Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771  

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, April 7, 2002 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Brian Fagan

ABSTRACT -- A recent, and ongoing, revolution in paleoclimatology is changing perceptions of the ways in which both longer term and short term climatic shifts have affected the course of ancient and more recent human history. In this lecture, Brian Fagan examines the impact of El Ni–os on a variety of ancient societies, among them Ancient Egyptian civilization, the Moche state on the north coast of Peru, and the ancient Maya. He also reviews some of the catastrophic famines in India during the late 19th century, which resulted from monsoon failures (and El Niño events). More than 20 million people died as a result of climate-caused droughts in the 19th century alone. For six centuries before, the Little Ice Age caused major perturbations in European society. Fagan examines some of these events, among them the great hunger of 1315-21, the Norse abandonment of Greenland, the origins of the Atlantic cod fisheries, and the French Revolution.

SPEAKER -- Brian Fagan is currently Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Fagan was born in England and studied archaeology and anthropology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Early in his career, he excavated sites in Africa (from as early as the Stone Age), helping to pioneer multidisciplinary African history. While in Africa, he worked as Keeper of Prehistory at the Livingstone Museum in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and as Director of the Bantu Studies Project of the British Institute for Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. His many awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Public Service Award of the Society of Professional Archaeologists, the Public Education Award of the Society for American Archaeology, and a Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Fagan's numerous books include The Rape of the Nile; The Adventure of Archaeology; Time Detectives; Floods, Famines, and Emperors; and The Little Ice Age. He also edited The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Brian Fagan is married with two daughters. His other interests include bicycling, kayaking, sailing, and civilized dinner parties. 

Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Brent Warner, GSFC, 301-286-8568