Climate Change in Prehistory explores the challenges that faced humankind in a

glacial climate and the opportunities that arose when the climate improved

dramatically around 10,000 years ago. Drawing on recent advances in genetic

mapping, it presents the latest thinking on how the fluctuations during the ice age

defined the development and spread of modern humans across the Earth. It reviews

the aspects of our physiology, intellectual development and social behaviour

that have been influenced by climatic factors, and how features of our lives – diet,

health and the relationshipwith nature – are also the product of the climate inwhich

we evolved. This analysis is based on the proposition that essential features of

modern societies – agriculture and urban life – only became possible when the

climate settled down after the chaos of the last ice age. In short: climate change in

prehistory has in so many ways made us what we are today.