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Climate, history and the modern world
412
BOOK
REVIEWS
Climate, History and the Modern Cambridge. $3.95.
World. By H. H. Lamb.
1982. University
Press.
Professor H. H. Lamb and the late Professor Gordon Manley together pioneered the study of climatic changes in historical times, during a period when such studies were not as fashionable as today. For decades archaeologists, historians and geographers had fought shy of interpreting events in human history in terms of environmental controls and stimuli. The stimulating studies of great men like Huntington and Prince Kropotlin were dismissed, and deterministic interpretations of such events as early Holocene domestication by men like Gordon Childe were regarded as simplistic and inaccurate. However, in the last few decades, partly through the patient and persistent studies of Lamb, and partly as a result of the development of new techniques for environmental reconstruction and dating, our knowledge of environmental changes in the Pleistocene and Holocene has become more certain and more detailed. Given these surer foundations it is not surprising that once again there is a concern to assessthe role of climatic changes as a, not the, factor in history. This book is a stimulating and personal ramble through a field that the author has very much reactivated. The reader will inevitably gallop through the first few chapters which explain, albeit lucidly, how the atmosphere works, to the chapter on methods of reconstruction. This is fascinating and all too short, but at least one does not have to wait long until one reaches those sections that deal with climate and its impact over the past 10,000 years or so. The range of topics investigated is catholic and wide-ranging; the peopling of the Americas and Australia, migrations, domestication, the effects of pluvials, the fortunes of the great riverine civilisations of Asia, the birth of religions, disease epidemics, the Romans, the voyages of the Vikings, the Medieval vineyards, the Little Ice Age, the Irish famine, etc. The final portion of the book investigates the increasing alleged variability of climate in the last few decades, looks at the causes of fluctuations and climates, considers the question of forecasting, and then ends by asking the question “What can we do about it ?“. This is a good book which 1 have dug into so avidly since receiving it that the paperback is now falling apart. Andrew Goudie
BOOK
REVIEWS
Climate, History and the Modern Cambridge. $3.95.
World. By H. H. Lamb.
1982. University
Press.
Professor H. H. Lamb and the late Professor Gordon Manley together pioneered the study of climatic changes in historical times, during a period when such studies were not as fashionable as today. For decades archaeologists, historians and geographers had fought shy of interpreting events in human history in terms of environmental controls and stimuli. The stimulating studies of great men like Huntington and Prince Kropotlin were dismissed, and deterministic interpretations of such events as early Holocene domestication by men like Gordon Childe were regarded as simplistic and inaccurate. However, in the last few decades, partly through the patient and persistent studies of Lamb, and partly as a result of the development of new techniques for environmental reconstruction and dating, our knowledge of environmental changes in the Pleistocene and Holocene has become more certain and more detailed. Given these surer foundations it is not surprising that once again there is a concern to assessthe role of climatic changes as a, not the, factor in history. This book is a stimulating and personal ramble through a field that the author has very much reactivated. The reader will inevitably gallop through the first few chapters which explain, albeit lucidly, how the atmosphere works, to the chapter on methods of reconstruction. This is fascinating and all too short, but at least one does not have to wait long until one reaches those sections that deal with climate and its impact over the past 10,000 years or so. The range of topics investigated is catholic and wide-ranging; the peopling of the Americas and Australia, migrations, domestication, the effects of pluvials, the fortunes of the great riverine civilisations of Asia, the birth of religions, disease epidemics, the Romans, the voyages of the Vikings, the Medieval vineyards, the Little Ice Age, the Irish famine, etc. The final portion of the book investigates the increasing alleged variability of climate in the last few decades, looks at the causes of fluctuations and climates, considers the question of forecasting, and then ends by asking the question “What can we do about it ?“. This is a good book which 1 have dug into so avidly since receiving it that the paperback is now falling apart. Andrew Goudie