ABSTRACT
“Global warming!” Jones said. Though the man on the other end of the line couldn’t see, he swept an elegant hand in the air. “Like today, the Neolithic was a period of climate change, though then the causes were not human. Around 15,000 years ago the ice started to relax its grip. The steppes and mountain slopes of the Near East grew warm and moist and fat with plants and animals. You might think of all that abundance as the tree of knowledge, because human beings began to dimly understand they didn’t need to wander in search of food: it was all around them.”
