Kurzbeschreibung:
The Corrupting Sea looks at over 2000 years of the relationship between man and his physical and biological environment in the Mediterranean region.This is a comparative study on a very large scale, drawing on medieval European and Islamic evidence as well as on sources from the ancient world and the findings of scientific research and anthropology. The authors include in their study a new definition of the Mediterranean region, and discuss its historiography, patterns of settlement and demographic change, the geography of religious cult sites, the history of climate and disease, deforestation, soil erosion, technological innovation, and the anthropology of Mediterranean communities. As the first major study to modify the earlier work of Braudel, this book assesses the extent to which the Mediterranean world can be considered a homogeneous unity.