What Annually Laminated Sediments Reveal about the History of Environment and Civilization

This monograph presents a proposal for interdisciplinary and international research that uses varve as an essential tool. The discovery and subsequent palaeoenvironmental studies of the annually laminated sediments of Lake Suigetsu (Japan) revealed the directionality of a new discipline in the traditional field of historical science. The historical evidence of environmental changes and natural disasters provided by annually laminated sediments promote an integration of human and natural histories on a common time scale. To explore the impact of climatic changes and natural disasters on civilized society in the present and past, we simply open this door and enter a new phase in world history. The high resolution data about environmental history like climate, sea level, vegetation changes and natural disasters under the most reliable varve chronology will be discussed in relation to the development of human history and the rise and fall of civilizations. The book shows the direction of a new world history and new cosmology of the future civilization in relation to the environmental changes.