Offers an overview of the contributions geology has made to the study of climate change and the nuanced picture it presents of a climate that has gone through constant change over the course of millen
In the publicity surrounding global warming, climate scientists are usually the experts consulted by the media. We rarely hear from geologists, who for almost two hundred years have been studying the
A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR NATURE, THE CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS, AND BOOKLIST. How did we come to have a global climate? What role do the complex interactions of ice, ocean, and atmosphere play in sustai
The Lake Chad region of Nigeria is an extreme environment: virtually treeless sand and a broiling clay plain in the fierce heat of the dry season, then much of it inundated and impassable in the wet season as whole areas turn into shallow lakes or marsh. Yet even this hostile landscape and climate have sustained human communities in continuous occupation for some three hundred years. Professor Connah traces the story of human adaptation to and exploitation of this unusual environment from prehistoric to modern times. He presents a natural history of Man in the region, based largely on archaeological data but drawing also on written evidence, ethnography and oral tradition to reconstruct human history and experience in this largely unknown area. This ecological approach therefore cuts across the conventional boundaries between academic disciplines and the book is intended for students of African history as well as of archaeology. It provides too the historical context in which modern de
