IS MODERN CIVILISATION FRAGILE?
Reason Online, 9 June 2006 HYPERLINK http://www.reason.com/rb/rb060906.shtml http://www.reason.com/rb/rb060906.shtml Ronald Bailey Caltech – Our ancestors made themselves and us more vulnerable to the vagaries of nature and the weather once they switched from hunting and gathering to farming. So says Brian Fagan, emeritus professor of anthropology from University of California at Santa Barbara, who spoke on the impact of climate change on ancient societies at the Environmental Wars conference of the Skeptics Society last weekend. Fagan’s chief claim is that Farming in this case stands for the advent of more complex and interconnected societies. Fagan argues that nimble hunter/gatherers could respond to environmental changes faster than farmers and urbanites who are tied to their land and their cities. Fagan began his talk by describing his sojourn as a young man in a village of subsistence farmers in the Zambezi Valley in Africa. These farmers lived on the edge. In September and Octobe
