Contents -- Preface -- Editors'Acknowledgement -- 1. Introduction: Towards a Historical View of Humanity and the Biosphere -- 1.1. A new sense of change -- 1.2. The static character of ancient world views -- 1.3. Myths, maps, and models -- 2. Introductory Overview: the Expanding Anthroposphere -- 2.1. Life before humans -- 2.1.1. The first environmental crisis in the biosphere -- 2.1.2. Continental drift -- 2.2. Early humans and their first big impact: fire -- 2.2.1. Human origins and extensive growth -- 2.2.2. Intensive growth: technology, organization and civilization -- 2.2.3. The original domestication of fire -- 2.2.4. Long-term consequences -- 2.2.5. Regimes -- 2.3. Intensified human impact: agrarianization -- 2.3.1. Emergence -- 2.3.2. Continuities -- 2.3.3. Sequences -- 2.3.4. Hypertrophy and atrophy -- 2.4. Industrialization: the rise of the third regime -- 3. The Holocene: Global Change and Local Response -- 3.1. Introduction -- 3.2. Holocene climate and climate change -- 3.3. Climate change and human populations: Equatorial Africa -- 3.3.1. From the Late Glacial towards the middle-Holocene climatic 'optimum' -- 3.3.2. Environmental drying about 4000 yr BP and increasing vegetation degradation: the transition to the present -- 3.4. Early human-environment interactions: the Americas -- 3.4.1. Environmental and cultural change in western Peru -- 3.4.2. Late-Holocene environmental and Mayan cultures -- 3.5. The Vera Basin in Spain: 10,000 years of environmental history -- 3.6. Conclusions -- 4. Environment and the Great Transition: Agrarianization -- 4.1. Introduction -- 4.2. Environment and human habitat -- 4.2.1. Mountains, hills and plains -- 4.2.2. Rivers, lakes and coasts - and the sea -- 4.2.3. Steppe and savannah lands -- 4.2.4. Forest peoples -- 4.3. The agricultural transition: some narratives from science.

4.3.1. The Iranian Plateau and the surrounding plains -- 4.3.2. Europe -- 4.3.3. East and South Asia -- 4.3.4. North America: the Anasazi and the Hohokam people -- 4.4. The agricultural transition: how and why? -- 4.4.1. The origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism -- 4.4.2. Causes and consequences of agricultural expansion -- 4.5. Mapping the past: Europe in the Late Neolithic -- 4.6. Conclusions 108 -- 5. Exploring the Past: on Methods and Concepts -- 5.1. Introduction -- 5.2. Concepts and categories to organize the knowledge of the past -- 5.2.1. An epistemological note -- 5.2.2. Models: population-environment interactions -- 5.3. Time, space and resources -- 5.3.1. Orientation in time -- 5.3.2. Orientation in space -- 5.3.3. Resources -- 5.4. Complexity -- 5.5. Methods of acquiring knowledge about the past: setting the clock -- 5.5.1. Absolute dating -- 5.5.2. Relative estimates of age -- 5.6. The potential for human habitation and stages of agricultural development -- 5.7. Conclusions -- 6. Increasing Social Complexity -- 6.1. Introduction -- 6.2. Manifestations of increasing social complexity -- 6.2.1. Megaliths -- 6.2.2. Non-agricultural resources -- 6.2.3. Interactions: trade -- 6.2.4. Interactions: diffusion and migration -- 6.3. Early state and empire formation -- 6.3.1. Early urban centres in Mesopotamia -- 6.3.2. South Asia: Indus-Sarasvati -- 6.3.3. State formation in the Aegean -- 6.3.4. Meso-America -- 6.4. From states to empires -- 6.4.1. Egypt -- 6.4.2. China -- 6.5. What happened in the fringes of empires? -- 6.6. The decline and fall of social complexity -- 6.7. Conclusions -- 7. Empire: the Romans in the Mediterranean -- 7.1. Introduction:Why the Roman Empire as a case study and from which perspective? -- 7.2. Critical social and environmental phenomena accompanying Roman expansion.

7.2.1. An increase in surface and population -- 7.2.2. Urbanisation -- 7.2.3. Transport and commerce -- 7.3. The human environment in Roman times -- 7.3.1. Geography and climate -- 7.3.2. Colonization -- 7.3.3. Introducing industrialization of agriculture and commercial exploitation of the land -- 7.3.4. A different perception of space and the landscape -- 7.4. The Roman Empire as a self-organizing system -- 7.4.1. Self-organization -- 7.4.2. An example: newly colonized environments -- 7.4.3. Stagnation is decay: changing settlement patterns in the Rhône Valley 100 BC to 600 AD -- 7.4.4. What consequences does this have on the level of the Empire - how did it become a 'global crisis'? -- 7.5. The decline and end of the Empire -- 7.5.1. The disintegration process -- 7.5.2. Causes and effects: on the centre-periphery information gradient -- 7.6. Conclusions -- 8. Understanding: Fragments of a Unifying Perspective -- 8.1. Introduction -- 8.2. Modelling the Neolithic transition: a global dynamic model -- 8.2.1. Spatial dimension: recovering effective projections of the environment -- 8.2.2. Time dimension: socio-economic and technological evolution -- 8.2.3. Integrating space and time: agrarianization, migration and climate change -- 8.2.4. The computerized emergence of spatio-temporal patterns -- 8.3. Humans and their environment: a few more modelling exercises -- 8.3.1. Lakeland: fishing and mining strategies -- 8.3.2. Population growth among the !Kung San -- 8.3.3. What happened to the North American Pueblo Indians in the period 900-1300 AD? -- 8.4. Social science perspectives on state formation and environment -- 8.5. Perspectives on states and environment: insights into system dynamics -- 8.5.1. About processes, mechanisms and pathologies -- 8.5.2. The importance of interactions -- 8.5.3. Humans and their environment as complex adaptive systems.

8.6. Change and complexity in socio-natural systems -- 8.6.1. Cultural Theory and ecocycles -- 8.6.2. Complexity in socio-natural systems: the need for requisite variety -- 8.6.3. Cultural dynamics and environmental (mis)management: always learning, never getting it right -- 8.6.4. Complexity and the importance of being clumsy -- 8.6.5. Theories of change that make change permanent -- 8.7. Conclusions -- 9. Population and Environment in Asia since 1600 AD -- 9.1. Introduction -- 9.2. South Asia: population and environment in a geopolitical context -- 9.2.1. Population dynamics -- 9.2.2. Agriculture and food -- 9.2.3. Famines -- 9.3. Population and environment in South-East Asia - a historical view with particular reference to Sulawesi (Indonesia) -- 9.4. Russian expansion: eastward bound -- 9.4.1. Medieval Russia and the trade in forest products -- 9.4.2. Muscovy Russia and the Russian Empire: extensive not intensive growth -- 9.4.3. Land scarcity and rural overpopulation as the motor for expansion -- 9.5. Conclusions -- 10. The Past 250 Years: Industrialization and Globalization -- 10.1. Early industrialization -- 10.1.1. The meaning of industrialization -- 10.1.2. Connections and continuities with the earlier regimes -- 10.1.3. Origins and antecedents -- 10.1.4. The early industrial archipelago -- 10.1.5. Coal exploitation as intensified land use -- 10.2. Globalization and European expansion -- 10.2.1. European expansion as an episode in human history -- 10.2.2. A theoretical interlude: figurational dynamics -- 10.2.3. Agrarian expansion: sugar -- 10.3. Accelerating expansion -- 10.3.1. Extension and intensification of agrarian regimes -- 10.3.2. Extension and intensification of industrial regimes -- 11. Back to Nature? The Punctuated History of a Natural Monument -- 11.1. Introduction -- 11.2. On a rowing boat -- 11.3. Natural causes.

11.4. The impact of culture -- 11.5. Uneasy compromise -- 11.6. Nature -- 12. Conclusions: Retrospect and Prospects -- 12.1. The discovery of the biosphere -- 12.2. Historical and theoretical reflections -- 12.3. Prospects -- 12.3.1. Paradoxes of prediction -- 12.3.2. Scenarios -- 12.3.3. Towards a fourth regime? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- About the Authors -- Index of Subjects -- Index of Names -- Index of Geographic Names.