Brian Fagan The Great Warming Critical Analysis

The Great Warming: Critical Analysis In a time referred to at the Medieval Warm Period, the earth faced a rise in temperature that altered the climate worldwide. In a New York Times Bestseller, The Great Warming, written by Brian Fagan, we learn how the history of the world a half millennium ago implies that we still are misjudging the power that climate change holds. Brian Fagan, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, works his way across the globe to find evidence explaining the interaction of climate change and human societies. Fagan finds evidence of climate change in areas on western Europe, where longer summers and shorter winters led to plentiful harvests and population growth, evidence of severe droughts were found in modern-day California, violent climatic swings took place in Northern China, and in southern Yucatan, arid …show more content…
Through this book, we realize that climate has the ability to transform and or destroy human societies. The causing of the Medieval Warm Period is still unclear, however, the author is able to draw one clear conclusion from his research in the final chapters of The Great Warming, on the present day propositions of the great climate change over a thousand years ago. “History is always around us, threatening, offering encouragement, sometimes showing us precedents. The warm centuries of a thousand years ago remind us that we have never been masters of the natural world; at our best, we have accommodated ourselves to its fickle realities” (242). I think that The Great Warming was written very clearly and a surprisingly interesting read. Brain Fagan presented this material in a simple and rigid way that clearly portrays his argument that climate change has a big control over human