Book ID: CBB244686914

The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (2022)

unapi

Pyne, Stephen J. (Author)


University of California Press


Publication Date: 2022
Physical Details: 192
Language: English

A provocative rethinking of how humans and fire have evolved together over time—and our responsibility to reorient this relationship before it's too late. ​The Pyrocene tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Around fires, across millennia, we have told stories that explained the world and negotiated our place within it. The Pyrocene continues that tradition, describing how we have remade the Earth and how we might recover our responsibilities as keepers of the planetary flame.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Cordy Tymstra (2023) Review of "The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next". Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 413-416). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB244686914/

Similar Citations

Book Jeremy Davies; (2016)
The Birth of the Anthropocene (/isis/citation/CBB198861990/)

Article Daniel R. Uden; David J. Wishart; Larkin A. Powell; Craig R. Allen; Rob B. Mitchell; Gerry Steinauer; (2021)
Adaptive Fuel Procurement in Nineteenth-Century Great Plains Landscapes (/isis/citation/CBB386674127/)

Book Marcia Bjornerud; (2018)
Timefulness: How Thinking Like A Geologist Can Help Save The World (/isis/citation/CBB456036923/)

Article Shulman, Peter A.; (2010)
Linking Energy and Climate (before 1974) (/isis/citation/CBB001221291/)

Book David Bond; (2022)
Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment (/isis/citation/CBB856832723/)

Article Jennifer Eaglin; (January 2019)
The Demise of the Brazilian Ethanol Program: Environmental and Economic Shocks, 1985–1990 (/isis/citation/CBB102895968/)

Book Dipesh Chakrabarty; (2021)
The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (/isis/citation/CBB369796069/)

Book Brooke, John L.; (2014)
Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (/isis/citation/CBB001422667/)

Book Anthony McMichael; (2017)
Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations (/isis/citation/CBB502802983/)

Article Myron P. Gutmann; (2018)
Beyond Social Science History: Population and Environment in the US Great Plains (/isis/citation/CBB780470005/)

Book Benjamin Lieberman; Elizabeth Gordon; (2018)
Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present (/isis/citation/CBB966780951/)

Book McNeill, John R.; Peter Engelke; (2016)
The great acceleration: An environmental history of the anthropocene since 1945 (/isis/citation/CBB150318381/)

Book Klaus Dodds; (2018)
Ice: Nature and Culture (/isis/citation/CBB209651748/)

Book Erle C. Ellis; (2018)
Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction (/isis/citation/CBB701157023/)

Book Cristina Baldacci; Shaul Bassi; Lucio De Capitani; Pietro Daniel Omodeo; (2022)
Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide (/isis/citation/CBB968298285/)

Book Ellen E. Wohl; (2015)
Transient Landscapes: Insights on a Changing Planet (/isis/citation/CBB297435545/)

Book Florence Bretelle-Establet; Marie Gaille; Mehrnaz Katouzian-Safadi; (2019)
Making Sense of Health, Disease, and the Environment in Cross-Cultural History: The Arabic-Islamic World, China, Europe, and North America (/isis/citation/CBB064731069/)

Authors & Contributors
Peter Engelke
Shaul Bassi
Cristina Baldacci
Lieberman, Benjamin
Larkin A. Powell
Rob B. Mitchell
Concepts
Environmental history
Climate change
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
Anthropocene
Geology
Climate and climatology
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
Stone age
Prehistory
Medieval
Places
North America
Great Plains (North America)
Levant and Near East
North Africa
Europe
China
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment