Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors
About this ebook
“A rich survey of the past.” ―Nature
Human-made climate change may have begun in the last two hundred years, but our species has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty. From Ancient Egypt to Rome to the Maya, some of history’s mightiest civilizations have been felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought.
The challenges are no less great today. We face hurricanes and megafires and food shortages and more. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: the past. Our knowledge of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the last decade, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years and see just how people and nature interacted. The lesson is clear: the societies that survive are those that plan ahead.
Climate Chaos is a book about saving ourselves. Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani show in remarkable detail what it was like to battle our climate over centuries and offer us a path to a safer and healthier future.
Discover more
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Brian Fagan (1936-2025) was one of the world's leading archaeological writers. He was a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of numerous books, including The Little Ice Age and the New York Times bestseller The Great Warming.
Nadia Durrani is Commissioning Editor at Oxbow Books, former Lead Editor of Current World Archaeology magazine, and author or co-author of over 20 archaeology books, including What We Did in Bed and Bigger Than History with Brian Fagan. She is a Cambridge-trained archaeologist with a PhD from University College London in Arabian archaeology. She lives in London.
