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Climate change forged first civilizations

Flying in the face of accepted theory that settled societies emerged from the development of static farming in good climatic conditions that produced food surpluses and allowed specialization, Nick Brooks said the opposite was true. "Civilization did not arise as the result of a benign environment which allowed humanity to indulge a preference for living in complex, urban civilized societies," he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. "On the contrary, what we tend to think of today as civilization was an accidental by-product of unplanned adaptation to catastrophic climate change. Civilization was a last resort," he added.

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