Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos

Description:

Explores the challenges that faced humankind in a glacial climate and the opportunities that arose when the climate improved dramatically around 10,000 years ago. Drawing on advances in genetic mapping, the book presents the latest thinking on how the fluctuations during the ice age defined the development and spread of modern humans across the Earth. It reviews the aspects of our physiology, intellectual development and social behaviour that have been influenced by climatic factors, and how features of our lives - diet, language, health and relationship with nature - are also the product of the climate in which we evolved. This analysis is based on the proposition that essential features of modern societies - agriculture and urban life - only became possible when the climate settled down after the chaos of the last ice age. In short: climate change in prehistory has in so many ways made us what we are today.

Climate Change in Prehistory weaves together studies of the climate with anthropological, archaeological, and historical studies, and will fascinate all those interested in the effects of climate on human development and history.