This book was born from an exchange between science and history.

At first, it was little more than a game between the authors, who swapped observations and ideas. But soon this exchange turned into a journey through time, following the common thread of climate change. These changes and the will to forecast the weather are not exclusively modern concerns.

Mediterranean civilizations have been struggling to understand the climate and its relationship with human activities, to predict the weather and protect themselves from its extreme manifestations, for millennia.

What did the ancients think of the climate changes that preceded them, which they attest to in their writings? How did their theories on the shape of the earth and the representations of it affect their understanding of our planet’s climates? Did the environmental modifications occasioned by past human activities have a bearing on the climate? How did people cope with phases of warming and cooling in the past, before the present global warming set in? Sensitivity to these issues has grown recently.

While much work still needs to be carried out on Mediterranean countries, this book attempts to set off on a journey through time to see how human beings reacted to climate changes and extreme events. Efforts to adapt to changes in the climate and to endure its vagaries in the face of the damage and risk it involves are no novelty. We can look to the past to better understand the environmental challenge that lies before us.