Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos (ISBN 0521824095)

Book Description:
This book explores the challenges that faced humankind in a glacial climate and the opportunities that arose when the climate improved dramatically after the Ice Age. It weaves together studies of the climate with anthropological, archaeological and historical studies, and will fascinate all those interested in climate and human development.

A balanced account of the latest thinking:
At first I thought that "Climate Change in Prehistory" was too academic and stuffed with dry facts for the non-specialist reader. I changed my mind by the end. There are certainly lots of facts and technical jargon, but these are enlivened by occasional gems of dry humour. The author has also struck a good balance with technical jargon. The book is easy to read, although it is not a "popular" account by any means. The author handles controversial topics well: such as the date of human occupation of the Amercas and the extinction of megafauna in Australia and the Americas. He presents the relevant research (including the occasional crackpot theory) and indicates where consensus or controversy exist. Readers who want to dig deeper into specific issues have plenty of references and an excellent bibliography to get them started. The book covers a surprisingly wide range of topics. For example, the effects of changing diets (meat vs carbohydrates) as humans changed from being hunter-gatherers to farmers is described. The author seems to come to an implicit conclusion in relation to modern diets, but I won't give the game away by revealing it here. Ancient history is generally taught as starting with the Egyptians and Mesopotamian civilisations, so most students have never been exposed to descriptions of what came before the evolution of large, settled societies - probably because little beyond conjecture was known until quite recently. Books such as "Climate Change in Prehistory" show how much we have learned about climate in pre-history in recent decades - and how much a study of the remote past can illuminate current climate debates. I was struck by how well Burroughs integrates information from a remarkably wide range of data into his book - ice cores, linguistics, pollen studies, oceanic sediments, tree rings to name just a few. Readers new to the subject, or who are looking for a less-technical account, might be better off reading "The Long Summer" (Fagan) and "The Little Ice Age" (Grove). These are both excellent introductions to climate and its effects on humans since the last ice age. "Climate Change in Prehistory" is an excellent book for readers who want to know the latest thinking about how climate has varied and affected humans since the last ice age.

Climate and Sociologic Developments 20 K Years Ago:
Pre-history in this case is really defined in terms of the last ice age. In the first part of the book the author talks about relatively recent research into the weather changes in the last hundred thousand or so years. This is based on things like drilling cores into the ice in Greenland and Antarctica. Trapped air in bubbles in the ice provide clues to the climate at the time. After that the author begins to look into the effects of these changes on life at the time. This includes both plant and animal life as well as human. The author contends, and with some very good reasoning, that the climatic conditions at the time did a lot to define an awful lot of things that we take for granted today, things like the differing gender roles, color blindness (men are about 20 times more likely to be color blind than women), migration patterns (a lot of the old thinking has been revised in view of DNA studies). One striking point is the possibility or even likelyhood that there was a migration from Europe to America in the 20,000 year ago time period. This is was suggested by the similarity of arrowheads (the Clovis points) in America and parts of Europe. Then DNA evidence of Indians living around the Great Lakes seem to have a different lineage than the rest of the American Indians. This is a new book that reflects the new theories that result from recent scientific discoveries.

A Great Introduction to climate change(s):
Read this book if you are at all interested in climate change, evolution and the forces that gave rise to modern civilized life.

Prehistory is still relevant:
The primary theme of this book is that during prehistory (prior to about 10,000 years ago) wild swings and unpredictability in weather patterns prevented more complex adaptations such as agriculture. It was not until there was some stability after the melting of the ice sheets that agriculture, herding, cities, and higher population densities were possible. He postulates that as our own actions destabilize the current weather patterns, we may face the possibility that we cannot maintain our adaptations. He does not address this in any detail, but his perspective should cause us to start looking at the way we live in the hopes that we can adapt our stability-dependent systems to unstable weather patterns.