Delaware County District Library

Climate chaos, lessons on survival from our ancestors, Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-306) and index

mapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

Climate chaos

bibliography

Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani

lessons on survival from our ancestors

Man-made climate change may have begun in the last two hundred years, but humankind has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty: once-mighty civilizations felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: history. The study of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the past ten years, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years, and see just how civilizations and nature interacted. The lesson is clear: the societies that survive are the ones that plan ahead. Climate Chaos is thus a book about saving ourselves

A frozen world (c. 30,000 to c. 15,000 years ago) -- After the ice (before 15,000 years ago to c. 6000 BCE.) -- Megadrought (c. 5500 BC to 651 CE) -- Nile and Indus (3100 to c. 1700 BCE) -- The fall of Rome (c. 200 BCE to the Eighth Century CE) -- The Maya transformation (c. 1000 BCE to the Fifteenth Century CE) -- Gods and El Niños (c. 3000 BCE to the Fifteenth Century CE) -- Chaco and Cahokia (c. 800 to 1350 CE) -- The disappeared megacity (802-1430 CE) -- Africa's reach (First Century BC to 1450 CE) -- A warm snap (536 to 1216 CE) -- "New Andalusia" and beyond (1513 CE to Today) -- The ice returns (c. 1321 to 1800 CE) -- Monstrous eruptions (1808 to 1988 CE) -- Back to the future (Today and tomorrow)

general