By Brian Fagan

On Sale: Feb 10, 2009
Page Count: 368 pages
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN-13: 9780786727681

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In 1997 and early 1998, one of the most powerful El Ninos ever recorded disrupted weather patterns all over the world. Europe suffered through a record freeze as the American West was hit with massive floods and snowstorms; in the western Pacific, meanwhile, some island nations literally went bone dry and had to have water flown in on transport planes. Such effects are not new: climatologists now know the El Nino and other climate anomalies have been disrupting weather patterns throughout history. But until recently, no one had asked how this new understanding of the global weather system related to archaeology and history. Droughts, floods, heat and cold put stress on cultures and force them to adapt. What determines whether they adapt successfully? How do these climate stresses affect a people’s faith in the foundations of their society and the legitimacy of their rulers? How vulnerable is our own society to climate change? In this dazzlingly original new book, archaeologist Brian Fagan shows that short-term climate shifts have been a major — and hitherto unrecognized — force in history. El Nino-driven droughts have brought on the collapse of dynasties in Egypt; El Nino monsoon failures have caused historic famines in India; and El Nino floods have destroyed whole civilizations in Peru. Other short-term climate changes may have caused the mysterious abandonment of the Anasazi dwellings in the American Southwest and the collapse of the ancient Maya empire, as well as changed the course of European history. This beautifully written, groundbreaking book opens a new door on our understanding of historical events.

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“Fagan makes high drama out of…the cracking of El Nino’s riddle.”
Washington Post
“The aberrant and often devastating weather patterns brought on by El Nino are by now familiar. According to Fagan, they have had a less recognized effect. Could severe climatic change topple a modern civilization?”
Scientific American
“Fagan… draws on his archaeology background to intriguingly explore the correlation between unusual climatic shifts and unusual historical events.”
Kirkus
“Brian Fagan's engaging new book is a masterful synthesis of ocean, atmosphere and human dynamics. It chronicles the commanding interplay of climatic change and the creation and collapse of great civilizations. This is compelling reading for the global audience of a warming world.”
Michael E. Moseley, author of The Incas and Their Ancestors
“Clear, precise and thoroughly engaging...Drawing on an encyclopedic range of sources—archaeology, geology, history and ethnography—Fagan immerses the reader in a lively anecdotal portrait of the relationship between major climatic events and major historical events in both ancient and modern times. This is a must-read for laypersons, serious scholars and students alike.”
Thomas D. Dillehay, University of Kentucky
“Every so often, advances in scientific understanding require reconsideration of the historic record. Brian Fagan brings recent climatology to bear on history with admirable and entirely convincing skill. A landmark book.”
William H. McNeill, author of Plagues and Peoples

Brian Fagan

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).

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