Питер Франкопан (Peter Frankopan)
THE EARTH TRANSFORMED
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World
The First Crusade: The Call From the East
To Jessica
When God created the first human, He took him and led him round all the
trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him … ‘Pay attention that you do
not corrupt and destroy My world; if you corrupt it, there is no one to repair
it after you.’
Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah, 7:13
The drought is so excessive,
And we are tormented by the heat.
I have not stopped offering sacrifices …
To the powers above and below I have made sacrifices and buried offerings.
There are no spirits I have not honoured.
King Xuan of Zhou (r. 827–782 BC), ‘Yunhan’ (雲漢)
from Shijing (詩經, Classic of Poetry)
[God] has raised the heavens and set up everything in balance,
Therefore do not transgress the balance that has been established.
Qurʾān, 55:7–8
A change in our climate … is taking place … Both heats and colds are
become much more moderate.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785)
The poorest nations, already beset by man-made disasters, have been
threatened by a natural one: the possibility of climatic changes.
Henry Kissinger, Address to the Sixth Special Session of
the United Nations General Assembly (April 1974)
I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it … I don’t believe it.
Donald Trump, 45th President of the
United States of America, on the
US National Climate Assessment 2018
Contents
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1 The World from the Dawn of Time (c.4.5bn–c.7m BC)
2 On the Origins of Our Species (c.7m–c.12,000 BC)