This publication benefits from specialist research and an evangelical spirit to remind the modern world about the achievements of our ancestors, so that we learn from them as we try to combat climate change. It is a rebuttal for those many scientists and agriculturalists, economists and politicians who dismiss the economic viability of ancient technology in today’s world. It is packed with innovative solutions to current problems of desiccation, soil erosion, temperature control, food security, rising water levels and many other issues, and it presents the archaeological evidence for how past cultures successfully mastered the inhospitable environments they encountered.

Structured into seven chapters, it is written in a conversational style easy to read and assimilate, even when covering complex and niche scientific topics. Chapter one explains techniques for studying past environments and human adaptation, discussing key concepts on sustainable agriculture, nitrogen fixation, organic farming and intermediate or appropriate technologies. Chapter two examines evidence for wetland agriculture, such as the floating gardens of Mexico (chinampas), raised fields in Amazonia and the Andes, water meadows in Britain and land reclamation from marine flooding in the Netherlands. Desert conditions in the third chapter include innovative ways in which past cultures managed their water resources, capturing and storing rainfall, encouraging absorption and preventing soil erosion through using stone mounds and terracing, with experimental evidence to support how agriculture flourished in the Negev, and how clay pots buried in the ground helped societies in China, the US and Zimbabwe with sustainable irrigation. It discusses long distance water supplies such as the qanats or foggara, underground canals engineered to bring water from the mountains to the dry plains.

Chapter four examines benefits of biodiversity through the wealth of cultigens and domesticated animals developed to ensure food security, with frost-, pest- or drought-resistant qualities. The importance of intercropping and fallow for enriching soils is compared to the dangers we face today from monocultures and pesticides. In contrast the sustainability and abundance of traditional Chinese agriculture was severely damaged by the cultural revolution, and 800 strains of rice were lost in Japan between 1910–20 as a result of modernisation. The book argues that traditional approaches to agriculture contain great potential for future food production, with yields that can often be more reliable over the long term than modern varieties dependent on chemical supplements.

Chapter five discusses ancient societies who designed systems to prevent erosion and add fertility so that soils grew in depth and richness, while areas of increasing aridity were countered by methods of sustainable irrigation that prevented salinisation, now a major global problem. Terracing was used in many hilly and mountainous areas of the world, such as South America, south-east Asia and Tanzania. In sandy zones, peat used for animal bedding was spread on the land, providing rich manure for the soils, called plaggen in German. The author’s own research in the Orkney and Shetland islands using micromorphological analysis, soil magnetism and chemistry demonstrated a similar process had been continuously applied since Neolithic times and historically seaweed was also spread as a fertiliser. In South America pockets of very black, nutrient-rich soils (Terra Preta) date back 7,000 years, using plant remains, domestic waste and excrement, together with charcoal as a critical component. Experiments have shown that charcoal can increase crop production by 200–800 per cent. In sub-Saharan Africa traditional methods existed prior to colonial reorganisation of the land, using ridges, furrows and pits, mulching of weeds and seasonal grazing of stubble in arable fields to help maximise fertility and minimise erosion.

Chapter six focuses on the sustainability of vernacular architecture while Chapter seven discusses the approach that could be adopted for future environmental management. Use of local materials in construction is traditional and sustainable, but ingenious methods for heating and cooling were important, such as heated floors dating back 5,000 years in China, while domes and windcatcher towers cooled buildings in hot lands, eg the badgirs and malkafs in Iran. Courtyards, interior gardens and latticing were devices used to introduce cooling breezes. Mud-brick has been used by many cultures because it absorbs heat in the day and releases it at night, helping cool structures on summer days and warm them on winter nights.

This book is a fascinating read and one that highlights the variety and ingenuity of past technologies that should be adapted in today’s world to combat the many global challenges we are facing. Although much more could be added, Erika Guttmann-Bond’s writing is both optimistic and extremely well-referenced, presented in a small book that entertains and informs with equal measure.