What is the price of humanity’s progress? The cover of this book, featuring a dusty landscape of tree stumps, leaves little to the imagination. In the eyes of French journalist and historian Laurent Testot it has been nothing short of cataclysmic. Originally published in French in 2017, The University of Chicago Press published the English translation at the tail-end of 2020.
Early on, Testot makes clear that environmental history as a discipline can take several forms: studying both the impact of humans on the environment, and of the environment on human affairs, as well as putting nature in a historical context. Testot does all of this in this ambitious book as he charts the exploits of Monkey—his metaphor for humanity—through seven revolutions and three million years.
Cataclysms: An Environmental History of Humanity, written by Laurent Testot, published by The University of Chicago Press in November 2020 (hardback, 452 pages)
To be frank, Testot deals with the first 2,988,000 years in the first two chapters. Understandably, as the pace of progress was initially slow, and comparatively little information is available to us from the palaeontological and archaeological records. Thus, he starts his history proper with the agricultural revolution ~12,000 years ago. Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.
Some examples include the near-simultaneous rise of agriculture in several places, with geography playing an important role in which plants and animals were available to domesticate, or the fall of the Late-Bronze Age civilizations in the 12th century BCE. The myth of virgin rainforests and the long history of agriculture practised in the jungle. The microbiological onslaught that accompanied the Columbian exchange when Christopher Columbus and other explorers brought new epidemics to the Americas, or the scourge of mosquito-borne diseases that later decimated European colonialists overseas. The medieval Little Ice Age and the global crises it precipitated, or the worldwide impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption. The Great Acceleration in the 20th century and the recognition of the Anthropocene. All of these have been chronicled at length in books and other publications.
“Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.”
Testot also mentions episodes that I was barely familiar with; partially, I suspect, because he can draw on the French history literature. For example the eruption of the Samalas volcano that seems to have served as a transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Or the 15th-century mining for silver in the Andes and the immense pollution that caused. Or the environmental roots of the expression “mad as a hatter” (it involves the 17th-century beaver trade). Cataclysms sometimes seems to forget it is an environmental history book. Thus, the environment takes a backseat when he describes the Axial Age, the period between 800 and 300 BCE that saw the birth of universal religions and philosophies in both Asia and Europe that are still with us today. Similarly, the chapter charting the rise of money, empires, and trade in Europe and Asia before the Common Era only at the very end examines the environmental impact of it all.
The book’s style might divide opinions. Testot throws all his eggs in the proverbial narrative basket. The book is clearly deeply researched, but the notes section at the end encompasses a mere 16 pages. Testot must have decided that supporting every claim and fact with a footnote would have distracted from the story he tells. Although the references contain many interesting books and publications, those wishing to check up on certain claims will have to do their own research. Furthermore, the book is strikingly devoid of photos, maps, graphs, and tables, bar a single chart of the human world population through time in the appendix. As such, I felt Cataclysms did not deliver on the dustjacket’s promise of providing “the full tally” the way e.g. Vaclav Smil did in Harvesting the Biosphere. Those wanting a more data-driven overview will probably want to check out Cataclysms‘s big contender for 2020, Daniel R. Headrick’s Humans versus Nature. I had the chance to rifle through a copy, though not yet read it in full. At 604 pages with a 100-page notes section (and some illustrations), it promises to be a denser read.
“[The book] will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope […] but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.”
Testot’s outlook for the future is bleak, though his concluding chapter wanders somewhat aimlessly. Rather than offering an overview of which planetary boundaries we have breached and how far in overshoot we are, Testot focuses on what he calls the upcoming Evolutive Revolution before turning to some likely consequences of climate change. This final revolution could either pan out as the pipe-dream of transhumanism where nano-, bio-, and information technologies converge into the singularity that would make humans immortal / obsolete as Artificial Intelligence takes over (something Testot is critical of), or we may end up as mutants in the chemical cesspit that we are making of our planet. Throw in a conclusion and an epilogue to the English edition that both reiterate main points from the book, and it starts to feel a little bit like Tolkien’s struggle to let the reader go in the last book of The Lord of the Rings.
Environmental history has become a rather crowded subject and opinions will probably be divided on whether Cataclysms stands out from the crowd sufficiently. It will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope—Testot knows how to spin a fine yarn and provides an entry point to many fascinating chapters in world history that readers will want to explore further. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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To figure out how old a tree is, all you have to do is count its rings, and some truly ancient trees grace the pages of this book. But, as tree-ring researcher Valerie Trouet shows, that is the least fascinating thing you can derive from wood. Revealing the inner workings of the academic field formally known as dendrochronology, Tree Story is an immersive jaunt through archaeology, palaeoclimatology, and environmental history. A beautifully written and designed book, it highlights the importance and usefulness of tree rings in reconstructing past climate and linking it to human history.
Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings, written by Valerie Trouet, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in May 2020 (hardback, 246 pages)
The first things that struck me when opening Tree Story were the beautifully designed endpapers (more on the illustrations later). At the front of the book is a world map with thumbnails of important trees and sites, and what chapters they feature in. At the back is a timeline of key historical periods and events, both human and climatological. Too few publishers make use of this, so we are off to a great start.
The first few chapters of Tree Story provide an excellent introduction. Trouet traces the history of dendrochronology to its unlikely birthplace in the Arizona desert, explains how tree rings are actually formed in living trees, and how, based on fluctuating climatic conditions, their appearance changes. Years with good growing conditions result in wider rings, while challenging years with droughts, storms, or other climatic upheavals result in narrower rings. That last factor is key when it comes to dating (in the chronological sense): the unique pattern of wider and narrower rings acts as a barcode. By looking at many trees in different parts of the world, researchers have constructed large databases of overlapping tree ring patterns that go back millennia. Using these can tell you how long ago a certain tree died, and therefore how old a wooden object or building is.
Having covered these basics, the bulk of Tree Story consists of a series of immersive chapters that look at some of the most interesting studies done using tree rings. For one, they play an important role in palaeoclimatology. The historical record of weather stations only extends back a few centuries, so to reconstruct past climates, palaeoclimatologists use proxies: indirect traces that correlate with climate. These have been collected from ice cores, lake sediments, stalagmites, and, of course, tree rings. But the pattern of rings only reveals so much. The width of rings will not tell you if a tree was stressed because of drought or cold, for example. By looking closer with lab instruments you can measure the wood density in individual rings, and that is primarily determined by temperature. It was one of the many proxies used by climate scientists to reconstruct the famous hockey-stick graph of past temperatures.
“harvest dates […] of trees used in the construction of historical buildings […] has revealed phases where building activity peaked, alternating with periods where plagues or the collapse of empires saw construction grind to a halt.”
Researchers have also compared harvest dates of thousands of trees used in the construction of historical buildings. This has revealed phases where building activity peaked, alternating with periods where plagues or the collapse of empires saw construction grind to a halt. One prominent example is the complex decline of the Roman Empire, which was illuminated (as Trouet gracefully acknowledges here) in Kyle Harper’s excellent book The Fate of Rome. Wood in historical buildings or archaeological dig sites can also cast a light on the history of regional deforestation and the ensuing timber trade as people started importing wood from forests further away from major population centres. This is the subtle art of dendroprovenancing.
Even more jaw-dropping is the link Trouet has drawn between tree rings, shipwrecks, and pirates. Hurricanes that rip leaves and branches off trees result in years of poor growth, leaving a visible mark in the tree-ring record. But hurricanes also sink ships. And when she compared the historical record of shipwrecks with that of hurricanes captured in tree rings, the two matched beautifully. At the same time, an extended period of reduced sunspot activity known as the Maunder Minimum reduced temperatures and, with it, storm activity, coinciding with the Golden Age of Piracy from approximately 1650–1720.
“Even more jaw-dropping is the link Trouet has drawn between tree rings, shipwrecks, and pirates. […] As you keep reading, the exciting examples of cross-disciplinary science underpinned by tree rings just keep coming, right up to the final chapter.”
As you keep reading, the exciting examples of cross-disciplinary science underpinned by tree rings just keep coming, right up to the final chapter. The impact of past volcanic eruptions such as Tambora. The fluctuations of the jet stream blowing high up in the atmosphere that shows in tree rings at ground level. The amazing story of how a suspected large earthquake in the Pacific Northwest was confirmed by historical records of a tsunami of unknown origin in Japan. The history of forest fires and different fire regimes read from tree scars. The Little Ice Age in Europe and how it was cleverly exploited by the Dutch. Some authors, notably archaeologist Brian Fagan, have build careers on investigating the link between climate and the rise and fall of nations, although Trouet is quick to point out that it is an oversimplification to think that climatic changes alone topple civilizations. Other factors are just as important in determining the resilience of societies.
The clarity of Trouet’s explanations stands out, as does the book’s pacing: chapters are just the right length and never outstay their welcome. Thoughtful little extras are the glossary, the list of tree species, and separate lists with references and recommended reading. Add to this her personal stories and anecdotes based on a twenty-year career. She strikes the right balance between entertaining the reader without overshadowing the scientific narrative. And she moves you: these stories will make you laugh, cringe, or (in the case of the relentless persecution that followed the publication of the hockey-stick graph) anger you.
“A massive shout-out to the illustrator, Oliver Uberti. […] His [infographics] are uniform, clean, crisp, legible, clearly labelled, and (importantly) designed to be printed in grayscale—and those lovely endpapers really turn the book into a keepsake.”
Without wanting to take your attention away from the wonderful book that Trouet has written here, I want to give a massive shout-out to the illustrator, Oliver Uberti. His style looked familiar and I realise I have previously heaped praise on his infographics when reviewing Who We Are and How We Got Here. His illustrations give the book a certain cachet and are uniform, clean, crisp, legible, clearly labelled, and (importantly) designed to be printed in grayscale—and those lovely endpapers really turn the book into a keepsake. Publishers and authors should pay close attention and be lining up to commission him.
Tree Story is a sublime example of what booksellers have lately started calling smart non-fiction: sophisticated academic books for a broad audience (often published by American university presses) that are just a few notches above the yuck or wow-factor of more generic popular science. The excellent clarity and pacing that Trouet brings to this fascinating topic meant I that tore through Tree Story in a day. If I added ratings to my reviews, this book would be a ten out of ten. Already, this is a very strong contender for my book of the year.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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“Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past“, written by Sarah Parcak, published by Henry Holt in July 2019 (hardback, 286 pages)
I first touched on this topic in my review of Tropical Forests in Prehistory, History, and Modernity, which mentioned the use of LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) to reveal the scope of jungle ruins. You will have been hard-pressed to miss these findings making news headlines. The rationale behind remote sensing is simple, says Parcak: Where do you begin? Given that, at the surface, many archaeological sites are covered under either sand, jungle, or modern infrastructure, how do you know what lurks beneath? And how do you even begin to decide where to dig? You would be surprised what you can see from the air.
Ever since we had cameras, hot air balloons, and the first aeroplanes, aerial photography became a thing. More concerted efforts came in the 1950s with the development of infrared technology and the spy satellite programmes of the Cold War, and in the ’60s with NASA launching satellites. But space archaeology had to wait until technological developments allowed for high-resolution images. That moment arrived in the 2000s and everything has gone a bit crazy since then.
The central part of Archaeology from Space is a mind-blowing tour of archaeological digs where remote sensing was involved. Parcak is an Egyptologist by training but has also worked on sites in, amongst others, Iceland, The Shetland Islands, Italy, and Newfoundland. And she provides an overview of some of the most spectacular finds others have made.
“The rationale behind remote sensing is simple, says Parcak: […] how do you even begin to decide where to dig? You would be surprised what you can see from the air.”
It is hard to overstate the significance of this technology. Take Tanis, a well-known site in Egypt. Where two centuries of work on the ground have focused on temples, tombs, and pyramids, Parcak inspected satellite images that revealed the whole city! Work on Easter Island, meanwhile, is overturning the long-held assumption that the Polynesians caused their own demise by cutting down their forests. Instead, introduced diseases by European explorers are to blame (see also The Statues that Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island). And the use of LiDAR in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Central America has to date mapped more than 60,000 buildings (a finding Parcak calls insane). Particularly memorable is the story of archaeologist Arlen Chase, who found more ancient Maya sites in one night of feverishly inspecting satellite imagery than he had in 30 years working in the jungle. Probably the most important topic she tackles is wide-scale looting. In an era where online platforms such as eBay feed through to many potential buyers, there is scope for a massive black market. But here, too, satellite imagery has a role to play.
Despite the potential of this technology, Parcak is quick to recognise its limitations. Every potentially interesting site you identify needs to be ground-truthed with fieldwork. Even for a trained eye, it is easy to make mistakes, dismissing sites that are worthwhile or chasing phantoms that turn out to be false positives. With disarming honesty, Parcak tells of some of her biggest howlers. In the process, she reveals just what is involved in overseeing an excavation.
Midway the book she takes an unexpected step back from remote sensing. She combines the fictionalised life story of a woman in ancient Egypt with what we know about the transition of its Old Kingdom to its Middle Kingdom about 2200-2000 BC. This is Parcak’s home turf and her knowledgeable account is interesting, but I could not help but feel it broke the flow of the book a bit. Her next piece of fiction – picturing how an archaeologist in 2119 might go about things, complete with swarms of nano-drones and other futuristic archaeotech – is a relevant exercise in imagination, however.
“archaeology now faces the same problem as genomics and astronomy: big data. It has never been easier to acquire more information than you could hope to process in several lifetimes.”
See, archaeology now faces the same problem as e.g. genomics and astronomy that routinely reel in data by the tera- and petabytes: big data. It has never been easier to acquire more information than you could hope to process in several lifetimes. For the first time, we actually have tools to get to grips with the scale of what remains to be discovered. The estimated guesses Parcak gives are mind-boggling, but she revels in impossible odds. She is a dreamer, and I mean that in the best possible sense of the word. Technology is developing at a break-neck pace, allowing things we could not have imagined a few decades ago. Does anyone else remember that article where X-ray imaging was used to read charred papyrus sheets that were too fragile to unroll? Exactly. Suddenly her speculations on hyperspectral imaging and machine learning do not sound that implausible anymore.
And there is one other avenue Parcak has already bravely explored: crowdsourcing. She tells how, having won the million-dollar TED prize in 2016, she founded GlobalXplorer. This online, citizen-science platform allows anyone with an internet connection to help out locating sites of archaeological interest on satellite imagery. The response to the opening campaign was overwhelming and revealed many new and genuinely interesting sites. But Parcak dreams big. This is the woman who would have us map the entire world in the next ten years using this approach. What a hero.
One reviewer faulted the book for not talking enough about the technical details. Given that Parcak has authored the textbook Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology that gives you all the technical details you could want, this book is not the place for that. Even so, she explains why and how underground structures show up in satellite imagery (plant growth can be affected by what is buried underground, leading to visible crop marks), goes into some detail about hyperspectral imaging, and explains how seasonality and weather can influence your results.
“Harrison Ford might be too old to inspire a new generation of archaeologists as Indiana Jones, but he can safely pass his fedora on to Sarah Parcak.”
It is true that Parcak sometimes goes off-script to talk about things close to her heart. Next to her chapter about historical Egypt, one chapter discusses the underrepresentation of women in archaeology. Seems like a very understandable and important diversion to me. I admit that I found some of her jokes borderline silly (they probably work wonderfully as one-liners in a presentation), but I had a lot of fun reading this book.
Archaeology from Space is a remarkably inspiring book, full of wonder and hope, buoyed by Parcak’s boundless enthusiasm and love for her profession. Harrison Ford might be too old to inspire a new generation of archaeologists as Indiana Jones, but he can safely pass his fedora on to Sarah Parcak.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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“Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet“, written by Will Hunt, published in Europe by Simon & Schuster in January 2019 (hardback, 277 pages)
It starts off innocently enough, with Hunt discovering an abandoned train tunnel running beneath his home in Providence, Rhode Island. This left in an indelible impression that would be reawakened when he moved to New York City and became part of the city’s urban explorer crowd. From here, Underground follows Hunt on trips around the world, exploring the Parisian catacombs, a sacred Aboriginal ochre mine in outback Australia, the underground cities of Turkey, and the Mexican tunnel systems that became such an intimate part of late Mayan culture.
Hunt weaves history throughout his tales. From the prevalence of the underworld in the gods and places of Greek mythology to the Magdalenian culture, “the Rennaissance Florentines of the Paleolithic Age”, who littered European caves with carved statues and wall paintings between 17,000 to 12,000 years ago. He introduces an extraordinary cast of historical characters, from the 19th-century Parisian cataphile Nadar, who was a very early tinkerer in subterranean photography, to the first attempts at underground mapping by Edouard-Alfred Martel, whose cartographic conventions we still use.
“The modern West may be a secular society now, but go underground, Hunt observes, and “we perform an unwitting shadow-performance of the old rituals […]””
Another very prominent aspect of Hunt’s story is the religious and spiritual pull these places have always had (see also Sacred Darkness: A Global Perspective on the Ritual Use of Caves). Examples he gives include the worshipping of the underground deity El Tío by Bolivian miners, the ritualized Aboriginal pilgrimages to dig up ochre, or the many shamans and philosophers who retreated underground for vision quests and extended retreats. The modern West may be a secular society now, but go underground, Hunt observes, and “we perform an unwitting shadow-performance of the old rituals, sometimes following the ancient choreography down to the last gesture” as we have to twist and contort our bodies in the same way to descend into these spaces.
As Hunt points out, subterranean creation myths are prevalent in cultures around the world. One could even argue that scientists have their own version of this. He joins a team of microbiologists working for the NASA Astrobiologist Institute Life Underground who hunt for so-called “intraterrestrials”, the microbes living deep underground, possibly even throughout Earth’s crust in microscopic passageways (see Deep Life: The Hunt for the Hidden Biology of Earth, Mars, and Beyond for much more on this). And he shortly considers the deep evolutionary history of burrowing animals, writing of ants in particular (see my review of The Evolution Underground: Burrows, Bunkers, and the Marvelous Subterranean World Beneath Our Feet for more on that). Hunt also considers the neurobiological basis to the powerful experience of being underground, illustrating it with his own tales of the disorientation when getting lost in catacombs, or the hallucinations that accompany the sensory deprivation when he camps underground in the dark for twenty-four hours.
“Hunt joins microbiologists […] who hunt for so-called “intraterrestrials”, the microbes living […] throughout Earth’s crust”
Part of what makes Underground such a fascinating book to read is the exclusive access it gives the reader. Over the years, Hunt has become increasingly well-connected in the world of urban explorers, anthropologists, and archaeologists. He meets one of New York’s most elusive and secretive graffiti artists, considered a phantom by the photographer who followed his work for over two decades but never met him. And he gets up close to an exceptional palaeolithic sculpture in the privately owned and zealously guarded Le Tuc cave in the Pyrenees, which archaeologists consider the most inaccessible major decorated cave in Europe.
Hunt has placed his narrative front and centre in this book, forgoing footnotes or an index (though major works are referenced in the text), but adding many fascinating though uncaptioned archival photos throughout. I became so engrossed in the book that I managed to blitz through its 260 pages in between the gaps of a single working day. This is an absolutely mesmerizing book.
So, how does Hunt’s Underground compare to Macfarlane’s Underland? It feels Macfarlane casts his mind outwards more, pondering deep time and the Anthropocene, while Hunt turns his gaze inwards, probing the more human side: religion, spirituality, and neurobiology. Macfarlane, as a nature writer, is more poetic in his writing, though Hunt, using a different tone, is an equally masterful storyteller. Underland is carefully annotated and referenced, but barely illustrated – Underground is the reverse. And even though both writers end up exploring under Paris and both touch on topics of biology and archaeology, it is striking how little they overlap. Clearly, the world under our feet is so vast there is space for more than one book. So why pick one? I heartily recommend them both!
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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“Tropical Forests in Prehistory, History, and Modernity“, written by Patrick Roberts, published by the Oxford University Press in January 2019 (hardback, 350 pages)
In my recent review of The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative I already touched on what is the central thesis of this book: far from pristine wilderness untouched by humans, rainforests have been shaped by us for many millennia. After introducing the sheer diversity of habitats that hide under the catch-all term rainforest (from evergreen tropical rainforest to montane rainforest, freshwater swamp forest, and others), the book takes a chronological approach, beginning with hominin evolution.
The dominant narrative in palaeoanthropology has been that as humans evolved, they came down from the trees and onto the plains of Africa. A shift to upright walking on two legs is often cited as one line of evidence, but morphological and observational studies on apes increasingly show that bipedalism is common in forest environments. Analyses of fossil teeth, both the chemical composition of enamel and patterns of microwear, have been used to reconstruct the diet of our ancestors (see my reviews of The Tales Teeth Tell: Development, Evolution, Behavior and Evolution’s Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins). But these results, too, do not prove equivocally that humans shifted exclusively to savannah habitat. Roberts makes the case that much research is pointing toward our ancestors spending most of their time in woodland-grassland mosaics.
Once our ancestors left Africa, a popular explanation for their dispersal has been the pursuit of fish and other marine resources, which saw them following the coastline of Asia to then both island-hop through Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and trek over the Bering Land Bridge to colonise North and South America (see my review of Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization). Rainforests would only have been colonised during the Holocene, from 10,000 years ago onwards. But recent archaeological, palaeobotanical, and palaeoenvironmental work in the tropics that Roberts reviews here instead shows humans occupying rainforests from at least 45,000 years ago, possibly even much earlier.
“LiDAR […] has revealed the sheer scope, size, and complexity of many jungle ruins, lending support to the idea that these areas once housed tens of thousands of people.”
The archaeological meat of the book comes with chapters 5 and 6, which survey a vast body of work that is showing two things. First, rainforests have seen millennia of agricultural practices that blur the line between foraging and farming, with practices such as tree cropping, controlled burning to create mosaic patches, corralling of wild animals such as turtles, and the tending to and moving around of various food plants (see for example The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation of the Tropical Woodlands). James C. Scott has similarly argued that, for a long time, agriculture was a small part of a larger portfolio of different strategies to make a living (see my review of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States), but he did not specifically mention the possible role of tropical rainforests, focusing instead on the Middle East.
Second, this form of proto-agriculture allowed for the existence of large, but low-density urban areas. Roberts takes the reader on a tour of forest ruins in Mesoamerica (the Maya), Cambodia, Sri Lanka, the Amazon, and the Pacific to show the many different forms that this took. One technological development, in particular, has produced spectacular findings. LiDAR, or 3D laser scanning, is a survey method that allows the visualisation of structures hidden under vegetation and has revealed the sheer scope, size, and complexity of many jungle ruins, lending support to the idea that these areas once housed tens of thousands of people.
Given all of the above, how, then, did rainforests come to symbolise pristine wilderness? In short, because history is written by the winners. Our historical narrative is inherently Eurocentric, which, some argue, can be traced back all the way to how the ancient Romans and Greeks saw the world (see A History of the World in Twelve Maps). But it was really with the exploration from the time of Columbus onwards that infectious disease, warfare, and slavery killed millions and largely eradicated their history. In its stead, we created first the myth of the noble savage, a relic of past human adaptation (though see The Myth of the Noble Savage for a critical appraisal), and more recently the idea of Indigenous groups as active conservationists. Roberts baulks at both these ideas, arguing they paint Indigenous people in a corner as passive subjects living in isolation, threatened by colonialism and, nowadays, capitalism.
“[…] how, then, did rainforests come to symbolise pristine wilderness? In short, because history is written by the winners.”
Instead, with this book Roberts builds a well-supported case that these groups have been shaping and manipulating rainforests for millennia. Now, this is in no way intended to downplay more recent destruction and he is at pains to clarify that this is not a carte-blanche for their current unchecked exploitation by Western forces such as the logging and mining industry. But he does think that the impact of Indigenous communities differs only in degree, not in kind (quantitatively, not qualitatively). This, he argues, should be taken on board when trying to define when the Anthropocene started, a discussion that has, so far, largely revolved around geology and stratigraphy (see my review of The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit). More importantly, it points towards the value of Indigenous knowledge, showing how it is possible to live in these areas without destroying them.
The book makes good use of photos, graphs, and maps, though a minor niggle I have is their reproduction. Many are quite small, and their resolution betrays digital rather than offset printing, sometimes obscuring details. Why many of them have been printed in greyscale when colour is used for some others is another curiosity. Given the high price of the book, it is a shame the publisher did not include a colour plate section with larger reproductions.
That aside, Tropical Forests in Prehistory, History, and Modernity is an incredibly valuable and information-dense book that reviews a vast body of literature from fields such as palaeontology, archaeology, anthropology, and ethnology (by my estimate, the 70-page reference section contains close to 1500 citations). The above outline I have given only touches on the main arguments, but there are many, many more interesting findings here. The book is scholarly and will require your full attention, but is certainly not stuffy (Roberts cannot resist the occasional pop-culture reference). Despite presenting a revisionist account, the tone is far from combative or polemic, instead carefully building a patient and exhaustive argument. To my mind, this is a major contribution to archaeology that should be a reference for years to come.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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“Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations“, written by Anthony J. McMichael and edited by Alistair Woodward and Cameron Muir, published by Oxford University Press in February 2017 (hardback, 370 pages)
Anthony J. McMichael was an epidemiologist associated with various renowned academic institutes during his life and advised the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the link between climate change and health (see this obituary for a fuller description of his many achievements and contributions). With the manuscript for this book accepted for publication, he suddenly passed away in September 2014. Alistair Woodward and Cameron Muir took up the torch and saw the book through to publication.
There is obviously increasing concern what future climate change will have in store for humanity and the planet at large. And there is no shortage of dire predictions of more frequent extreme weather events, sea level rise, impact on agriculture, and the risk of disrupted food production accompanied by conflict and unrest. This is not mere idle speculation or hypothetical model forecasting, says McMichael. Our past is littered with episodes where natural climatic changes caused all sorts of misery. The key to understanding what might come next lies in an understanding of our past.
“Our past is littered with episodes where natural climatic changes caused crop failures, famines, warfare and the demise of civilizations.”
The first few chapters give the reader all the relevant background knowledge needed. McMichael introduces the various mechanisms that cause longer and shorter-term climate fluctuations, from Milankovitch cycles to decadal oscillations such as El Niño. The result, as I mentioned in my review of The Oceans: A Deep History, is a fiendishly complex system of feedback loops. He gives an overview of the various direct and indirect health impacts that climate change can have, and provides a short history of the rise of humans and the beginning of agriculture (see also my review of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States). McMichael speaks of the Faustian bargain we unwittingly made by transitioning from nomadism to farming. Palaeopathology has documented how our health suffered due to our change in diet (see Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, or my review of Evolution’s Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins), but this new sedentary lifestyle also made us more vulnerable to climatic changes.
The centrepiece of the book is his synthesis of some 11,000 years of environmental history. Starting with early civilizations in or near the Nile Valley, he walks us through the civilizations of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, and, in the Indus Valley, the Harappans. For most of these, the lack of written records means that we have pieced together their history from archaeological and palaeoclimatological data. We have a far more detailed picture of the rise and fall of Roman, Mayan, and Anasazi civilizations, and, later, of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1300-1850), the eruption of Mount Tambora, and the Irish potato blight. Throughout, McMichael summarises how droughts, floods, or changing temperatures are linked to famines, the spread of diseases, warfare, mass migrations (whether as climate refugees or as groups hell-bent on conquest), and, ultimately, the fate of empires.
“McMichael speaks of the Faustian bargain we unwittingly made by transitioning from nomadism to farming.”
Now, there is a vast literature on the link between climate and human history, so this book necessarily takes a bird’s eye view. Next to the academic literature, you could build a small library with more popular books from the likes of Jared Diamond (see Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive) and especially Brian Fagan (see The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, and Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations). Early eras are covered in, for example, Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos, but there are also excellent books on Roman civilization (see my review of The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, & the End of an Empire), the Little Ice Age (see The Little Ice Age and my review of Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age Transformed the West and Shaped the Present), and the impact of the Tambora eruption (see Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World and Tambora and the Year without a Summer: How a Volcano Plunged the World into Crisis).
What sets this book apart is the synthesis of this vast and fascinating topic, making it a good starting point, and its explicit link to health and disease. Off the top of my head, the only other book that does something similar is Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey, but McMichael’s background as an epidemiologist and his work for the IPCC position him very well to tell this story.
One of the things I liked was the author’s caution throughout the book. So, when he mentions the possible impact on our very early history of the Toba eruption (see my review of When Humans Nearly Vanished: The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano) or the question whether the Black Death in 16th-Century Europe was actually caused by bubonic plague (see for example Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer or Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations), he gives a brief overview of why these ideas are considered controversial. When, in the final chapters, it comes to forecasts and lessons for the future, he is similarly moderate. Never before has our population reached such large numbers, and to see comparable levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide we have to go back tens of millions of years in palaeoclimatological records. So, without downplaying the important lessons that history holds for the future, in some ways the future is not like the past.
“even though I am familiar with [this topic], the way it is brought together and puts time into perspective still gave me near-vertigo.”
The dumb thing is, even though I am familiar with all the individual pieces McMichael lays out here, the way it is brought together and puts time into perspective still gave me near-vertigo. Clearly, no empire ever looked much ahead or entertained the idea of their demise until it was almost upon them. McMichael highlights how evolution, always aiming to help organisms survive the now, has left us poorly equipped to plan for the longer-term. While the full story of most civilizations has spun itself out over many centuries, our “Great Acceleration” and the growth of the world’s population from 1.5 to 7+ billion people took just decades (see my review of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945).
Even if, for the sake of argument, human-induced climate change was not on the menu, have we, through our technological advances, created a robust society able to weather climate fluctuations far into the future? Or have we mindlessly expanded to the maximum carrying capacity allowed by our environment? I think we all know the answer to that (see also my review of Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want it Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future). It is a tall order to look at the totality of the picture revealed here and remain as optimistic as the author – though his mindset does not take away from the urgency of his message.
The only minor quibble I have with this book is that some of the sourced illustrations were designed with colour in mind and have here been reproduced in greyscale, limiting their usefulness. That notwithstanding, Climate Change and the Health of Nations is a fascinating and thorough synthesis that shows how history holds many valuable lessons for those willing to listen. The book is also a fitting testament to McMichael’s long career, and Woodward and Muir, as well as the publisher, are to be commended for making sure this book saw the light of day.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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