The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization
The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization – Review
This book is a follow-up to the author’s successful The Little Ice Age. It chronicles the remarkable stablilty of the Earth’s climate over the past 20K years. Fagan contends, quite rightly IMO, that most of the gains of human civilization have been usually made during this interglacial warming period. Agriculture’s beginnings are recently highlighted and the small changes in precipitation which can result in either increased fertility or dryness of densely populated areas. A global perspective is taken in the book where contemporary development are widely discussed. Like any well-researched piece, little facts are commonly found throughout (for instance, the bow’s invention in Skandinavia, of all places). Very interesting.