How ten thousand years of climatic stability made civilization possible

How ten thousand years of climatic stability made civilization possible.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Harvesters (1565). Google Art Project.

There is a chair in the backyard of our Hudson Valley home where I often sit and watch the seasons pass. In autumn I watch the leaves loosen their hold on the trees and drift to the ground, sometimes carried sideways by a breeze, sometimes descending gracefully through still air. From the same chair I watch December snowflakes, May blossoms, and the fireflies of July. It is a serene place to observe the turning of a year, and to wonder about the immense history concealed within that familiar procession. The seasons return with a regularity we hardly notice until something interrupts it. Winters vary in severity, spring may arrive late, an autumn storm can strip the trees overnight. Yet we trust the sequence to repeat. We arrange our work and celebrations around it, Even our memories acquire the shape of seasons. In the long history of our planet, however, such…

John Steele is the Publisher and Executive Editor of Blue Continuum.

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