Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
In view of the environmental problems of our own time, we are increasingly addressing the question of the historical roots and conditions of ecological crises. This leads us back far beyond the environmental history of the past fifty years, and addresses long-term developments of human history since the earliest times. It also includes a large number of scientific disciplines: prehistory, history, geography, geology, anthropology, medicine, biology, ethnology and others. Clearly, environmental historical work relying on a single discipline would be inadequate or too one-sided; it would need to be completed by results from other fields of study, and, ideally, meshed with them.
Ancient history as a discipline draws primarily on the literary sources, from Greece of the archaic era through to late antiquity. It thus addresses primarily ancient perceptions, descriptions and interpretations, which risks a one-dimensional perspective. For a more adequate reconstruction of ancient environmental conditions, this volume will attempt to at least begin to include research from other disciplines, even if no comprehensive interdisciplinary approach can as yet be realised.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Environmental History of Ancient Greece and Rome , pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012