Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-269) and index.

"Until very recently, we had no detailed record of climate changes during the Holocene. Now we do, and Brian Fagan shows us how climate functioned as what historian Paul Kennedy described as one of the "deeper transformations" of history - a more important factor than we have heretofore understood." "In The Long Summer, Fagan shows how a thousand-year chill caused by the sudden shutting off of the Gulf Stream led people in the Near East to abandon hunting and gathering to take up the cultivation of plant foods; how the catastrophic flood that created the Black Sea drove settlers deep into Europe; how a subsequent warming and drying of the Sahara forced its cattle-herding peoples to take up a less hazardous life along the banks of the Nile; how the Roman Empire extended north in Gaul only as far - and for as long - as the climate allowed sustained cereal farming; and how a period of increased rainfall in East Africa in the sixth century spread rat populations and the bubonic plague throughout the Mediterranean, and how this in turn spurred massive migrations that helped shape modern Europe and the Middle East." "The Long Summer illuminates for the first time the centuries-long pattern of human adaptation to the demands and challenges of an ever-changing climate - demands and challenges that are still with us today."--Jacket.

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