INTRODUCTION: Cave paintings -- DNA sequencing -- Archaeological foundations -- Where do we start -- What do we cover -- Climate rules our lives -- The interaction between history and climate change -- THE CLIMATE OF THE PAST 10,0000 YEARS: Defining climate change and climatic variability -- The emerging picture of climate change -- Proxy data -- Do ice core and ocean sediment data relate to human experience -- Changes during the last ice age -- The end of the last ice age -- The Holocene -- Changes in climate variability -- Just how chaotic is the climate -- Changes in sea level -- Causes of climate change -- The lunatic fringe -- Conclusion a climatic template -- LIFE IN THE ICE AGE: The climatology of the last ice age -- The early stages of the ice age -- Oxygen isotope stage three (OIS3) -- The last glacial maximum (LGM) -- The implications of greater climatic variability -- Lower sea levels -- Genetic mapping -- Walking out of Africa -- The transition to the upper Palaeolithic -- Settling on the plains of Moravia -- Life on the mammoth steppes of Asia -- Shelter from the storm -- The first fishermen of Galilee -- Wadi Kubbaniya and the Kom Ombo Plain -- Threedog nights -- Of lice and men -- THE EVOLUTIONARY IMPLICATIONS OF LIVING WITH THE ICE AGE: Bottlenecks -- The upper palaeolithic revolution -- Europeans palaeolithic lineage -- Physique -- The broad spectrum revolution -- Concerning tortoises and hares -- Gender roles -- Anthropomorphisation a pathetic fallacy or the key to survival -- The importance of networks -- Did we domesticate dogs or did dogs domesticate us --

EMERGING FROM THE ICE AGE: The North Atlantic oscillation

Europe the Middle East and North Africa

East and South Asia

Africa and the southern hemisphere

North America

Mass extinctions of big game

The origins of agriculture

Natufian culture

Catalhoyuk

People and forests move back into northern Europe

The spread of farming into Europe

The peopling of the New World

Concerning brown bears and hairless dogs

A European connection

Flood myths

The formation of the Nile delta

The lost Saharan pastoral idyll

The Bantu expansion

ENSO comes and ENSO goes

RECORDED HISTORY: Climatic conditions in Europe during the mid Holocene

East Asia in the mid Holocene

Agricultural productivity the abundance of Mesopotamia

Egypt a paradigm for stability

The price of settling down

The first great dark age

The demonisation of the pig

The sea peoples

The continuing catalogue of dark ages

OUR CLIMATIC INHERITANCE: Did we have any choice

Regaining our palaeolithic potential

Warfare

Climatic determinism the benefits of temperate zones

Ambivalence to animals

Updating of gender roles

THE FUTURE: Climate change and variability revisited

Are we becoming more vulnerable to climatic variability

Can we take global warming in our stride

Which areas are most vulnerable to increased variability

The threat of the flickering switch

Supervolcanoes and other natural disasters.