‘Archaeology of climate change’ aims to help plan response to environmental emergency

How ancient human reactions to upheavals such as the end of the ice age, could inform our future and strategy

The global climate crisis of today has one key driver – anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions – but humans have grappled with various forms of climate change numerous times in the short period we have existed on Earth.

As we examine how to mitigate the worst impacts of our current climate-altering behaviour, scientists are looking at how the past can inform our response to living in a rapidly heating world.

New research by an international team of anthropologists, geographers and earth scientists from Canada, the US and France, makes the case for a new discipline they call “the archaeology of climate change”.