John L. Brooke. Climate Change and the Course of Global History

Among the ruins of ancient civilizations in Turkey, the early-twentieth-century geographic determinist and popular writer Ellsworth Huntington found clear evidence of progressive desiccation and historical climatic changes or, as he called them, “pulsations.” The result was his first book, The Pulse of Asia (1907), where he argued for the power of physiography, especially climate, to mold the habits and even character of peoples, concluding that “geography ... is the basis of history in a way that is not generally recognized; and that climatic changes have been one of the greatest factors in determining the course of human progress” for all nations of the world (Huntington, p. 359). John L. Brooke's book, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey, follows this tradition, without citing it, by depicting on the cover a desiccated landscape with ancient stone works in the foreground, and by promising “a venture into history on a grand scale” (p. 1) with historical support for punctuated evolution driven to “epigenetic rupture” by episodic tectonic and cosmic upheavals (p. 36).

Biology · Climate change · Darwinism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Chinese history and philosophy · Ecology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

• Resonating with Deep-Time

  Open Access•Marilyn Ahearn•Australian Journal of Environmental…•2025

  Add to list