Natural Disasters and Cultural Change

Footprints of early hominids preserved in volcanic ash demonstrate that human cultures have been interacting with natural hazards since the dawn of time. This book explores these interactions in great detail and revisits some famous catastrophes; the eruption of Thera and the collapse of the Minoan culture, the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Less well known but equally catastrophic events are also explored and they include volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes and shipwrecks. Case studies range widely from ancient societies in Peru, North America, Japan and the Pacific to pollution emitted by an Icelandic volcano in the eighteenth century and even to modern disasters in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. At its heart this book explores the role played by catastrophic natural events in generating cultural change. Previous research has adopted a simplistic approach, correlating the scale of the event with the scale of human response. In contrast, these stuTorrence, Robin is the author of 'Natural Disasters and Cultural Change' with ISBN 9780415216968 and ISBN 0415216966.