Take the long view, the really long view: Dr. Brian Fagan, an appreciation
Dr. Brian Fagan, a vital California writer, archaeologist, historian and professor emeritus at UCSB, passed away on July 16.
To my mind, Dr. Fagan is one of the great writers of our era.
So much of the work we read about climate change or sea level rise constitutes either the we-are-all-going-to-die narrative or the Hail Mary recipe for a reprieve.
Patiently, methodically, Dr. Fagan looked at how ancient civilizations withstood or collapsed due to climate change (both global warming and global cooling) and handled sea level rise, and how they faced up to extreme drought. Dr. Fagan’s been-there-done-that perspectives are absolutely vital as we lumber towards the rest of the 21st century.
And unlike most historians who center on the last few hundred years, he is as comfortable writing about Neolithic cultures as he is about civil engineering in medieval Arabia or ancient Rome or in the Southwest of the United States or pre-Columbian Mexico or the Incan Empire…and all of these places and times are not shared for the sake of showy erudition but to tell readers the history of mankind’s engagement with sea level rise or climate change or the collapse of a water supply system.
Of the dozens of books he wrote, the three on my must read book list are,
“The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations”
“Elixir: A Human History of Water”
“The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels”
For back up on climate change perspectives these two are also extremely helpful,
“The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850”
“The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization”
For pure delicious fun, I recommend “The Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human History.” To start, he spells out the priceless value of…donkeys…to ancient human civilizations and cross-cultural economic expansion (donkeys were the creature that made desert crossing via caravans possible,) while he underlines how critical mules were to construction in the Roman era, who he endearingly refers to as “the pickup trucks of history.”

And, I had a wonderful personal engagement with him when I had to attend a conference in 2010 with my two month old baby. He was the keynote and I was standing in the back two minutes into his talk, when my baby started to cry. I got the glare of doom from a bunch of older guys in the audience. Dr. Fagain jumped in with his inimitable British accent with two questions,
“Is this or is this not the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts?”
The audience agreed that it was, so Dr. Fagan continued,
“How can you say that you work for conservation if you cannot even figure out how to allow a tiny baby to co-exist with you in a room full of people working to restore our ecosystems?”
There was a stunned silence, a few people clapped, then everyone joined in and, mercifully, my daughter fell silent. It was a spectacular lecture. That moment still makes me smile. What a true feminist ally.
I’ve picked out a few of the big elements in his books that align with working in conservation and want to note that all of these themes center around societal structure and function. One implication of these big picture insights is that nagging schoolchildren to pick up litter or pushing kids to solve massive climate problems that we have not successfully tackled is not going to get us where we need to go. Instead, as you read his books, consider what big choices each of these cultures made that either destroyed them or helped them to survive in the face of major climate change.
To start, societies that held on to forest and savannah landscapes were able to better sustain groundwater recharge. Societies where water was managed as a shared resource rather than as the property of an elite were able to survive in drought conditions by sharing limited resources better; this concept could hardly be more relevant during an era dominated by capitalism. When things got dire, the people who survived moved. Changing farming processes by changing crops to adjust to new climatic conditions has always been a winning move.
Looking through this massive array of human cultures scattered across time, this idea of private ownership of natural resources, especially water, appears to be a more modern aberration ,not the norm. Changing our cultural perspective is the smoothest path forward: imagine reconsidering and rewriting the laws that lock in water rights, thinking about water fluidly, as belonging to all of us, a resource to be shared.
If you’ve ever played in the ocean on a super hot day with a thousand other families, you know that feeling… it’s everyone’s deep blue sea.
It may be easier to accept Dr. Fagan’s demise, knowing that he spent a lifetime exploring civilizations that have been gone for thousands of years, imagining how tenderly he researched ancient gravesites and no doubt carefully handled very old human bones. He must have gone to his final rest knowing what peacefully reconnecting to the earth feels like more than most of us, or so I hope. He has now become the thing he studied, part of our past.
What a brilliant, shining mind. I am feeling both sadness and gratitude.
Try on Dr. Fagan’s perspective: take the long view, the really long view.
Read other articles by Melina Sempil Watts:
Restoring Lost Streams: A Conversation with Jessica Hall, Landscape Architect
Water Always Wins author Erica Gies to keynote at Safe Clean Water LA Event on Thursday November 17
Exploring “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest” by Dr. Suzanne Simard










