Climate Change in Human History
How a Changing Climate Drove Human Evolution and the Rise of Civilization
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Narrated by:
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Jimmy Moreland
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By:
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Francis Chapelle
About this listen
Human history mirrors the history of climate change. Human origins, for example, can be traced to five million years ago when the climate of East Africa became progressively hotter and drier. This caused the lush tropical jungles to disappear and be replaced by arid plains and savannahs. Our pre-human ancestors learned to exploit those new ecosystems by gathering the seed-bearing grasses, nuts, and tubers that thrived in these semi-arid conditions. Also, by foraging in the heat of the day, proto-humans could minimize unwelcome contact with nocturnal predators.
Looking at history in light of climate change is not only scientifically interesting, it is also a great way to tell the story of humanity’s past. Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps to invade Roman Italy in the winter of 218 CE, for example, was made possible by the warm temperatures that prevailed in Europe during the Roman Warm Period (300 BCE-400 CE). The Viking Age of Expansion (750-1100 CE) can be traced to a
Scandinavian population explosion made possible by the Medieval Warm Period (750-1300 CE). Conversely, the famine that led to the Russian Time of Troubles (1600-1613 CE) was caused by a dramatic global cooling event that followed the explosion of the super-volcano Huaynaputina in Peru. In the same vein, the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo that led to Napoleon’s final defeat turned on the unusually cool, wet summer of 1815 in Europe caused by the explosion of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia.
The 14 chronologically organized chapters of this book tell how many historical events—the agricultural revolution and the beginnings of cities (2,400 BCE), the rise and fall of the Western Roman Empire (300 BCE to 400 CE), the cultural renaissance in Europe during the Medieval Warm Period (750 – 1300 CE), the development of the modern atmospheric and geologic sciences due to the 1883 CE explosion of Krakatoa in Indonesia—were influenced by climate change. Finally, recognizing how climate change has affected human societies in the past can provide useful insight as to how we can deal with climate change in the future.
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From Joseph Romm, Chief Science Advisor for National Geographic's Years of Living Dangerously series and one of Rolling Stone's "100 people who are changing America," Climate Change offers user-friendly, scientifically rigorous answers to the most difficult (and commonly politicized) questions surrounding what climatologist Lonnie Thompson has deemed "a clear and present danger to civilization."
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Religious not scientific claims and preachings
- By Jeanne Renzo on 09-19-19
By: Joseph Romm
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When Humans Nearly Vanished
- The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in toda's Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade. In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide.
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A very special book
- By Scott Fitzsimmons on 02-02-19
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Don't Know Much About Geography: Revised and Updated Edition
- Everything You Need to Know About the World But Never Learned, Revised and Updated
- By: Kenneth C. Davis
- Narrated by: Kenneth C. Davis, Joe Ochman, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About® History, Don't Know Much About the Civil War and Don't Know Much About the Bible, turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics.
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Errors
- By The Product Owner on 08-29-15
By: Kenneth C. Davis
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Origin Story
- A Big History of Everything
- By: David Christian
- Narrated by: Jamie Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
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A brilliant achievement, must read/listen
- By 11104 on 09-05-18
By: David Christian
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Island on Fire
- The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World
- By: Alexandra Witze, Jeff Kanipe
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Laki is Iceland's largest volcano - and its most fearsome. Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.
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Interesting and Pertinent Topic!
- By Catherine Puma on 01-23-22
By: Alexandra Witze, and others
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A Most Improbable Journey
- A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves
- By: Walter Alvarez
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Big History, the field that studies the entire known past of our universe to give context to human existence, has so far been the domain of historians. Geologist Walter Alvarez - best known for his Impact Theory explaining dinosaur extinction - makes a compelling case for a new, science-first approach to Big History.
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Learned so much
- By Niki on 12-09-18
By: Walter Alvarez
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The Nature of Nature
- Why We Need the Wild
- By: Enric Sala
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In this inspiring manifesto, an internationally renowned ecologist makes a clear case for why protecting nature is our best health insurance, and why it makes economic sense.
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Amazing
- By Lars Pardo on 11-21-24
By: Enric Sala
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The Ocean of Life
- The Fate of Man and the Sea
- By: Callum Roberts
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists - leads listeners on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on Earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
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Immediate fan of Mr Roberts
- By Anna on 06-25-24
By: Callum Roberts
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The Planets
- By: Professor Brian Cox, Andrew Cohen
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Mercury, a lifeless victim of the Sun’s expanding power. Venus, once thought to be lush and fertile, now known to be trapped within a toxic and boiling atmosphere. Mars, the red planet, doomed by the loss of its atmosphere. Jupiter, twice the size of all the other planets combined, but insubstantial. Saturn, a stunning celestial beauty, the jewel of our Solar System. Uranus, the sideways planet and the first ice giant. Neptune, dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds. Pluto, the dwarf planet, a frozen rock.
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baroque and flowery verbiage
- By Chris on 01-14-20
By: Professor Brian Cox, and others
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The Empires of Atlantis
- The Origins of Ancient Civilizations and Mystery Traditions Throughout the Ages
- By: Marco M. Vigato
- Narrated by: Micah Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Exploring more than 100,000 years of Earth’s history, Marco Vigato combines recent discoveries in the the fields of archaeology, geology, anthropology, and genetics with the mystery teachings of antiquity to investigate the true origins of civilization. Establishing the historical and geological reality of Atlantis stretching all the way back to 432,000 BCE, he traces the course of Atlantean civilization through its three empires, revealing how civilization rose and fell several times over this lengthy span of time.
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Lost library
- By russell b. on 04-02-24
By: Marco M. Vigato
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First Peoples in a New World
- Colonizing Ice Age America
- By: David J. Meltzer
- Narrated by: Christopher Prince
- Length: 11 hrs
- Abridged
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More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology.
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Last Gasp of American Anthropological Orthodoxy
- By Thomas66 on 01-05-17
By: David J. Meltzer