Book review: The Earth Transformed an ambitious narrative that sets humankind’s history in environmental context

The Earth Transformed 

By Peter Frankopan
Bloomsbury Publishing/684 pages/$30.90/4 stars 

You know this book is going to be a challenging read – not just from the physical heft of it – when the introduction declares the author’s intention to look at how earth the planet has changed “since the beginning of time”. 

Living up to his promise in the introduction, The Earth Transformed begins with the creation of the planet 4.6 billion years ago.

It then proceeds to track the development of the earth’s environment and climate, and how these factors affected the evolution of humankind, from the earliest hominins to Neanderthals to homo sapiens. 

The story of man’s evolution is set in the context of the environment, which impacted everything from the human body – in terms of hospitable weather and food supply – through to spiritual beliefs where religious narratives sought to explain the natural world and man’s place in the universe. 

As author Peter Frankopan notes, humankind’s time on this planet is a mere blink in the longer geological timeline. But people have had an outsized impact on this planet, accelerated in the last century by technological advancement and the mass industrialisation of human activities in every conceivable sphere. 

One certainly cannot accuse Frankopan of lacking ambition when it comes to his sweeping surveys of human history.

Fans who have followed his works since the ground-breaking The First Crusade in 2012 through to 2015’s The Silk Roads: A New History Of the Worlds will know what to expect. 

First, there is his geeky glee in research, reflected in countless juicy tidbits which seed his books like little breadcrumbs, luring readers on to the next stop on his long and winding narratives. 

These anecdotes prove invaluable in this latest book, which can be hard going if you are planning to read it in one shot.

For every complicated technical paragraph grappling with the intricacies of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (a recurring climate pattern) and genomic typing of plague viruses, there are the random, jawdropping factoids that keep a reader gripped, such as a throwaway revelation that in the Hittite Code of the Nesilim, sex with pigs, dogs or cows could command the death penalty while bestiality with horses, a prized animal, was not a punishable act.  

Secondly, there is Frankopan’s openness to alternative narratives and histories, which in his previous books flipped traditional Western-centric narratives on their heads, offering eye-opening new ways to look at the history of human civilisations. 

The Earth Transformed broadens the scope of his previous books, which focused mainly on European, Asian and Central Asian narratives. The Americas, with their Native American, Mayan, Aztec and Olmec narratives, are referenced, as are African, South Asian, South-east Asian and Polynesian stories. 

Last but not least is Frankopan’s ability to weave together a narrative from all the disparate threads of information, which in this book also extends to a staggering amount of scientific findings.

Those findings offer some intriguing insights into weather patterns throughout human history, as evidenced from analyses of ice core samples and the chemical compositions of cave stalactites. 

These are cross-referenced with DNA findings that track genetic ancestry through different populations, as well as studies of linguistic heritage, which reveal patterns of human migrations and cultural exchanges.

While there is, without a doubt, a lot of information to wade through here, much of it is fascinating, especially for history buffs and trivial pursuit nuts.

One cannot help but remember the old adage that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

The endless litany of stories about civilisations that have grown – and overgrown – through environmental exploitation and then reached a tipping point which leads to collapse, is a sobering reminder of mankind’s woefully short memory. 

The last 300 pages of the book are hideously depressing in their narration of the shamefully rapacious and egregiously wasteful mindset of humans when it comes to exploiting the environment and one another. 

The last gasp of optimism in the final chapter, which details positive scientific developments in combating the multitude of environmental woes confronting humankind, barely registers in the bleak overall picture.

This planet is the only resource mankind has, and if history is any indication, human beings are racing towards their own extinction. The earth, however, will outlive humankind, climate change being a feature and not a bug of its operating system.

If you like this, read: Peter Frankopan’s The First Crusade: The Call From The East (Vintage, paperback, 288 pages, from $17.27 from

amazon.sg

), a much shorter read which nonetheless upends the conventional Crusade narrative, focusing on Byzantium emperor Alexios I Komnenos’ central role in setting in motion events that led to the West marching on Muslim powers and changing the course of world history.