000			03162cam a22002775i 4500
001			137284
003			ISI Library, Kolkata
005			20161205155229.0
008			150915s2015 nyu 000 0 eng
020			_a9783319225111
040			_aISI Library
082	0	4	_a599.938 _223 _bG559
100	1		_aGlikson, Andrew Y., _eauthor
245	1	0	_aClimate, fire and human evolution : _bthe deep time dimensions of the anthropocene / _cAndrew Y. Glikson and Colin Groves.
260			_aCham : _bSpringer, _c2016.
300			_axviii, 227 p. : _billustrations (chiefly color), color maps ; _c24 cm.
490	0		_aModern approaches in solid earth sciences ; _vv 10.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505	0		_a1. Early earth systems -- 2. Phanerozoic life and mass extinctions of species -- 3. Cenozoic biological evolution / by Colin Groves -- 4. Fire and the biosphere -- 5. The anthropocene -- 6. Rare earth -- 7. Prometheus : an epilogue.
520			_aThe book outlines principal milestones in the evolution of the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere during the last 4 million years in relation with the evolution from primates to the genus Homo – which uniquely mastered the ignition and transfer of fire. The advent of land plants since about 420 million years ago ensued in flammable carbon-rich biosphere interfaced with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Born on a flammable Earth surface, under increasingly unstable climates descending from the warmer Pliocene into the deepest ice ages of the Pleistocene, human survival depended on both―biological adaptations and cultural evolution, mastering fire as a necessity. This allowed the genus to increase entropy in nature by orders of magnitude. Gathered around camp fires during long nights for hundreds of thousandth of years, captivated by the flickering life-like dance of the flames, humans developed imagination, insights, cravings, fears, premonitions of death and thereby aspiration for immortality, omniscience, omnipotence and the concept of god. Inherent in pantheism was the reverence of the Earth, its rocks and its living creatures, contrasted by the subsequent rise of monotheistic sky-god creeds which regard Earth as but a corridor to heaven. Once the climate stabilized in the early Holocene, since about ~7000 years-ago production of excess food by Neolithic civilization along the Great River Valleys has allowed human imagination and dreams to express themselves through the construction of monuments to immortality. Further to burning large part of the forests, the discovery of combustion and exhumation of carbon from the Earth’s hundreds of millions of years-old fossil biospheres set the stage for an anthropogenic oxidation event, affecting an abrupt shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system. The consequent ongoing extinction equals the past five great mass extinctions of species―constituting a geological event horizon in the history of planet Earth.
650		0	_aHuman evolution.
650		0	_aPaleoclimatology.
650		0	_aFire ecology.
700	1		_aGroves, Colin, _eauthor
942			_2ddc _cBK
999			_c420742 _d420742