Sediments of Time
Subtitle: Environment and Society in Chinese History (Studies in Environment and History)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: January 13, 1998
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 842
ISBN-13: 9780521563819
Subjects: Asian / Middle Eastern history; Human ecology; BCE to c 500 CE; Prehistory; c 1000 CE to c 1500; History - General History; Cultural And Social Anthropology; Ecology; Science; Natural Resources; History: World; China; Asia - China; Medieval; Ecology--China; History / Medieval; Life Sciences - Ecology; Environmental sciences
First sentence: "Environmental history is the historically documented part of the story of the life and death not of human individuals but of societies, and of species, both others and our own, in terms of their relationships with the world about them."
Description: This collection of essays is the first relatively comprehensive survey of the environmental history of China. Written by some of the world's leading Western and Chinese experts, Sediments of Time crystallizes a new and distinct field of scholarship that studies what happens when human social systems interact with the rest of the natural world. This book shows how deforestation, land reclamation, settlement, and water control, when combined with an ever-changing climate, shaped a distinctive and often precarious environment.