Last year, author Jared Diamond argued in his book Collapse that environmental degradation led to the collapse of several successful civilisations.

This year, author Eugene Linden, who has been writing about nature and the environment since the early 1970s, makes a case that climate change has been a serial killer of human civilisations for thousands of years.

In his new book, The winds of change: Climate, weather and the destruction of civilisations, Linden uses the evidence from ice rings, mud, caves and lake and ocean beds to show major historical events over the past 100,000 years are directly linked to changes in climate conditions.

'We disregard the role of climate in history at our peril,’Linden writes.

'In certain cases, the evidence is pretty compelling, not just in linking weather to a particular event, but also specific ways in which a changing climate may have undermined the legitimacy of rulers.

'In some cases, climate change fostered the spread of disease; in others, climate change might have set in motion a chain of events that led to migration and warfare.

'In one well-documented case,the cold alone made life untenable. The interplay of climate, politics and economiesis complex, but there is evidence from the past that helps us sort this out.'

Linden cites the example of Sumatra’s Mount Toba, which exploded with such power 71 000 years ago that its ash blocked solar rays for several years and lowered the Earth’s temperature by five degrees C, resulting in a 1000 year ice age.

Scientists suspect this event made homo sapiens the dominant human species.

A sudden cooling and drying 8200 years ago set back the development of the first cities in the Fertile Crescent.

Some 4000 years ago, decades of drought accompanied by howling winds scoured the Mesopotamian plain. The Akkadians, the most powerful civilisation of the region, abandoned their cities so quickly that walls were left half-finished.

In 536AD a mysterious event darkened the sun for more than a year. In Rome there was a 'dry fog' and 'dim sun,' in Britain a coloured rain, in China a yellow dust that rained down like snow and could be picked up in handfuls. The resulting drought and famine encouraged species like microbes, lice and rats.

In 541-43 the dreaded Justinian Plague spread up the coast of eastern Africa and around the Mediterranean basin, killing millions.

In the Americas, the Mayans never recovered from intense drought in the first decade ofthe 10th century AD.

Archaeological digs show sites were simply abandoned, and cores from a lake in the Yucatan show prolonged periods of drying.

Linden also looks in detail at El Niño as a force in history. Some historians argue that a series of El Niños in the late 19th century killed more people than the two world wars of the 20th century combined.

Linden suggests that benign climate is essential for civilisations to prosper, and that our current prosperity is due to 200 years of stable climate. He believes we are now in a periodof 'flickering' climate when climate rapidly shifts back and forth between warm and cold,wet and dry, before settling into a new state.

'Possibly what is coming is another Little Ice Age, like the centuries-long chill that afflicted Europe in the late middle ages,' he writes. 'We have an advantage over past civilisations that were blindsided by climate change. We can learn from their misfortunes.'

Eugene Linden, Winds of Change, Simon & Schuster, 2006.

- REBECCA LINES-KELLY

This column appears in Agriculture Today.