Summary: I had completed Part 1 of this 2-part series and didn’t even know there would be a part 2 when I started reading my next book on climate change (and my last book on this subject for a while).
Earth’s climate is very dynamic. Thus, radical climate change has been going on many millions (and probably billions) of years before the first member of our species (Homo sapiens) evolved. Part 1 of this series explored an event (the Paleocene‒Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM) that occurred roughly 56 million years ago, and how anthropomorphic (human-caused) climate change could trigger a much worse “PETM-like” event in the near future.
This paper will explore humans’ (specifically Homo sapiens’) history for events that were caused or substantially affected by both anthropomorphic and natural climate change. By looking at how ancient cultures responded to these events, we might find some role-models defining how we should respond to current and future climate change.
