Europe: A History by Norman Davies Read Free Book Online Page B

the past of all the continents. This in turn produced a special brand of environmental determinism. The growth of classical civilization in the Mediterranean could be attributed to the onset of a moist phase which permitted the cultivation of wheat in North Africa, for instance, whilst northern Europe floundered under an excessive deluge of rain, fog, and frost. The decline of the ancient world could be attributed to a climatic shift in the opposite direction, which brought Mediterranean sunshine north of the Alps. The migrations of the Mongols, which directly affected the history both of China and of Europe (see pp. 364–6), could be attributed to an extended drought in the oases of Central Asia. In his later work, The Mainsprings of Civilisation (1945), Huntington explored other factors of the physical environment such as diet and disease, and their interplay with human heredity. 10 Crude linkages gave the subject a bad name, and attempts have since been made to refine the earlier findings.
    Nevertheless, periodicity theories continue to have their advocates. ‘Cyclomania’ is not yet dead: the rise and fall of civilizations has been linked to everything from sunspots to locust swarms. Whatever their particular preference, scholars are bound to be drawn to the phenomenon of environmental variation, and to its impact on human affairs. After all, it is a matter of simple fact that climate does vary. Parts of the Roman world which once supported a flourishing population now find themselves in desert wasteland. Viking graves were once dug in plots in Iceland and Greenland, which permafrost renders impenetrable to pick or shovel. In the seventeenth century, annual fairs were held on the winter ice of the Thames in London; and armies marched across the frozen Baltic in places where similar ventures would now be suicidal. The European environment is not a fixed entity, even if its subtler rhythms cannot always be exactly measured. [VENDANGE]
    Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History (1933–9), which offered a comprehensive theory of the growth, breakdown, and disintegration of civilizations, is but the most prominent of environmental histories. After discussing the genesis of civilizations in terms of mankind’s response to the ‘challenge of the environment’, he propounds his law on ‘the virtues of adversity’. The Roman Campagna, the semi-desert of Judah, the sandy wastes of Brandenburg, and the hostile shore of New England are all cited as dour environments that have generated a vigorous response. One might add the backwoods of Muscovy. After outlining ‘the stimuli of blows, pressures, and penalisations’, he comes to the concept of the ‘golden mean.’ If the Slavs in Eastern Europe suffered from a lack of early stimuli, the Celts and the Scandinavians suffered from excessive adversity. According to Toynbee, the nearest thing to ideal conditions was experienced by the Hellenic civilization of ancient Greece—‘the finest flower of the species that has ever yet come to bloom’. 11
    Nowadays, though the impact of the environment on man is by no means discounted, special attention is also paid to the impact of man on the environment. [ECO] Historical ecology emerged as an academic subject well before the onset of the ‘greenhouse effect’ alerted everyone to its importance. It calls on a wide range of technological wizardry. Aerial archaeology has revolutionized our knowledge of the prehistoric landscape. Sedimentology, which studies the patterns of riverine deposits, and glaciology, which studies the patterns of ice formation in glaciers, have been mobilized to give new precision to environmental change over centuries and millennia. Geochemical analysis, which measures tell-tale phosphates in the soil of ancient habitations, has given archaeologists another potent tool. Palynology, or pollen analysis, which analyses ancient grains preserved in the earth, permits the reconstruction of former plant-life spectra.