Age of water maya how to#
To lend some structure to this collection of water facts, Gleick divides the human history of water into three parts: the "First Age of Water," marked by primitive attempts at channeling water for agriculture and flood prevention and early violent conflicts over its control the "Second Age of Water," when humans gained dominion over water flows to the point where its storage behind huge dams has shifted the balance of Earth's mass as measured from space and, finally, the future "Third Age of Water," when the global community will face serious decisions about how to protect this resource from overbearing and destructive human mastery. And across its 300 pages, he leaves no historical stone unturned.Īfter starting with the birth of the universe, he weaves in lengthy descriptions of excavated aqueducts from ancient civilizations, evidence for Noah's Ark-type flood stories common across many cultures, details on the pathology of various water-borne diseases, farmer testimonials from the 1930s Dust Bowl, the origins of our addiction to bottled water, the drought context of the Syrian civil war and many other H20-related anecdotes sure to fascinate readers who are willing to stick with the book's sometimes meandering course. "Three Ages" is Gleick's 14th book about water. He is a co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a non-governmental organization based in Oakland focused on solving modern water challenges and advancing global sustainability. Gleick is a California-based scientist and communicator whose work on global water and environmental issues has been recognized with a MacArthur “genius” grant, the U.S.
Later, he writes, Homo sapiens learned to tame water woes via impressive engineering feats like wells, dams, aqueducts, irrigation canals and purification treatments that enabled our species to expand and thrive.īut now, Gleick argues, our exploitative and wasteful attitudes about water endanger our own survival. In " The Three Ages of Water: Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future," published Tuesday by Public Affairs Books, Gleick outlines how early humans struggled to survive the unpredictable moods of the hydrologic cycle, often by migrating away from catastrophic droughts or floods. From there, he works his way up the channel of water history, noting where various tributary events tie in, to explain the origins of and suggest solutions to many of our most pressing modern challenges. To kick off his comprehensive overview of humanity's relationship with water, he goes back to the very beginning, to the creation of hydrogen and oxygen atoms that later bonded to form water and make life on Earth possible. Water expert Peter Gleick's new book starts with a bang - The Big Bang.
0 kommentar(er)
