WHAT IS HISTORY AND WHAT is it for? The first historians aimed to see that “the deeds of humanity should not be forgotten in time”, as the Greek Herodotus put it, and to provide an account of use to future generations: “a possession for all time” in the words of Herodotus’s successor Thucydides. History is about and for human beings; the disciplinary boundary between History and Natural History is very ancient.
A new book by Peter Frankopan seeks to change this. This is the “untold history” of the natural world and humanity’s place within it. His aim is to “reinsert climate back into the story of the past as the underlying, crucial and much overlooked theme in global history”.
