Chapter 1 - Climate and culture change: Exploring Holocene transitions

Abstract

This chapter attempts to explore the climatic and cultural changes and transitions that have occurred in past 10,000 years. Responding successfully to climate change and its likely impacts on human culture is one of the great scientific challenges of the 21st century and a major test for global civilization. Various studies have been conducted in this regard, and various papers have been presented. This study explores how past human cultures have responded to changes in climate and consequent changes in vegetation and precipitation patterns. It documents research that offers many lessons of value to scholars, politicians/planners, and the general public. Scientific literature, archaeological research, and paleobiological evidence can be critical for identifying human presence and impact on the landscape; so, too, can geoarchaeological/geophysical analyses. Under this light, this chapter demonstrates that the reconstruction of both past climate change and past human cultural systems is best accomplished by using data from multiple sources, or proxy records, and by specialists from different disciplines working together. The development of the radiocarbon calibration curve has profound implications for archaeological and paleoenvironmental research. Furthermore, this study describes the possible causes of Holocene climate change, also rationalizing the need to study climate and culture change, and particularly events and processes occurring during the Mid-Holocene from ca. 9000 to 5000 years ago to help in the modern world. The basis for such studies lies in the relationship between climate and cultural change, which is elucidated in this chapter.