Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present

Fantastic book of reference. Extremely relevant to ancient prehistory as well as modern issues of climate-induced mass migrations. Up to date on DNA as well as science. Lively pacing.

An excellent, well-researched clearly written, and absolutely indispensable book to understand the human battle with and adaptations to a constantly changing climate. We cannot understand where we are now vis-a-vis our looming global climate emergency without knowing the 3rd dimension: what we have been through already (climate change--both natural and anthropogenic--on local and regional scales) and how we've responded and suffered. For a family or community the only difference between a climate catastrophe in your local region and a global climate catastrophe is the lack, in the later case, of someplace to flee. The former experience we have suffered over our entire existence as a species, and in part have helped to cause since the Bronze Age. Everyone should read this book. Douglas Kenning

This book is cited as an explanation of how climate changed human's history; which is also the title of the book. How ever there is very little detail or evidence presented in the book. Instead you get statement like: "Toba super volcano pushed more ash into the atmosphere", but no discussion of what that meant to humans or its impact on the enviroment that they -- as hunter-gathers -- depended on for their existence. Instead they say that it dropped the world temperature by ****degrees C. But what does a temperature drop like that mean humans and how did it impact their absolute dependence on the plants and animals they hunted-gathered? I expected more of the authors than just statements with no evidence presented to back up those statements. Nor is it a good introduction of the subject. Brian Fagan's series of books -- The Long Summer; The Little Ice age, etc. -- are much better and you don't have to deal with the scientific jargon. But I WILL pass it on to our annual book fair.

Could have done with both a copy editor to check spelling ('jays' for 'eyes', etc) and an editor to tighten the whole book. Later chapters on modern era climate change read like a student thesis.