In this book anthropologist Brian Fagan makes the contention that climate has had a profound effect upon human civilization. His thesis is that we have traded up in vulnerability by moving away from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to an agriculturally based existence. We may have insulated ourselves from the effects of minor, short-term climatic disruptions (such as a couple of years of lower-than-average rainfall or cold winter), but we have made ourselves much more vulnerable to the effects of major climatic disruptions which only come along once every thousand or ten thousand years.
Fagan builds his case by providing a wide array of examples including Ur of the Chaldees, Egypt, Roman and Celtic civilizations, the Mayas of Central America, and the long-lost Tiwanaku civilization in the Andes of South America. He shows in great detail how all of these civilizations were influenced by climate. Ur and other Mesopotamean cities failed because the monsoons from the Indian Ocean which used to water that part of the world shifted southward and left them dry. Roman civilization prospered over the Celtic civilizations of northern Europe because upper-level atmospheric weather patterns shifted in such a way that most of the European continent fell under the influence of a Mediterranean climate which the Romans were better suited to deal with. And the Maya and Tiwanaku civilizations of Central and South America failed because they experienced prolonged drought which their farming methods were inadequate to deal with.
Fagan’s contention is that the way in which humans have best survived climatic stress is to move to more favorable locations. However, with society as developed as it presently is, moving is not an option. Therefore we are extremely vulnerable to major climatic disturbances. This is intended as a cautionary note that perhaps we must rethink our policies and practices of technological development.
As for the quality of the reading, I found it to be interesting, even if it was dry and technical in some places. I enjoyed learning about the science of climatology and the relationship between the earth’s climate and human history, about new discoveries from the study of sediment cores from lake beds and ice glaciers, and what that tells us about the way things were in the past.
The one thing which I disliked about this book was its theology. Everyone has a theology, whether they admit it or not, and the theology of this book is staunch secularism. This comes through quite clearly in Fagan’s discussion of the religious practices of ancient civilizations. Writing about medieval Europe, he says:
In that devout age, everyone’s fate was in the hands of the Lord, the latest in a panoply of deities that went back to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and even earlier. People lived at God’s mercy, with only their piety to intercede for them, expressed in prayer and mortar. Gratitude came from chant and prayer, from lavish offerings, and, above all, from a surge of cathedral building. Despite wars, schism, and other strife, these were the centuries of Gothic architecture, of great shrines that were the magnets of medieval life. Here great bells tolled in times of joy and mourning, celebration and crisis. Each Easter, a New Light was kindled to signal the beginning of the farming year. And each fall, laden carts brought harvest offerings to God. Compared with previous centuries and what lay ahead, these centuries were a climatic golden age. True, local food shortages were not unknown, life expectancy was short, and the routine of backbreaking labor never ended. But crop failures were sufficiently rare that peasant and lord alike believed that God was smiling upon them.
And in the epilogue, he writes:
A sense of capricious and unforgiving divine anger has shaped human behavior since before the beginnings of civilization. The chants of tribal shamans in Ice Age caves interceded with the forces of the supernatural. Revered ancestors stood watch over family land and harvests at Jericho and Catalhoyuk. Divine kings served as land agents for the gods at Ur. The lords of Maya Tikal and of Tiwanaku by Lake Titicaca used their supernatural powers to communicate with the unknown. Before the days of climatology and scientific records, changes of climate within the narrow span of human memory were thought to be the work of the gods. The only human recourse was propitiation through prayer, sacrifice, and temple building.
In other words, religion is simply a fraud, the product of ignorant men. All the gods of human history are powerless to save, even the Lord God himself. But science will save us, specifically the science of climatology. It will answer all of our questions about the world, and tell us what to do when we don’t know.
As a Christian I cannot accept such a dismissive attitude towards religion, and specifically Christianity. I do not wish to get into the issue of science versus faith in this post, but I may address that more thoroughly in a later post or series of posts. Stay tuned.
Many Christians of the fundamentalist variety believe, based on their interpretation of the first two chapters of Genesis, that the Earth is no more than six to ten thousand years old. Fagan clearly indicates that human life has been around for at least ten to twenty thousand years, and other life forms much longer than that. For that reason, many would dismiss him as wrong, and as not worthy of any attention. But I believe that it is important to have a biblical understanding which is consistent with what science tells us about the history of the Earth. I believe that a proper reading of Genesis 1 and 2 does admit the possibility of an Earth with life forms older than six to ten thousand years.
Finally, what am I as a Christian doing reading a book like this in the first place?
This post from the MetaLutheran blog references a quote from Augustine which says something to the effect that pagans can know something about the physical universe. Fagan may be a rank secularist, but clearly he knows a lot about climate change and the history of the Earth. Christians who attempt to argue with scientific types without taking the trouble to develop an informed understanding of science and its relationship to the faith merely make us look foolish. I believe that science and faith can coexist, given a proper understanding of the Bible. I am tired of Christians saying that it is our duty to refute biologists and physicists with the Bible at every turn.
The Long Summer is a very interesting and informative book about a fairly new branch of science and how it relates to human history. If you can get past the author’s secularist prejudices and accept that he might have something worthwhile to say about the physical universe, then I recommend this book.
