The Earth Transformed

An Untold History

By: Peter Frankopan

Narrated by: Peter Frankopan

Length: 29 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

A revolutionary new history that reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development—and demise—of civilizations across time

Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been with us.

Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop failure, why the roots of regime change in eleventh-century Baghdad lay in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth century. Again and again, Frankopan shows that when past empires have failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, The Earth Transformed will radically reframe the way we look at the world and our future.

*Includes a downloadable PDF of historic maps and global charts from the book, as well as the written acknowledgements

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Peter Frankopan (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2023: BBC NEWS, SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW EUROPEAN, GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, THE TIMES (LONDON), AND THE WEEK

"An essential epic that runs from the dawn of time to, oh, six o’clock yesterday." —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

"Frankopan shows you how everything fits together...Vast, learned and timely work...The Earth Transformed is Sapiens for grown-ups....It holds lessons for a world grappling with rapid climate change caused by human industry." —Dan Jones, The Sunday Times

"Frankopan has brought all of this scholarly work together into a massive book that is comprehensive, well-informed, and fascinating. It has the intellectual weight and dramatic force of a tsunami....This is an endlessly fascinating book, an easy read on an important issue." —Gerard DeGroot, The Times (London)

Comprehensive and balanced review of climate and environment through the ages

It clarified many events of human history and the earth evolution and the insignificance of our journey as a race in the context of the future of the planet.

HUMANITY'S TRIAL

Peter Frankopan journeys from pre-history to the present to offer perspective on the earth’s global warming crisis. He reviews what is either speculated or known of disastrous world events. Frankopan recalls histories of major volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, famines, pandemics, and epidemics that have changed the course of history. Frankopan wryly observes global warming is a crisis, but that human life is as likely to end from another cataclysmic natural event or nuclear war as the imminent warming of the world.

One hopes histories past lessons inform a future that includes a place for the youth of this, the next, and future generations. World change brought on by crises have been overcome in the past through human adaptation. It seems reasonable to presume, despite the ignorance of some national leaders, that humanity will survive today’s global warming crisis.

Wow! What a book.

Wow. What a book. I read Peter’s book, Silk Road, and was impressed with Peter’s ability to extract events from human history to weave a fascinating story of cultural development and what events lead to the world we know today.

In his latest book, Earth Transformed, Peter describes how a variety of natural events shaped human history and how humans transformed the planet. I find Peter’s attention to detail impressive as he navigates a variety of naturally occurring phenomena and how they effected human society. Using data from a variety of sources including written human history, geology, climatology, and archaeology Peter is able to fill in the blanks on why cultures rose to power then failed.

Much of human history is guided by climate change, especially volcanic eruptions which cooled the planet leading to lower than expected crop yields and starvation in extreme cases.

The book begins 4.6 billion years ago when the planet was formed, Peter quickly takes the reader through the advent of first life on the planet, then goes into early man. The meat of the book begins with early civilizations about 11,000 years ago and brings the reader forward through a variety of cultures leading up to where we stand today.

While this book is more of a history book, it does leave the reader with where Peter stands on Global Warming. From what I gather, he thinks we are in deep Doo-Doo.

The effect of volcanic activity on climate over millennia.

The author consulted amount of world literature, from myth to peer reviewed research. He coordinated global literature that was written in response to specific events, such as volcanic activity, to illustrate effects over larger or smaller geographic and temporal scale. The author’s reading was very good.

A Thoughtful History of A Complex Phenomenon

I greatly enjoy this book and feel refreshed by its insightful and innovative interpretations of human social development. It is filled with enchanting stories that we are familiar with but told from different angles.

The author looks at history via a lens of how the climate shapes human behavior at the societal level and the success and unintended consequences of human attempts to change their surroundings. They are intriguing and informative snapshots of different civilizations and cultures in the river of time.

It's a long multi-disciplinary book, for there is no simple way to meaningfully examine and explain the interconnection between human actions and global climate shifts. The narratives cover paleoanthropology, geology, geography, climatology, history, sociology, religion, ecology, science, and all-encompassing.

After this book, if you like its way of peering into human history and want to delve deeper into certain aspects, check out these books from different perspectives (listed by publication time, mostly).
- Climate Crisis - "Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now" by John Doerr, Ryan Panchadsaram (2021)
- Finance/Economy - "Money, The True Story of a Made-Up Thing" by Jacob Goldstein (2020)
- Paleoanthropology -"Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari (2017)
- Early Geography - "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" by James C. Scott (2017)
- Biology/Evolution - "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution" by Richard Dawkins (2009 and a classic)
- Sociology - "Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond (1997 and a classic)
- Something to go with a drink - "A History of the World in 6 Glasses" by Tom Standage (2011) (spoiler alert: half of the drinks are alcoholic)
- From the same author (Peter Frankopan, a professor at both Oxford and Cambridge) - "The Silk Road" (2015) and "The New Silk Road" (2018)

A Wonderful Explanation

A very well-written explanation of the unrelenting devastation and death that has been, and continues to be, humanity’s only path. The progress and pattern of ecocide is detailed as so predictable that the book can almost seem monotonous at times. Yet, the author skillfully helps us confirm civilized Homo sapiens as an inevitably inept, bureaucratically inclined, greedy, power-hungry, self-infatuated, super predatory species.

A very good book.

Human and natural causes of climate change

A wake up call and overview of the history of climate change and impacts on the world’s civilizations

Things have always been bad.

I started this book hoping that the author would attempt to integrate modern climatic data into the broad outline of human history. I had read and enjoyed the author’s previous book, “The Silk Roads”. However, this book leaves much to be desired.

The author provides no overall framework to his tome. He begins by leaping across continents and thousands of years in a head-jerking fashion. While climatic interactions are a main topic, his persistent “woke” approach to history seems to say that everything was always terrible. His constant diatribes on civilization and the dangers of cities ignores much modern work on the vital influence of cities in the development of not only the modern world but of many cultures over time.

He is either unaware of or ignores such works as Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature.” No new information is provided here beyond works as Alfred Crosby’s “The Columbian Exchange” and Charles C. Mann’s wonderful “1491” and “1493”. His confused and cursory review of modern paleoanthropology is a mess.

Yes, there are myriad tragic examples of massive mistreatment by elites of indigenous peoples all over the world. Yes, many climatic variations were challenging to those living through them. But the author’s consistent, unrelenting pessimism reaches the level of downright fiction. If you count the numbers of mentions of negative climatic events versus the positive ones, the inevitable conclusion is that Frankopan believes that climate has gone downhill during the entire course of human history—a clearly false belief.

After enduring what can only be described as Herculean efforts to prove his “wokeness”, I reached the end of his treatment of the 19th century and just had to stop. He barely mentions the vast improvements in living standards and medical treatment in much of the world during that time.

As a narrator, Frankopan does a decent job. However, his curious mispronunciations of well-known words such as “Hyksos” and “ascetic” cause me to wonder about his overall education.

Finally, the author seems to have an unfortunate penchant for marginal, highly speculative theories about subjects such as the peopling of the New World and the affects of chlorine gas on the influenza epidemic of 1918.

As for his climate narrative, his attempts to forcibly synchronize climatic and cultural developments in the Americas with contemporaneous events in Eurasia seem very poorly justified.

Overall, I have to wonder that a professional scholar could produce a work of such erratic quality. I am reminded of the apocryphal aphorism, “History is just one damned thing after another”. Personally, I avoid books that, rather than clarifying history, attempt to turn it into botany by reducing a wonderfully complex topic to merely vast lists of disconnected events.

Missed opportunity

I was really looking forward to this. However, it needs more of a narrative. It could be an interesting story. Instead, it sounds like nothing more than a compiled list of facts. What made it even harder to listen to it was the clipped monotone of the author/narrator. I couldn’t get past chapter 4.

Save your money

A terrible, incoherent mishmash. This is an important story that deserves much, much better. Not well organized.