Climate and Humans Over 12,000 Years

The latest research in climate history for a broad audience. This accessible book presents climate change from the last Ice Age to current global warming and how it has impacted people and communities worldwide.

Blending history and climatology, the book takes the reader on a journey through world history, highlighting powerful and abrupt climate shifts that have sometimes drastically altered the living conditions of millions.

In Climate and Humans Over 12,000 Years, we trace how, less than 6,000 years ago, the Sahara Desert was a savanna, rather than the world’s largest desert, and how the climate was once warm enough for tortoises to live in Sweden. We also explore how the nomadic populations of the Central Asian steppes were repeatedly forced to migrate to Europe and China due to drought, and how the monsoon rains in Asia have varied and dictated periods of prosperity and famine for hundreds of millions of people. This journey takes us to the Native American civilizations that collapsed due to drought, at a time when a warmer climate allowed northern Europeans to settle as cattle ranchers in southern Greenland.

The book describes how the Little Ice Age, which peaked in the 17th century, contributed to supply crises and hardship in many places, including Europe. But it also offers numerous examples of people adapting to, and even benefiting from, climate change. The book provides important insights for our time, as ongoing global warming and its consequences, particularly in many of the world’s poorest regions, are among the greatest challenges facing humanity.

Frederik Charpentier Ljungqvist is a professor of history, specializing in historical geography, and an associate professor of physical geography at Stockholm University. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 scholarly articles and the sole author of two science books and five previous science popularization books. In 2016, he was awarded the Clio Prize for his first two books on popularizing science, and in 2022, he received the Rettig Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his scientific work.