APOCALYPSE

Big, bad changes in human history.

Award-winning science journalist Wade opens by defining “apocalypse” as “a rapid, collective loss that fundamentally changes a society’s way of life” and then proceeds to examine world events from the last 50,000 years. Most don’t meet her definition, but few readers will complain. The Neanderthal extinction of 40,000 years ago probably passed with few fireworks. It’s also a matter of pure speculation. Wade’s summary of the latest findings emphasizes a mostly nonviolent ebbing of scattered bands of long-established Europeans in the face of more numerous immigrants from the east. Aside from the occasional volcanic eruption or invasion, Wade’s apocalypses are slow, often taking centuries, fascinating to archeologists and historians if not Hollywood producers. Humans often quarrel, compete, and make war, but no day passes when they don’t yearn to eat, so bad weather and famine play an outsized role. Forty-two hundred years ago, rainfall diminished around the world. Egypt’s Old Kingdom collapsed as Nile floods became a trickle. This is well documented, but archeologists are still unearthing huge cities across India, their writing still undeciphered, abandoned during this time. Pacific Ocean temperature changes produce El Niño weather, which annoys Americans but devastates Peru and may have done worse in the past. The author concludes with two apocalypses that gave birth to today’s world: Europe’s incursion into the Americas, which killed tens of millions of people, and African slavery, which took the lives of millions more. Looking to the future, Wade writes, “It’s time to get used to living in, and with, the apocalypse….Unlike most of the apocalypses in this book, ours are and will be truly global. In the case of climate change, it might eventually transform our planet into a place unlike any human has ever seen before.”

A sobering look at how cultures die.