Author │ Archaeologist │ Climate Change Historian
Dr. Brian Fagan is a leading authority on the complex relationship between the environment, climate change and human society. Fagan is the author or editor of 46 books, including eight college textbooks familiar to two generations of archaeology students. For audiences ranging from business executives to high school students, Fagan places today’s highly publicized climate crisis in a crucial historical context and describes how humans have adapted to environmental changes over the eons.
In his bestseller
The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (2008), Fagan offers a compelling and eminently readable narrative that extends from the Arctic ice cap to the Sahara and the Indian Ocean.
500 years ago, the Earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed the climate worldwide—a preview of today’s global warming. In western Europe, longer summers produced more bountiful harvests, while population growth caused art and culture to flourish. In the Arctic, Norse and Inuit sailors made profound connections across thousands of miles, trading priceless iron goods and contributing to one another’s cultural advancement. But in other parts of the world, climate change brought famine, drought, and pestilence.
Fagan paints a vivid and disturbing picture of the power of climate change to disrupt and irrevocably alter the course of human history. By “looking backward,” says Publishers Weekly, “Fagan presents a well-documented warning to those who choose to look forward.”
Fagan’s book
Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans (2010) turns to prehistoric humans who were the most adaptable and inventive population that had ever existed. Paying particular attention to the impact of climate change on Cro-Magnon society, Fagan crafts a narrative that Barnes & Noble Review calls “highly entertaining and instructive…the re-imagining of the past is entertainingly done, and a great deal of science, especially climate science, is accessibly introduced on the way.”
His next book,
Elixir: Humans and the History of Water (2011), describes the complex, ever-changing relationship human beings have had with water for the past 10,000 years. Long before water became an anonymous commodity at the end of a faucet, people revered water and treasured it to an extent unimaginable in today’s world.
Elixir is a fascinating journey that encompasses the brilliant water managers of classical Greece, the Roman aqueducts, the magnificent gardens of Islamic engineers, and the challenges of taming Chinese rivers. It’s the story of a largely forgotten world that existed before the diesel pumps and fossil fuels of the Industrial Revolution turned water into a seemingly limitless resource. And from this largely vanished world, Fagan draws timeless lessons about the vital importance of water conservation for our society today.
Fagan is currently Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1967. He was born and educated in England, and spent six years as Keeper of Prehistory at the Livingstone Museum in Central Africa before relocating to the US. In addition to his books, Dr. Fagan has contributed more than 100 papers to scientific journals and has served as an archaeological consultant to the National Geographic Society, Time/Life, Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta.
With the publication of
Elixir, Fagan adds the topic of humanity’s relationship to natural resources to his other lecture topics, which include climate change, natural history, and the development of human society, as well as various other subjects related to archaeology.
Selected Lecture Topics
- "The Great Warming: What the World of 1,000 Years Ago Tells Us About Climate Change, or The Story of the Silent Elephant in the Room"
- "Ancient Climate Change: Its Lessons for the Future"
- "Elixir: The History of Water and Humanity and What It Means for the Future"
- "Fish on Friday, or the Story of Why Catholics (and others) Eat Fish in Lent and at Other Times"
Selected Writings
- Beyond the Blue Horizon: How the Earliest Mariners Unlocked the Secrets of the Ocean (Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming 2012)
- Elixir: Humans and the History of Water (Bloomsbury Press, 2011)
- Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans (Bloomsbury Press, 2010)
- The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (Bloomsbury Press, 2009)
- Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World (Basic Books, 2007)
- The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (Basic Books, 2004)
- The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 (Basic Books, 2001)
Awards1997 Public Education Award, Society for American Archaeology
1996 Presidential Citation Award, Society for American Archaeology
1996 Distinguished Service Award, Society of Professional Archaeologists
MediaDr. Brian Fagan explores the value of archaeology in understanding climate change at the Pop!Tech conference: