The Earth transformed An untold history

Review by Choice Review

The Earth Transformed is an engaging and insightful work examining the centrality of climate to global history. Frankopan (global history, Univ. of Oxford, UK) covers the entirety of human history, successfully using a Big History framework to explain how the environment has been a constant in shaping world history. Such a sweeping overview can have its limitations, but by focusing on climate Frankopan provides specific examples that provide depth as well as a truly global scope. Indeed, although many environmental histories explain how humanity has altered, exploited, or damaged the environment, climate offers a comprehensive approach without avoiding humanity's role in changing the Earth. The work begins by exploring environmental factors in human evolution, followed by the emergence of societies, agriculture, cities, religions, and empires. These earlier chapters are particularly useful given how much scholarship is dedicated to the modern period. The second half of the book examines topics after 1500, throughout which Frankopan retains a strong global dimension. The book is meticulously researched; however the endnotes are not included in the published work but are compiled on a companion website. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Thomas Anderson, Merrimack College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

Anxious about climate change, Oxford historian Frankopan surveys all of human history, looking for patterns of adaptation and traces of resilience. Since its creation, Earth's climate has proven neither static nor keeping to any essential balance. Humans have existed for as little as 0.0001 percent of the planet's history and interactions with the climate have shaped human existence perhaps more than any other single factor. The ever-expanding science of climate history indicates a two-way dialogue between humans and the climate, humans coping with drought, deluge, and pandemic while also distorting or destroying ecosystems with our actions. Mapping historical, anthropological, and economic narratives against mountains of climate data, Frankopan correlates periods of instability to shifts in weather patterns, ocean currents, and seismic events. And if the human species has frequently survived existential peril--the Black Death, the Little Ice Age, volcanic mega-eruptions--the threats to our collective future are massive and unprecedented. The future favors agile societies that act proactively to mitigate risk. Propelled by Frankopan's global scope and interdisciplinary legwork, the resulting synthesis is ambitious, nervous, and impressive.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this sweeping history, Oxford historian Frankopan (The New Silk Roads) explores how climate has shaped human history, and how humans have shaped the climate in return. He suggests that climate is a "crucial and much overlooked theme in global history" with sometimes catastrophic consequences, such as when volcanic eruptions around the world in the 530s and '40s belched a stratospheric haze that dimmed the sun and caused global cooling, crop failures, and famine. Industrialization, the author contends, marked a turning point in humanity's relationship with the environment as pollution, deforestation, and the depletion of resources posed formidable threats to civilization (he notes the High Plains aquifer crucial to U.S. agriculture is being depleted faster than rainfall can replenish it). Frankopan shows that while environmental upheaval has been a constant presence roiling human affairs, what's varied has been the ability of societies to adapt. Indus Valley denizens, for example, successfully diversified their crops to adjust to erratic precipitation around 2000 BCE, but less lucky were Chinese citizens under the 10th century Tang Dynasty, which was overthrown after leaders failed to effectively respond to difficulties caused by drought. Frankopan demonstrates an impressive mastery of anthropological, historical, and meteorological literature, and his scrupulously evenhanded analysis carefully notes uncertainties in scientific and historical evidence. Elegant and cogently argued, this illuminates an age-old and urgently important dynamic. (Apr.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Frankopan (global history, Oxford Univ.; The New Silk Roads) narrates his work examining how climate change has altered human history and how, in turn, people have dramatically contributed to it. As a narrator, Frankopan brings a sense of immediacy and intimacy to his carefully researched and timely work, transporting listeners through a sweeping history of climatic shifts and drawing connections to today's debate about anthropogenic climate change. Frankopan describes many instances where human history was altered by climate: Hitler's unsuccessful Operation Barbarossa, complicated by a brutal Russian winter; volcanic eruptions in the 530s and 540s CE, which ushered in a time of global cooling and political regime change; environmental disasters that brought down South America's Moche civilization in 700 CE. Some communities were able to adapt to changes, but others were decimated by inflexibility. VERDICT This thorough nonfiction title is recommended for those who have found works by Jared Diamond, Clive Ponting, or Brian Fagan to be enlightening. A hefty but significant addition to any library's collection on science, climatology, or history.--David Faucheux

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A scholarly assessment of the long-standing human habit of altering the environment to increasingly devastating consequences. "Rather as a doctor should have full knowledge of an illness before trying to devise a cure, so too is investigating the causes of the current problems essential if we are to suggest a way to deal with the crises now confronting us all." So writes Oxford historian Frankopan, enumerating the many environmental challenges we face. It's no secret that the environment shapes history--e.g., in such events as the Mongol failure to invade Japan thanks to an intervening typhoon or Hitler's failure to take Moscow because of the brutal Russian winter. However, as the author shows, environment doesn't explain all: "Overambitious objectives, inefficient supply lines, poor strategic decisions and worse execution of plans on the ground" doomed both Hitler's and Napoleon's Russian campaigns just as much as the weather did. Mix poor decisions and incomplete knowledge with an attempt to conquer nature, and you get trouble, as when the Mesopotamian state rose concurrently with its mastery of irrigated agriculture only to watch as its fields were covered with salts from the desert's hard water, a problem reiterated millennia later in British Imperial India. Frankopan writes that his intention is to meld the environment into the historical narrative, extending that study far into the past, as when he proposes that Neanderthals declined in Europe in a time of widespread climate change to which they were less able to adapt than the Homo sapiens around them. The author negotiates the difficult matter of environmental determinism well, although he does adduce some suggestive stuff--for instance, that the naturally richest agricultural areas of the South, the sites of the most intensive use of slave labor in America, "are more likely today not only to vote Republican, but to oppose affirmative action and express racial resentment and sentiments towards black people." A deep, knowledgeable dive into environmental history that doesn't offer much hope of a course correction. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 The World from the Dawn of Time (c.4.5bn-c.7m bc) In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, theearth was a formless void ... - Book of Genesis, 1:1 We should all be grateful for dramatic changes to global climate. Wereit not for billions of years of intense celestial and solar activity, repeatedasteroid strikes, epic volcanic eruptions, extraordinary atmospheric change,spectacular tectonic shifts and constant biotic adaptation, we would not bealive today. Astrophysicists talk of habitable regions around stars that arenot too hot and not too cold as being in the 'goldilocks zone'. The earthis one of many such examples. But conditions have changed constantlyand sometimes catastrophically since the creation of our planet around4.6 billion years ago.1 For almost all the time that the earth has existed, ourspecies would not and could not have survived. In today's world, we thinkof humans as architects of dangerous environmental and climate change;but we are prime beneficiaries of such transformations in the past. Our role on this planet has been an exceptionally modest one.The first hominins appeared only a few million years ago, and thefirst anatomically modern humans (including Neanderthals) around500,000 years ago. What we know of the period since then is patchy,difficult to interpret and often highly speculative. As we get closer to themodern day, archaeology helps us understand more reliably how peoplelived; but to know what they did, thought and believed we have to wait till the development of full-writing systems around 5,000 years ago. Toput that into context, accounts, documents and texts that allow us toreconstruct the past with nuance and detail cover around 0.000001 percent of the world's past. We are not just fortunate to exist as a species,but in the grand scheme of history we are new and very late arrivals. Like rude guests who arrive at the last minute, cause havoc and setabout destroying the house to which they have been invited, humanimpact on the natural environment has been substantial and isaccelerating to the point that many scientists question the long-termviability of human life. That in itself is not unusual, however. For onething, our species is not alone in transforming the world around us, forother species of biota - that is to say, flora, fauna and microorganisms -are not passive participants in or simple bystanders to a relationshipthat exists solely or even primarily between humans and nature. Eachis actively involved in processes of change, adaptation and evolution -sometimes with devastating consequences. This is one reason why some scholars have criticised the idea andthe name of the 'Anthropocene', which prioritises humans into 'adistinguished species' that has claimed the right to identify what is andis not wild, to classify 'resources' as ones that can be used - sustainably orotherwise. Such, argue some, is the 'arrogance that greatly overestimateshuman contributions while downplaying those of other life formsalmost to the point of nonexistence'. For around half the earth's existence, there was little or no oxygen in theatmosphere. Our planet was formed through a long period of accretion,or gradual accumulation of layers, followed by a major collision with aMars-sized impactor - which released enough energy to melt the earth'smantle and create the earliest atmosphere from the resultant exchangebetween a magma ocean and vapour that was anoxic, that is to say,lacking in oxygen. The earth's biogeochemical cycles eventually resulted in a radicaltransformation. Although there is considerable debate about how, whenand why oxygenic photosynthesis occurred, evidence from organicbiomarkers, fossils and genome-scale data suggests that cyanobacteriaevolved to absorb and take energy from sunlight, using it to make sugarsout of water and carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen as a by-product. Newmodels suggest that 1 to 5 billion lightning flashes that occurred per year on early earth may have been the source of large volumes of prebioticreactive phosphorus that played an important role in the emergence ofterrestrial life. Around 3 billion years ago - if not earlier - enough oxygen wasbeing produced to create 'oases' in protected nutrient-rich shallowmarine habitats.6 Whether because of chemical reaction, evolutionarydevelopment, sudden superabundance of cyanobacteria, volcaniceruptions or a slowdown in the earth's rotation (or a combination ofall five), atmospheric oxygen levels accumulated rapidly around 2.5-2.3billion years ago, resulting in an episode known as the Great OxidationEvent. This was a key moment that paved the way for the emergence ofcomplex life as we know it. It also led to dramatic changes in climate, as rapidly increasing oxygenreacted with methane, producing water vapour and carbon dioxide.Alongside the effects of a supercontinent being formed from thecollisions of landmasses, the earth's greenhouse was weakened, leadingto the planet being covered completely in ice and snow.8 Changes in theearth's orbit around the sun, known as the Milankovitch cycle, may alsohave played a role in this process.9 So too might giant meteorite impactswhich not only threw up debris into the atmosphere that blocked thesun's light and heat but also played an important role in the formationof the continents.The glacial episodes may have been weaker orstronger over the course of several hundred million years, but in generalthe effect of 'Snowball Earth' was so dramatic that some scientists referto this period as a whole as a 'climate disaster'. This process was precarious and complex, and is the subject ofconsiderable advances in current research. As with later glaciations,however, it resulted in profound changes for the planet's plant and animallife. One outcome appears to have been the evolution of small organismsinto larger sizes, capable of moving at faster speeds to compensate forthe high viscosity of cold seawater.14 It has recently been suggested thatthe formation of 8,000-kilometre long belts of 'supermountains' mayhave played a role in the rise of atmospheric oxygen and in stimulatingbiological evolution as a result of phosphorus, iron and nutrients beingdeposited into oceans as mountains eroded over the course of hundredsof millions of years. The fossil record of complex, macroscopic organisms begins with theEdiacara Biota period which started 570 million years ago and which saw at least forty recognised species developing into multicellular animals thatwere symmetrical - presumably helpful for functions such as mobility.16 Itmarked a period of extraordinary diversification in the variety of animalsliving in the oceans and in their evolution, development and adaptation,with some creatures like trilobites developing respiratory organs on theirupper limbs. Near the end of the Ordovician period, around 444 million years ago,a sudden cooling, perhaps triggered by tectonic shifts that produced theAppalachian mountains, led to sharp falls in temperature and initiatedshifts in deep ocean currents, as well as declines in sea level that shrankhabitats for marine planktonic and nektonic species. That coolingproduced one pulse of extinction; another came when temperaturesmoderated, sea levels rose and ocean current patterns stagnated, with aresultant sharp fall in oxygen levels.18 Traces of mercury and indicationsof significant acidification suggest that volcanic activity was a key factorin the second stage of a process that ultimately brought about theextinction of 85 per cent of all species. As the moon used to be much closer to the earth - perhaps half thedistance away that it is today - these forces were considerably strongerand therefore had a greater impact on the earth's climate and alsoperhaps on its wildlife: recent modelling suggests that big tidal rangesmay have been responsible for forcing bony fish into shallow poolson land, thereby prompting the evolution of weight-bearing limbsand air-breathing organs.21 The moon played a role not only in thetransformation of the earth, in other words, but also in the developmentof life on this planet. Excerpted from The Earth Transformed: An Untold History by Peter Frankopan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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