The Earth Transformed

First published in 2023, Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed: An Untold History offers a sweeping account of civilisation through the forces of climate and the natural world. From ancient droughts and volcanic eruptions to devastating winters, shifting coastlines and the modern climate crisis, Frankopan explores how environmental change has shaped the rise and fall of empires, the movement of peoples and the course of human history. Agricultural revolutions, trade routes, wars and political upheavals emerge in a new light as he traces the often overlooked relationship between humanity and the planet on which it depends. The result is a richly interconnected history in which nature is not merely the backdrop to human affairs, but one of their most consequential forces.

Building on the global perspective of The Silk Roads, Frankopan draws together environmental evidence, historical scholarship and contemporary scientific research to reconsider familiar accounts of the past. His narrative explores not only how societies have adapted to ecological change, but also how human ambition, resource extraction and expanding populations have transformed the natural world in return. Both an ambitious work of historical synthesis and a reflection on the fragility of civilisation, the book offers a long view of the environmental challenges confronting the present. It invites readers to reconsider the boundaries between natural and human history, and the consequences of treating the Earth as an inexhaustible resource.

From the book

“Our world has always been one of transformation, transition and change.”

— Peter Frankopan, The Earth Transformed

On The Earth Transformed

“Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history.”

— Financial Times