Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization
Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization – Review
I enjoyed “Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World” rather more than I originally expected I would. I had highly anticipated from the type of the book something more on the line of “Floods, Famines and Emporers” or possibly “The Little Ice Age” by Fagan, both of which I enjoyed. The latter books appear at the immediate results of weather and climate, more specifically at the el Nino and NAO, on the line of world history. While Keys does use climate–and it’s effect on plague bringing organisms–as a connecting thread to his work, he must restate this fact in the summary of each of his chapters to remind the reader. In Fagan climate is the main center of the work. So I had to re-estimate the direction and subject of the book, something I hadn’t expected to do. What Keys’ book does do and does well, is to examine a broad physical area within a part of history ( about 530-1200 AD). Although this is not generally my time of choice (I prefer ancient and prehistoric), I have to admit to having been particularly fascinated by Key’s building of the period. By regularly drawing many of the diverse elements of the human drama together, he illuminates the stage upon which many episodes of our own time were originally enacted. This period tends to be chaotic and difficult to study because of its fragmented character. Many aspects, particularly events in secondary areas, tend to have been wholly neglected by researchers as they primarily focused on Western culture, as currently represented by the Byzantines, and Eastern culture and the spread of Islam. As I have regularly maintained after translating books that mainly dealt with unusual topics particularly relating to secondary areas (as for instance in the books “The Mummies of Urumchi” or “The Tarim Mummies”), it is in secondary areas, the cross way of the world, that proper knowledge of world history perhaps lies. It seems as though the activity in the “wings” determines to a far larger extent then frequently realized, what happens on the center step of individual history. Keys becomes this very evident. Because of his amount of time period with its proximity to our own, his discussion of the events that eventually took place in these back halls of the world and their effects on the line of recent history becomes the significance of minor events much more apparent to the reader. For instance, his argument of the results of climate on the development of plague infested animals in Africa is especially illuminating. This is especially true as it pertains to the extent of individual settlement and to the results of global connections along trade routes. The historic spread of Bubonic and other plagues throughout the world by these means has significant implications for new nations facing developments of antibiotic resilient disease organisms and strange plant and animal pests into naive environments by these same means but at a significantly accelerated rate. (The books “The Parrot?s Lament” and “The Future of Life” both focus on these threats to the new world.) Of best interest is the author’s final chapter which projects the world into the future after currently looking at some of the basic theories of change in the past. Some of the author’s geologic scenarios, though interesting and already known to me, are a little far fetched–more the stuff of a usually made for TV movie–but the risk of a major disaster that realigns the world is not. His insights into the outcome of such events is probably quite close to the truth. “Significantly, this [a major volcanic catastrophe] would have the closely related long-term effect of freeing up the Third World, removing superpower influence over it. Its debt burden would just vanish….In the long term, the catastrophe would, I believe, have the result of greatly reducing the geopolitical imbalance between the West and the Third World. Although Asia, Africa, and possibly South America would lose hundreds of millions of their inhabitants to famine and disease, they would in the end appear stronger rather than weaker vis-a-vie the West (p. 279).” A book well worth simply reading for the history buff or anyone interested in the causes of weather, disease, and mass population movements on the line of history.