| Description |
xxi, 631 pages : illustratiions ; 23 cm. |
| Series |
Studies in environment and history
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Studies in environment and history.
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| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 581-591) and index. |
| Contents |
I. Evolution and earth systems. 1. Geological time: the court jester on the platform of life. Tectonics, asteroids, plumes, punctuation, Gaia: revolutions in earth science -- Evolution: from neo-Darwinism to complex emergence -- A punctuated earth systems synthesis -- Origins: the Hadean and the Archean -- Archean/Paleo-proterozoic crisis -- Neoproterozoic crisis and the Cambrian: a snowball earth? -- Phanerozoic super-cycles--and biotic extinctions and escalations -- Mass extinctions -- 2. Human emergence. Into the Cenozoic icehouse -- Court jester in the Cenozoic: debate and three kinds of evidence -- Miocene apes and the early hominins -- Orbital cycles: from the 23K world to the 41K world -- The 41K world and the genus Homo -- The 100K world: homo Heidelbergensis, archaic homo Sapiens -- Modern humans in the 100K world -- Modern origins debate and a renewed understanding of mortality -- Gould and Eldridge's punctuation meets Boserup's intensification: toward a new understanding of the Upper Paleolithic. |
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II. Domestication, agriculture, and the rise of the state. 3. Agricultural revolutions. Energy -- Changing climates: the end of the Pleistocene -- New climate science, new archaeological science -- Human adaptation at the Bølling-Allerød warming: the Mesolithic -- Younger Dryas and the early Holocene: cereal domestication in the northern mid-latitudes -- Early Holocene warming and tropical domestications -- Into the mid-Holocene: final domestications and first dispersals -- 4. Mid-Holocene, the late Neolithic, and the urban-state revolution. Emergence of modern global climates: the mid-Holocene transition -- Mid-Holocene crisis and the rise of the state -- Neolithic intensification: the secondary products revolution -- China and Mesopotamia in the Neolithic-Bronze Age transition -- 5. Human well-being from the Paleolithic to the rise of the state. Human health in the Paleolithic -- Neolithic demographic transition -- Civilizational stresses in the Neolithic -- Fertility and mortality in the Neolithic -- Fertility, mortality, and the origins of complex societies: the case of Southwest Asia. |
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III. Ancient and medieval agrarian societies. 6. Stasis and growth in the epoch of agrarian empires. Getting ahead, running in place, falling behind -- Population growth and Dark Ages -- Endogenous degradations? -- Late Holocene climate reversals -- Disease and epidemics -- Energy: innovation, labor, and slavery -- Punctuations -- 7. Optimum and crisis in early civilizations, 3000-500 BC. Old World Bronze Age: expansions and crises, 3000-1000 BC -- Preclassical crisis and the Age of Iron, 1200-300 BC -- A global view on optimum and crisis -- Human health in the Bronze Age Optimum and the Iron Age/preclassical crisis -- 8. A global antiquity, 500 BC-AD 542. Problem of growth in antiquity -- China, iron, and rotary power -- Global antiquity: numbers and climate -- Rise of Rome -- Fall of Rome? -- 9. Global Dark and Middle ages, AD 542-1350. Climate reversals in the tropics and the north -- Dark Ages, AD 400-900 -- Medieval climate anomaly, AD 900-1275 -- Population and health in the Old World Dark and Middle ages -- Growth and crisis in the medieval world, 1000-1350 -- Southern Asia -- North America -- China and Mongolia -- Into the little Ice Age -- Europe -- Little Ice Age and the Black Death. |
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IV. Into the modern condition. 10. Climate, demography, economy, and polity in the late medieval-early modern world, 1350-1700. -- Population in and beyond the third age of epidemics, 1300-1800 -- Question of growth and divergence -- Aftermath of the third age of epidemics -- Emerging European empires, New World depopulation -- Little Ice Age, New World depopulation, and the origins of the African slave trade -- Little Ice Age and early modern Eurasia -- Early modern England in the age of empire, the little Ice Age, and the seventeenth-century crisis -- Seventeenth-century English energy revolution -- 11. Global transformations: Atlantic origins, 1700-1870. End of the little Ice Age and the beginning of modern population growth, 1700-1860s. Beginnings of the modern Anthropocene -- Industrial revolutions -- First industrial revolution -- Emissions and atmosphere, 1800-1880 -- 12. Launching modern growth: 1870 to 1945. Urbanization, a new political economy, and the second Industrial Revolution -- Atlantic cities and the first wave: environmental crisis and social reform -- Second Industrial Revolution -- Demographic revolution, 1800-1945 -- 1914-1945: a world in crisis, growth on hold -- Environmental impacts, 1870-1945: the second wave -- 13. Growth beyond limits: 1945 to present. Demographic revolution, part II: 1945 to present -- Age of high growth and a third Industrial Revolution? the world economy, 1945 to present -- Environmental impacts, 1945 to present: confronting the third wave -- Modern Anthropocene. |
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Coda: A rough journey into an uncertain future. Malthus vindicated? -- Deniers, pessimists, and pragmatists. |
| Summary |
Presents a global history that integrates the earth system approach of the new climate science with the material history of humanity, demonstrating how geological, environmental, and climatic history have shaped the pattern and trajectory of biological and human evolution. --From publisher description. |
| Provenance |
Gift of Dr. Brooke B. Hunter |
| Subject |
Climatic changes -- History.
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Climatic changes. |
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History. |
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Nature -- Effect of human beings on.
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Nature -- Effect of human beings on. |
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Human beings -- Effect of climate on.
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Human beings -- Effect of climate on. |
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World history.
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World history. |
| Genre/Form |
History.
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| ISBN |
0521871646 (hardback) |
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0521692180 (paperback) |
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9780521871648 (hardback) |
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9780521692182 (paperback) |
| Standard No. |
40023526014 |
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9780521692182 |
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