Around 2250BC, Naram-Sin reigned supreme over a big chunk of Mesopotamia in modern Iraq – an empire known as Akkad. But then, catastrophically, came “the curse of Akkad”. Rains stopped and crops failed, leading to rampant inflation, mass starvation and political chaos. At the time, it was believed that the “curse” was Naram-Sin’s doing – he’d wronged by “defying the gods” and “losing divine favour”.
Scientists today have reached a different conclusion. Evidence suggests there was a sudden change in the climate at the time – “an evaporation event” – which caused severe drought followed by several centuries of aridity. As Peter Frankopan puts it in his masterly new book: “the collapse of the Akkadian empire has become an important and salutary example for the modern age” and “a stark warning of how mighty civilisations can fold in on themselves”, because of rapid ecological shocks. “Our world has always been one of transformation, transition and change,” he writes, and yet “the weather, climate and environmental factors have rarely been seen as a backdrop to human history, let alone as an important lens through which to view the past”.
The Earth Transformed is Frankopan’s sweeping attempt to forge a new kind of history, one made possible by new technologies (machine learning, sensors and data analytics) that are opening up new ways to study the relationship between our climate and our past. Keen readers of the historian will recall that he’s touched on this theme before. His monumental The Silk Roads included the tale of a Chinese emperor forced out of power by famines caused by extreme weather, as well as an account of how global cooling in the 15th century “heralded a period of dislocation… stagnation, hard times and a brute struggle for survival”.
But The Earth Transformed takes this argument much further. It is packed with riveting examples of how history has been affected by our environment. Indeed, argues Frankopan, the start of the modern human era owes its existence to climatic changes. Around 12,000 years ago, global temperatures rose, prefiguring what’s known as the Holocene epoch, which coincided with the rapid growth of humans. As the author observes: “Agriculture may not have been impossible before the Holocene, but it suited conditions perfectly after its onset.” In other words, if the planet hadn’t warmed up when it did, the agricultural revolution that gave rise to cities, empires and the explosion of the human population might never have happened. Fascinating. Similarly, until reading this book, I’d never come across the Roman climatic optimum – a period of “warmer than average” temperatures from around 100BC to AD200 – “precisely the time that Rome emerged supreme in the Mediterranean, Europe, North Africa and the near East”.
In Frankopan’s account, the changing weather “helped boost agricultural outputs…which in turn improved demographic growth, manpower for conquest and the stability that helped political authorities legitimise and cement their own powers in the process”. More soberingly, he highlights data on the persecution of Jewish people in Europe between AD1100 and 1800, suggesting that a small drop in temperature during the crop-growing season led to an increased probability of Jews being attacked “during times of food shortages and higher prices”.
While most other historians look at these events – the rise and fall of the Roman empire, the abuse of minorities – in terms of politics and economics, Frankopan sees them as ripples set in train by environmental fluctuations. As he puts it: “Reintegrating human and natural history is not just a worthwhile exercise; it is fundamentally important if we are to understand the world around us properly.” Not so much the great man theory of history as an enormous weatherman.
Of course, the global warming and biodiversity loss we’re living through today means Frankopan’s view of the past carries a resonant message for our future. You’d have thought it would be blindingly obvious that our lives are profoundly shaped by the environment and yet most of us – historians included – have assumed that we’re separate from nature; that our technological advances mean we’ve somehow transcended our earthly bonds.
On every one of its 700 pages, The Earth Transformed shows this worldview to be flawed: the sprawling span of human history reveals that our fate is indelibly bound up with the health of the natural world. As Frankopan pointedly concludes, the environment is “the very stage on which our existence plays out, shaping everything we do, who we are, where and how we live” – and if “the theatre closes or collapses, that marks the end for us all”.
Given the heartbreaking damage we’re doing to our planet today, us poor players would do well to listen.
• The Earth Transformed: An Untold History by Peter Frankopan is published by Bloomsbury (£30). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
