The Attacking Ocean (37 page)

This book is the culmination of years of research into ancient climate change. It draws on a vast academic literature, much of which is virtually unknown to nonspecialists. I relied not only on archives and libraries, but also on years of discussions with colleagues from many disciplines either in person or across cyberspace. I realize now that the story took so long to mature in my mind, much of it years before the esteemed major general’s talk, that I cannot possibly remember you all. Please forgive me if I offer a collective thank-you. You have my eternal gratitude. Special thanks to: the late professor Grahame Clark, Nadia Durrani, Vince Gaffney, Chris Jacobson, Paul Mayewski, George Michaels, Stefaan Nollet, Annet Nieuwhof, Bruce Parker, Helga Vanderveken, and Stephanie Wynne-Jones. My thanks also to those many folk who have asked perceptive questions at lectures or in seminars. They have helped me immeasurably.

As always, Peter Ginna and Pete Beatty have made this book infinitely better. It is, as I have said of earlier works, as much theirs as mine. Their perceptive comments and suggestions were invaluable. I enjoy my relationship with them more than I can say. My old friend Shelly Lowenkopf talked me through difficult moments and was, as always, a companionable and astute critic in a partnership that goes back many years. So does my friendship with Steve Brown, who drew the maps with his usual skill. Susan Rabiner is the best of agents and always provided timely, and total, support. She is always there for me. And lastly, my gratitude, again as always, to Lesley and Ana, who provide encouragement and laughs at the right moments, and to our cats (once kittens), who have found that the fastest way to the great outside is across my desk and its tempting keyboard.

Notes

Chapter 1 Minus One Hundred Twenty-Two Meters and Climbing

(1)
A layperson’s account: Mark Maslin, “The Climatic Rollercoaster” in
The Complete Ice Age
, ed. Brian Fagan (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2009), 62–91.

(2)
Brian Fagan,
Beyond the Blue Horizon
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012), chap. 2.

(3)
Eustacy and isostasy are well described by Orrin H. Pilkey and Rob Young,
The Rising Sea
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009), 31ff.

(4)
Pilkey and Young,
Rising Sea
, 35ff.

(5)
Pilkey and Young,
Rising Sea
, 79.

(6)
Bruce Parker,
The Power of the Sea
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 212ff, discusses rising sea levels.

(7)
The TOPEX/Poseidon satellite, which functioned between 1992 and 2006, was a joint project by French and American scientists. The satellite measured the surface topography and height of the oceans.

(8)
Nicholas Shrady,
The Last Day: Wrath, Ruin, and Reason in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755
(New York: Viking, 2008). Parker,
The Power,
133ff, also has a vivid description. See also the eyewitness accounts by various writers who were in affected places at the time of the earthquake, published in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
49 (1756): 398–444.

(9)
Quoted by Parker,
The Power
, 134.

(10)
Parker,
The Power
, 135.

(11)
Parker,
The Power
, 136–42, has an excellent description of tsunamis.

(12)
Stein Bondevik et al., “Record-Breaking Height for 6,000-Year-Old Tsunami in the North Atlantic,”
EOS
84, no. 31 (2003): 298, 293.

(13)
A huge literature surrounds this epochal disaster. The most accessible
description of Akrotiri: Christos Doumas,
Thera: Pompeii of the Aegean
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1983).

(14)
Plato, and Desmond Lee, trans.,
Timaeus and Critias
(London: SMK Books, 2010), 25c–d.

(15)
Thucydides, and Richard Crawley, trans.,
History of the Peloponnesian War
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), book 3:89: 2–5. Accessed at
http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.3.third.html
.

(16)
Simon Winchester,
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
:
August 27, 1883
(New York: HarperCollins, 2003).

Millennia of Dramatic Change

(1)
I’m grateful to Professor Peter Rowly-Conwy of Durham University for his advice on this point.

Chapter 2 Doggerland

(1)
M. C. Burkitt, “Maglemose Harpoon Dredged Up from the North Sea,”
Man
239 (1932): 96–102. See also J. G. D. Clark,
The Mesolithic Age in Britain
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 125.

(2)
This chapter draws heavily on Vincent Gaffney, S. Fitch, and D. Smith,
Europe’s Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland
(York: Council for British Archaeology, 2009).

(3)
For an analysis of Reid’s work, see Gaffney et al.,
Europe’s Lost World
, 3–13.

(4)
Quoted from Gaffney et al.,
Europe’s Lost World
, 3.

(5)
Clement Reid,
Submerged Forests
(Oxford: Cambridge Series of Manuals of Literature and Science, 1913). Quote from p. 5.

(6)
Reid,
Submerged,
120.

(7)
J. G. D. Clark,
The Mesolithic Settlement of Northern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936). Clark ably summarizes the latest pollen research of the day.

(8)
Bryony J. Coles, “Doggerland: A Speculative Survey,”
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society
64 (1998): 45–81.

(9)
A general summary of these developments: T. Douglas Price, “The Mesolithic of Western Europe,”
Journal of World Prehistory
1, no. 3 (1987): 225–305. See also the specialist essays in Geoff Bailey and Penny Spikins, eds.,
Mesolithic Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

(10)
The history of the Baltic Sea is summarized briefly at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoldia_Sea
.

(11)
This section is based on Gaffney et al.,
Europe’s Lost World
, chaps. 3 and 4.

(12)
The literature on Star Carr is proliferating rapidly as a result of new generations of research. J. G. D. Clark,
Excavations at Star Carr
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), is the classic account. Paul Mellars and Petra Dark,
Star Carr in Context
(Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 1999), is an invaluable update, even if some of its conclusions are being modified by new and as yet unpublished research.

(13)
Summarized by Steven J. Mithen, “The Mesolithic Age,” in
Prehistoric Europe: An Illustrated History
, ed. Barry Cunliffe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 79–135.

Chapter 3 Euxine and Ta-Mehu

(1)
The collapse of Lake Agassiz was, of course, a much more complicated process than this, and its effect on the ocean conveyor belt is much debated. For the conveyor belt, see Wallace S. Broecker, “Chaotic Climate,”
Scientific American,
November 1995, 62–68.

(2)
Graeme Barker,
The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

(3)
Graeme Barker,
Prehistoric Farming in Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

(4)
A popular account of this event: William Ryan and Walter Pitman,
Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Subsequent research is questioning many details of the science. The connection with Noah’s flood is pure speculation and is discounted by most scholars (including me).

(5)
Herodotus,
The Histories
, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), book 2, line 5, 97.

(6)
Florence Nightingale,
Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile, 1849–50
(London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1987), 37.

(7)
My accounts of ancient Egypt and the Nile are based on personal experience and on two basic sources: Barry Kemp,
Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization
, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2006), and Toby Wilkinson,
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt
(New York: Random House, 2010).

(8)
Wilkinson,
The Rise
, 24.

(9)
An excellent description: H. J. Dumont, “A Description of the Nile Basin, and a Synopsis of Its History, Ecology, Biogeography, Hydrology, and Natural Resources,” in Dumont,
The Nile: Origin, Environments, Limnology and Human Use
, ed. H. J. Dumont (New York: Springer Science, 2009), 1–21. This section is
also based on Daniel Jean Stanley and Andrew G. Warne, “Nile Delta: Recent Geological Evolution and Human Impact,”
Science
260 (1993), 5108: 628–34. See also Waleed Hamza, “The Nile Delta,” in Dumont,
The Nile
, 75–94.

(10)
Barker,
The Agricultural Revolution
, chap. 4, has an excellent summary.

(11)
A short description of the site: Josef Eiwanger, “Merimde Beni-salame,” in
Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
, ed. Kathryn A. Bard (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 501–5.

(12)
Maadi: Béatrix Mident-Reynes, “The Naqada Period,” in
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt,
ed. Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 57–60.

(13)
Toby Wilkinson,
Early Dynastic Egypt
(London: Routledge, 2001), has an excellent account of these developments.

Chapter 4 “Marduk Laid a Reed on the Face of the Waters”

(1)
This quote comes from an elaborate introduction to an incantation recited in honor of Ezida, the temple of the god Nabu at Borsippa near Babylon. L. H. King,
The Seven Tablets of Creation
(San Francisco: Book Tree, 1999). Originally published in 1902, page 4 in the 1999 edition.

(2)
This passage is based on Douglas J. Kennett and James P. Kennett, “Early State Formation in Southern Mesopotamia: Sea Levels, Shorelines, and Climate Change,”
Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology
1 (2006): 67–99. See also Paul Sanlaville, “The Deltaic Complex of the Lower Mesopotamian Plain and Its Evolution Through Millennia,” in
The Iraqi Marshlands: A Human and Environmental Study
, ed. Emma Nicholson and Peter Clark (London: AMAR and Politico’s, 2006), 133–50.

(3)
The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), known to sailors as the doldrums, is an area around the globe near the equator where winds originating in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres come together. Normally appearing as a bank of clouds, the north-south movements of the ITCZ have short- and long-term effects on rainfall in many equatorial nations.

(4)
These paragraphs draw on Kennett and Kennett, “Early State Formation,” 79–85.

(5)
Quoted from Gavin Young,
Return to the Marshes: Life with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq
(London: Collins, 1977), 42–43.

(6)
Quote from Wilfred Thesiger,
Desert, Marsh & Mountain
(New York: HarperCollins, 1979), 106. For an assessment of the marsh ecosystem, see M. I. Evans, “The Ecosystem,” in Nicholson and Clark,
Iraqi Marshlands,
201–19.

(7)
Young,
Return
, 16.

(8)
The classic account of the Marsh Arabs is Wilfred Thesiger,
The Marsh Arabs
(New York: Dutton, 1964), upon which the account of these people in this chapter is based. See also S. M. Salim,
Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta
(London: Athlone Press, 1962), and Edward L. Ochsenschlager,
Iraq’s Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 2004).

(9)
Samuel Kramer,
The Sumerians
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 77.

(10)
Leonard Woolley,
Excavations at Ur
(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1954), gives a popular account of the Ur discoveries.

(11)
Woolley,
Excavations
, 34.

(12)
Woolley,
Excavations
, 36.

(13)
C. L. Woolley, ed.,
Ur Excavations
, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927–1946), 110–11.

(14)
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab1.htm

(15)
King,
The Seven Tablets
, 4.

Chapter 5 “Men Were Swept Away by Waves”

(1)
This section is based on: R. T. J. Cappers and D. C. M. Raemaeker, “Cereal Cultivation at Swifterbant? Neolithic Wetland Farming on the North European Plain,”
Current Anthropology
49 (2008): 385–402.

(2)
Cappers and Raemaeker, “Cereal Cultivation,” 388–89.

(3)
An extensive Dutch literature surrounds
terpen
. This passage is based on Annet Nieuwhof, “Living in a Dynamic Landscape: Prehistoric and Proto-Historic Occupation of the Northern-Netherlands Coastal Area,” in
Science for Nature Conservation and Management: The Wadden Sea Ecosystem and EU Directives
, H. Marencic et al.,
Proceedings of the 12th International Scientific Wadden Sea Symposium in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, 30 March–3 April 2009
(Wilhelmshaven: Wadden Sea Ecosystem No. 26, 2010), 174–78; also on Audrey M. Lambert,
The Making of the Dutch Landscape: An Historical Geography of the Netherlands
(New York: Seminar Press, 1971), 30–31. See also Jaap Boersma, “Dwelling Mounds in the Salt Marshes—The Terpen of Friesland and Groningen,” in
The Prehistory of the Netherlands
, ed. L. P. Louwe Kooijmans (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), 57–560.