Tracing civilizations, the historical epic Climate Change-Birth and Death of Empires uses two parallel frameworks to understand how they developed. The author puts to excellent use his background in engineering to tell a tale of how massive fluctuations in climate and meteorological conditions necessitated adjustments by early civilizations. Those that were once hunter-gatherers settled into a more sedentary lifestyle when sudden changes in weather dictated, and just as quickly dropped the trappings of organized life when the weather, many generations later, changed again. These variations in lifestyle brought with it new connections to neighboring tribes, technological innovation, and increased prosperity for the few lucky enough to gain wealth.The source of heating for survival is the history of fuels, combustion and electrification. It ranges from stick and tinder to nuclear power and beyond. The journey has been a twelve thousand year one. In my life time alone, home heating grew from in house owner wood, then coal, and later oil burning, district electrification and finally public utility networks. Few people remember the fired pot-belly stoves for heating, out-houses and water well manual hand pumps. Once, not long ago, there were party lines and an operator's voice asking "number please".
The conversion from coal firing to oil was driven by the suffocating gas emissions from coal firing in the cities. I have worked on coal fired steam locomotives, as a forest lumber jack, potato picker, and general agricultural laborer as was custom of the time for summer labor. And I still cannot predict the future of our changing source of fuel for energy. But I did try to learn more about our past. See those efforts to learn more in this book.
We are this little unique green speck of light in our unique solar system, a system with a vastly improbable companion in the universe. I hope we don't destroy our only possible home. God help us, there is no other place to go.
The second, parallel storyline concerns how merchants and commerce in general helped pave the way for an interconnected human society. As people finally, a few thousand years ago, settled into more permanent villages, it was the merchants who plied their trade between civilizations that contributed most to the furthering of humanity as a whole. Richardson weaves the stories of typical trading families into his narrative throughout, proving the more things change, the more much of society remains the same.
This novel will appeal to fans of epic, historical fiction in the vein of Ken Follett. There is action, adventure, romance, and danger in enough quantities each to attract a wide range of readers. Those more inclined to read technical works of fiction will find that Richardson's engineering background allows him to include enough detail to keep them invested without turning off those without such a scientific bent.
