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THE LONG SUMMER: HOW CLIMATE CHANGED CIVILIZATION Brian Fagan, 2004, 304 pp., $26.00, hardbound, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02281-2
In The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, anthropologist Brian Pagan synthesizes decades of paleoclimatological and archeological evidence to, in his words, "attempt an assessment of the impact of . . . climatic shifts on the long sweep of human history." Like Pagan's other recent publications (Floods, Famines, and Emperors and The Little Ice Age), The Long Summer is truly remarkable in its scope, covering centuries of prehistory through the rise and fall of hunter/gatherer societies and early civilizations, from 18,000 B.C. to around 1200 A.D. While the author never claims that climatic change is the direct cause of human events, he often makes a compelling case that paleoclimatic and ecologic changes helped to shape the path of human civilization throughout history.
At the outset, Pagan introduces the most common theme in his book: that humans have been most affected by climatic change once societies develop past a certain "threshold of vulnerability." He argues that history is rich with instances in which humans have established a way of life that is so dependent on a relatively stable climate that the occurrence of drought, coastal flooding, or another persistent climatic change completely overwhelms their ability to adapt; in the distant past, climate shifts often forced people...