How the earth's previous global warming phase, from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, reshaped human societies
from the Arctic to the Sahara�a wide-ranging history with sobering lessons for our own time.
From the tenth to the fifteenth centuries the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate
worldwide�a preview of today's global warming. In some areas, including Western Europe, longer summers brought
bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors
made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding
new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm
centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast
building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatan were left empty.
As he did in his bestselling The Little Ice Age, anthropologist and historian Brian Fagan reveals how subtle changes
in the environment had far-reaching effects on human life, in a narrative that sweeps from the Arctic ice cap to
the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may
yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today�and our vulnerability to drought,
writes Fagan, is the �silent elephant in the room.�