Historians often rely on new discoveries in order to make breakthroughs. Every now and again, a fresh document, a set of papers or a whole manuscript is found by chance. Maybe something unexpected and surprising will pop up from an archaeological dig or – in the case of inns and oasis towns along the Silk Roads – from the declassification of CIA satellite images taken during the cold war, which revealed sites that had long fallen out of use and been forgotten on the ground.
Researchers used to dream about such treasure troves. They do not have to any more. We are living not so much in a golden age of new evidence, but in one of hyper-abundance. Almost all of this comes from the physical and natural sciences. Politicians often talk crudely about “choices” between the humanities and Stem subjects, but in today’s world, cutting-edge history is all about understanding, assessing and integrating materials from sources that would have been completely alien to most historians writing just a generation ago. These materials are transforming ideas about the past – often in radical ways. And climate is central to that transformation.
