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Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors Hardcover – September 21, 2021

by Brian Fagan (Author), Nadia Durrani (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 44 ratings
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A thirty-thousand-year history of the relationship between climate and civilization that teaches powerful lessons about how humankind can survive.

 
Human-made climate change may have begun in the last two hundred years, but our species has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty. From Ancient Egypt to Rome to the Maya, some of history’s mightiest civilizations have been felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought.

The challenges are no less great today. We face hurricanes and megafires and food shortages and more. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: the past. Our knowledge of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the last decade, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years and see just how people and nature interacted. The lesson is clear: the societies that survive are those that plan ahead.

Climate Chaos is a book about saving ourselves. Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani show in remarkable detail what it was like to battle our climate over centuries and offer us a path to a safer and healthier future.
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  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    PublicAffairs
  4. Publication date
    September 21, 2021
  5. Dimensions
    6.45 x 1.35 x 9.6 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    154175087X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1541750876
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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"Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors by Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani is a tour de force because of its relevance to deal with global climate change. The authors ask, what can we learn from past successes and failures? The takeaway are six major lessons critical for our survival. Their clearly written and concise book includes [hi]stories beginning 30,000 years ago up through the Anthropocene. Case studies cover the cold (Ice Age) and the hot and dry (ancient Egypt) and hot and humid (the Maya), from nomadic hunters (early Africa and Europe) to empires (Rome), from megadroughts (American Southwest) to monsoons (Angkor)."―Lisa Lucero, professor of anthropology, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana

“Climate change is happening right now—but has happened many times before, too. Climate Chaos tells an astonishing story of thousands of years of wildfires, megadroughts, cataclysmic cyclones and floods, decades-long heat waves and sudden regional ice ages. As we respond to contemporary climate change, our great advantage over our ancestors is scientific knowledge. Will we use that knowledge wisely? Climate Chaos shows how.”―Gregg Easterbrook, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and author of The Blue Age

“It is often said that those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it. Human-caused climate change constitutes the greatest challenge we have yet faced as a civilization, and we must learn from our past if we are to meet that challenge. I can think of no better source than Climate Chaos by Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani, which explores how our ancestors coped with the challenges of natural climate instability, offering some lessons along the way for how we can avert a climate crisis.”―Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of The New Climate War

“Impassioned…educational…Fagan and Durrani’s work offers an original historical perspective.”―Publishers Weekly

“[A] rich survey of the past 30,000 years.”―Nature

“The leading archaeologist writing team of Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani has compiled a fascinating study of human species’ adaptation through cycles of drought and flooding in pre-industrial and post-industrial times.”―New York Journal of Books

About the Author

Brian Fagan is one of the world's leading archaeological writers and an internationally recognized authority on world prehistory. He is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of several widely read books on ancient climate change. He has lectured about the subject to audiences large and small throughout the world. His latest book is Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization (Yale University Press, 2018).
 
Nadia Durrani is a Cambridge University-trained archaeologist and writer, with a PhD in Arabian archaeology. She is the editor and founder of Past Worlds magazine, and is co-author, with Brian Fagan, of several books including What we Did in Bed and Bigger Than History.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ PublicAffairs (September 21, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 154175087X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1541750876
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.27 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.45 x 1.35 x 9.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 44 ratings

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  1. Brian M. Fagan

    Brian M. Fagan

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    Brian Fagan was born in England and studied archaeology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was Keeper of Prehistory at the Livingstone Museum, Zambia, from 1959-1965. During six years in Zambia and one in East Africa, he was deeply involved in fieldwork on multidisciplinary African history and in monuments conservation. He came to the United States in 1966 and was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1967 to 2004, when he became Emeritus.

    Since coming to Santa Barbara, Brian has specialized in communicating archaeology to general audiences through lecturing, writing, and other media. He is regarded as one of the world’s leading archaeological and historical writers and is widely respected popular lecturer about the past. His many books include three volumes for the National Geographic Society, including the bestselling Adventure of Archaeology. Other works include The Rape of the Nile, a classic history of archaeologists and tourists along the Nile, and four books on ancient climate change and human societies, Floods, Famines, and Emperors (on El Niños), The Little Ice Age, and The Long Summer, an account of warming and humanity since the Great Ice Age. His most recent climatic work describes the Medieval Warm Period: The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. His latest climate change book, with Nadia Durrani, is His other books include Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society and Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World and Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age gave birth to the First Modern Humans. His recently published Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind extends his climatic research to the most vital of all resources for humanity.

    Brian has been sailing since he was eight years old and learnt his cruising in the English Channel and North Sea. He has sailed thousands of miles in European waters, across the Atlantic, and in the Pacific. He is author of the Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California, which has been a widely used set of sailing directions since 1979. An ardent bicyclist, he lives in Santa Barbara with his life Lesley and daughter Ana.

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  2. Nadia Durrani

    Nadia Durrani

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
44 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Tony Harper
5.0 out of 5 stars Response is local; survivorship is global.
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2021
Verified Purchase
Brian Fagan, a co-author of Climate Chaos, is an excellent writer of historical narrative. A trained archeologist, he has the superb historical insight and broad contextual perspective to bring the adaptive strategies of past societies in responding to climate change to life for contemporary readers. His lesson for the reader is, among other things, that all adaptations to climate change are local, but I would add that the consequences of such knowledge are global in importance. Fagan and his co-author, Nadia Durrani, also a trained archeologist, have combined efforts and talents to produce a very worthwhile book for those who take climate change seriously, as we all should! Well done! Five stars.
Respectfully, Tony Harper
4 people found this helpful
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Lance McNeill
4.0 out of 5 stars we need the lessons of history
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2022
We need the lessons of history to help inform how we deal we the challenges before us. This sweeping historical account offers an important perspective on those lessons.
2 people found this helpful
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Tuohy
5.0 out of 5 stars Brian Fagen is always a good read.
Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2023
Verified Purchase
Both style and content make this a valuable book.
One person found this helpful
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John M. Cape, Author of Poorly Zeroed: A Net Zero Travesty.
3.0 out of 5 stars Logical Disconnect
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2023
Much of this book is worth reading. There is great evidence for the authors’ insights that adverse weather conditions and land use considerations accounted for the collapse of most major civilizations throughout history. The patterns of these collapses are often cyclical and driven by natural oscillations that dictate the availability of water conditions that enable food.

So far so good, his evidence seems quite compelling. Then, we get to discussions about more recent times.

One would expect that the authors would point out that mankind is less dependent on the vagaries of adverse weather events and the availability of natural water. We now have the ability to utilize energy and technology to grow and distribute food and other resources worldwide. The inhabitants of Earth are mostly much better off and less vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather, despite the fact that there are many more mouths to feed.

However, this is not the approach that is taken. Instead, this book insists that the planet is now at risk of being overheated from trace amounts of carbon dioxide, that all the warming is a result of increases in the consumption of fossil fuels and other manmade influences, and that mankind now is responsible for the climate. Furthermore, our world leaders should completely eliminate fossil fuels as fast as possible. These unsupported assertions are a complete disconnect from the research that he shared earlier.

To get a sense of where the book ought to have gone, read it alongside "Solving the Climate Puzzle" by Javier Vinos. You would get the benefit of a fascinating history lesson and a credible climate hypothesis that flange up nicely.
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elizabeth baker
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent review of our past and pointing to our future.
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2022
Verified Purchase
I like the style of writing. He ties together the past and possible future. If we don’t learn from our past we repeat errors. It is a hopeful book and easy to read.
One person found this helpful
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Kinkeeper
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting and well-written.
Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2022
Verified Purchase
Would recommend this book for general knowledge of past climate issues as well as those of today. Easy to read.
One person found this helpful
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Eric Chaffee
5.0 out of 5 stars CLIMATE CRUSHES THRIVING CIVILIZATIONS
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2022
The authors of this excellent book, CLIMATE CHAOS : Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors, are deeply acquainted with the tools of climate study, and are experts in the history of significant climatic events which have caused major suffering in the past — suffering we have mostly forgotten.  Humanity has survived some profound challenges, but often forgotten the lessons.  Two hundred years ago New England, Europe and Asia had several years of deep cold, with 1816 called the year without a summer, when it snowed in July and August.  Did your gran-pappy tell you of this? (Neither did mine.)  Our authors share many detailed observations, including how coal soot, studied in Alpine ice cores, may have contributed to the severity of this event.  And the tools and findings they reference are intriguing and impressive. 

They take us on a guided tour of numerous successful civilizations which collapsed, due to changing climate issues. (In a sequel, will one of the civilizations be ours?)  You can travel back in time with them to Egypt, Rome, the Maya, Cambodia, Peru.  It sure beats staying home to watch the sNEWs, which ignores history at our peril.

Remember what the old-time farmers knew: "A drought will scare you to death; but a flood will starve you to death." ~MeridaGOround dot com
5 people found this helpful
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D. K. Bagshaw
3.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive view of the effects of climate on human culture from earliest times to now
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2023
I liked the major points of the book, especially how peoples who survived the longest were those with favorable climates, local adaptation to climate swings, and charismatic leaders. These main points were made in chapter after chapter, using different empires and cultures as examples. I skipped forward to read about the civilizations I was most interested in. The ancient culture that stood out as exceptional in its adaptability was in the Indus Valley. Don't skip that chapter with the interesting description of the Nile Valley as well. Lots of interesting tidbits here and there. The book was enlightening at many points and with mind-boggling archaeological and geological data to back it up. Too much for me to take in but good for future reference.
3 people found this helpful
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