How climate change has shaped the past, by historian Peter Frankopan

In his new book The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, the British academic uses cutting-edge research to explain how the natural world has moulded the story of mankind

Peter Frankopan describes AI and computer modelling programmes as becoming essential tools in his kit. Getty

Advances in technology have made it easier to learn about the past, according to British historian Peter Frankopan.

He describes artificial intelligence and computer modelling programmes as becoming essential tools in his kit, in addition to a literary verve to weave all that information into an arresting narrative.

His latest book, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, is laced with cutting-edge research in an attempt to explain how climate change shaped the history of mankind.

While Frankopan is used to telling an epic story – his 2017 bestseller The Silk Roads: A New History of the World is essentially a study of the growth of Asia – technology spawned new research methods allowing historians to delve deeper and become more ambitious.

“The potential is huge for research. For example, in my new book, I talk about the settlements of islands in Polynesia and through computer modelling, we learnt that this settlement was not by chance, and it was deliberate,” he tells The National at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

“This just shows to me what AI, machine learning, big data and all kinds of computer and statistical modelling can do. It almost means it's not enough to study history any more without understanding sciences and maths, which are also exciting.”

While The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is full of startling facts and figures, it is ultimately a human story, as it details how our understanding of the elements shaped the trajectory of societies.

For example, the origins of the bureaucratic state, the book notes, dates back to the Sumer civilisation in the fifth and sixth millennium BC and their desire to centralise agricultural surplus.

Frankopan also explores how water was behind the birth of some of the world’s first great cities in North Africa and Asia more than 2,500 years ago.

“What a city needs is population density and people who want to live there. So why was the Nile River, the Indus Valley and Yangtze River chosen and not parts of Europe?” he says.

“They all shared a very similar signature in that they had a strip of land that has enough water which is essential for large populations. They also have arable land that you can cultivate and grow crops and animal herds.

“Above all, on either side of these strips are difficult terrain. So, you have to live there, or you die.”

Discussions surrounding climate change are also not a sign of the times.

The book details how early 17th century settlers in North America were worried about the air quality in their new surroundings.

“They thought the air was different than in Europe and I guess there were some racial reasons to think that, but they felt the world they were living in was somehow different environmentally,” he says.

“They were worried the footprint they were leaving on the earth was changing rainfall patterns.”

He goes on to explain that American founding father Thomas Jefferson was also concerned with the environment.

“He was obsessed about the climate and how it changes,” Frankopan says.

“He took two or three measurements every single day for 50 years. On the morning the Declaration of Independence was signed, you would think he had other things on his mind, but he went that morning to a shop to buy a new thermometer.”

From the descriptions of the eruption of Mount Tambora in modern-day Indonesia in 1815 to the transplantation of tomatoes from the Americas to Europe, the narrative is brainy and barrelling.

Frankopan says there is an equal amount of joy writing about the environment as historical figures.

“Volcanoes and weather changes have their own moods and characters,” he says.

“If all the chapters just mentioned locations and how many trees were cut down and I move on to the next one, it won’t cut through to the reader because there is nothing human about it.

“But if I can talk about the process of mining for gold in Egypt and how that process affected the Sinai River and killed fishes, and in one case poisoned a young man, people can understand that ecological catastrophe can affect everyone.”

And this is the ultimate message in The Earth Transformed: An Untold History.

Frankopan views the work less as a cautionary tale and more as a reminder for all to discuss and plan for the dangers that come with climate change.

“There are a set of winds that are blowing that will make a historian like me nervous,” he says.

“There are about 500 known emerging infectious diseases and 60 per cent of them are highly susceptible to changes in the climate and to warming.

“We have learnt so much about the global disease environment because of the coronavirus.

“But we do need to make sure that we have learnt all those lessons very carefully for the next round of diseases that will come.”