Civilization Began, Civilization Crashed
Either Way the Climate Changed!

If you read the Jarad Diamond’s article, “Agriculture, the Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race”, you know that he gave several reasons why moving from a hunter/gatherer life style to farming was a big mistake. The article is full of thoughts that rattled my brain when I first read it. I too had always considered agriculture as a good thing. My grandfather and my father were farmers after all. However the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was right. However it is too late now. We are dependent on agriculture and one of the most important reasons we need to be fully aware of that is the second reason he gave…

“…because of a limited number of crops, farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed.”

We can deal with the “limited number of crops” later. Right now I want to deal with “if one crop failed”.

Why do crops fail????? The weather – if it is too cold, crops freeze. If it’s too hot and dry, crops wither and die. If it is too wet … well that is more complicated. The thing to understand is that weather in any individual place where crops are grown, whether it is too wet, too dry, too cold or just right for agriculture, depends on the global climate.

Take a good look at the graph below. What do you see?

First, you should see the rising and falling of the global temperature over the last 8000 years. Second, you should see that the differences are relatively small, only 1-2 degrees. Third, there are two major civilization crashes located on this graph. The first depicts the time the world’s first civilizations declined and the second is the fall of the Roman Empire. Note that both declines coincided with a decrease in global temperature. And then there is the Little Ice Age...

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