This session invites anthropological and historical case studies examining how people of the past have understood, lived in, and coped with changing environments, both global and local.

We are children of the Quaternary period (2.6 mya - present), but we are increasingly apprehensive about our future prospects in the so-called "Anthropocene" epoch. Our species (Homo sapiens) emerged in the Pleistocene and survived scores of major climatic fluctuations, including multiple ice ages and interglacial epochs. Civilization developed in the Holocene, the most recent interglacial epoch. Was human survival and flourishing due to wisdom and knowledge, technology, social organization, luck, or to a number of such interacting factors? On the other hand, could such human attributes also generate additional problems?

Turning to the historical record, ancient, medieval, early modern, and enlightenment-era natural philosophers and scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries speculated on the causes of climate change. The social history of droughts, floods, volcanic weather, and other environmental disturbances also provides rich opportunities to examine human responses, both conceptual and organizational.

Papers are invited that propose to address and contextualize, in some detail, one or more of these issues.