward VI, was a boy king with a brief reign. Mary, who attempted to restore the Catholic Church, was certainly more afraid of the Protestants than she was of grain shortages. Elizabeth was concerned about plots by Catholics within her realm, by her cousin Mary Queen of Scots, and by Philip, King of Spain. Most of Fagan's readers will have heard of the Spanish Armada, sent by Philip. That completes the Tudor dynasty so one has to wonder which Tudor monarchs Fagan meant, and where he got his information.
Fagan might be on firmer ground in discussing geological and archaeological evidence of drought in the American southwest, in the Yucatan peninsula, in Peru, in Cambodia, and in China. He seems much more comfortable here than in dealing with reported history. Even in discussing China, which has had a bureaucratic tradition for two thousand years, he relies almost solely upon archaeology and geology. He suggests that the Chinese histories tend to focus on matters other than climate. Maybe he is right, although neighboring Korea and Japan have kept records dating back more than a thousand years showing the dates when the cherry trees blossomed in the spring.
His discussion of the influence of climate on Pacific trade winds and on the monsoon is interesting, and he makes a good case for how changes in the monsoon and the trade winds led to the settlement of the Pacific islands and to the downfall of the Pueblo, the Mayans, and the Khmer (although the last one occurred after the end of the Medieval Warm Period). His argument that climate change led to the depredations of the Mongols is interesting but speculative. Since other invaders such as the Khitan, the Seljuk Turks, and the Magyars had invaded civilized lands from the Eurasian steppes over a period of several hundred years before the election of Chinggis Khan as Great Khan in 1206, and the Arabs had expanded out of Arabia in the seventh century, well before the Medieval Warm Period, his conclusion is certainly an oversimplification.
All in all this is a "good read" and perhaps even useful for its discussion of the complex relationship among the monsoon, trade winds, ENSO, La Nina, and the ITCZ. However, I cannot call it a good book.
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Summary:
Drought: The silent elephant in the global warming greenhouse
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Comment:
Brian Fagan does an excellent job, with the knowledge we have today, of illustrating what lights paleoclimatology may be able to shine on today's global warming, with sufficient warnings for the humans that are causing it.
Specifically, the flight to the Sunbelt, especially the Desert Southwest, with its low-density sprawl and little mass transit, on the one hand, and demand for air conditioning, on the other, continuing to fuel anthropogenic global warming, Fagan would be excused if he didn't serve up a whole plateful of Schadenfreude crow for the largely conservative denizens of this part of the U.S. to digest.
He didn't, but he could. Why?
Based on paleoclimatology, it appears likely that this part of the country will experience the same long-term drought that wracked the Anasazi at Chaco Canyon, then later at Mesa Verde. Of course, the nearly 20 million of Southern California's Southland, the almost 5 million of the blot called Phoenix and the moving toward 1.5 million inexplicably in the Las Vegas area are a lot more thirsty for water than the Anasazi were.
But, move beyond the U.S. The droughts of sub-Saharan Africa that started in the early 1980s are also likely to get worse in the 21st century. So, too, are problems in China, especially north China.
Beyond this, Fagan documents the variety of ways in which civilizations of this time, from 900-1300 AD or so, called the Medieval Warm Period by British paleoclimatology pioneer Hubert Lamb, tried to deal with climate change of their era, or fell apart when they were able to deal no longer.
With excellent explanatory sidebars on climatic patterns, chapter-by-chapter maps of civilizations under discussion and more, Fagan details the power of climatic change, with a sobering bit of reality for our times.
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Summary:
It's all about rain . . . or lack of it
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Comment:
Climate change is a regular item in the news. Most articles and books look at the future - few address the past. While the human condition is a large consideration, real effects are not often dwelt on. Brian Fagan makes up for both these lacks in this finely researched and comprehensive study. In a framework centred on a millennium in the past, he takes us on a global tour of what is known as The Medieval Warm Period. Lasting for half a millennium, about 850 C.E. to 1300 C.E, Fagan shows us the importance of understanding the global nature of climate and its interconnected elements.
In Europe, the era was later named the High Middle Ages. Flourishing trade, wine grown in the British Isles and shipped to France [!] and the mighty cathedrals erected typified the period. Elsewhere, conditions weren't as salubrious. In the North American Southwest, drought brought to a close the civilisation of Chaco Canyon and toppled the great Mayan Empire. In Asia, the great Ankor Wat, built to symbolise a vast and rich realm, was abandoned to the jungle. China's peasant population, always at the edge of survival, was driven from their lands in many places by alternating extended droughts and torrential rainfalls stripping the soil. Even the Mongol Horde was prompted to move in what proved nearly catastrophic for Europe, driven by the need for grazing lands.
Enduring climate change has been a human consideration from the beginning. Even our evolutionary roots lie in the drying of Africa and the subsequent emergence of the savannah. In one sense, climate is what brought us the role of the one bipedal ape. The development of agriculture made us yet more vulnerable to shifts in climate, Fagan reminds us. Dependence on rainfall is the foundation of raising crops, alleviated only a little by irrigation canals. Irrigated farming plays a major role in this book, with the South American and other civilisations struggling with problems of water management. Those lacking such amenities, such as California Indians, suffered drastically when the severest droughts in thousands of years killed off natural food supplies.
Fagan's talent as a writer is equalled by his feeling for the human condition. In each region he describes, it's more than weather changes that he's concerned with. It's what that meant to the local population and how it reacted. The author uses a deft ploy to capture the reader's interest at the beginning of each section. He sets up a local scene with imaginary, but carefully defined, participants. The situation reflects the weather and social conditions, indicating how those interact to produce behaviours and adjustments.
At first glance, this book may seem merely a "history" with little meaning for today's conditions or those of the future. However, it is far from that - being instead a diagnosis for what is to come. Fagan concludes by reminding us of past population dislocations resulting from the great droughts. That pressure is certain to emerge again, and he asks how ready we are to deal with it. Although climate change is "normal", as the events of the Medieval Warm Period demonstrate, the population today is vastly larger than it was then. With the human contribution to warming accelerating the process, it will be billions of people affected by what is to come. In the earlier time, some people, such as the Chaco Canyon residents, had the ability to adjust, our capacity to follow their example is curtailed by our high density centres. This book is an overdue warning of what we, or our grandchildren, will be facing. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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