The Recurring Dark Ages: Ecological Stress, Climate Changes, and System Transformation

by Sing C. Chew

In this modern era of global environmental crisis, Sing Chew provides a convincing analysis of the recurring human and environmental crises identified as Dark Ages . In this, his second of a three-volume series concerning world ecological degradation, Chew reviews the past 5,000-year history of structural conditions and processes that define the relationship between nature and culture. Chew's message about the coming Dark Ages, as human communities continue to reorganize to meet the contingencies of ecological scarcity and climate changes, is a must-read for those concerned with human interactions and environmental changes, including environmental anthropologists and historians, world historians, geographers, archaeologists, and environmental scientists.

Genres: Ecology

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Elijah Meeks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I use this book extensively for my research and my course. I believe that Sing Chew is one of the best environmental historians, because he develops a solid methodology based on world systems theory and then explores the ramifications of how ecological degradation and urbanization force societies to use up their ecological capital and then exert pressure on those societies.

The theme of the book is environmental cycles running concurrently with socio-cultural and political cycles and integrating them into our understanding of "Dark Age" periods. Chew isolates and analyzes several different Bronze Age cycles in and around Greece and Anatolia, spending considerable effort on linking trade and resource acquisition available in texts to hinterlands and periphery areas that provide the raw materials for elite cultures. His concept of system transformation brought on by ecological degradation better explains changes in the historic political landscape than histories based purely on socio-cultural and political forces.