Geographica Historica: Pollution and the Environment in Ancient Life and Thought (Series #36) (Paperback)

Papers presented at a conference held October 16-18, 2014 in Berlin supported by Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and by Excellence Cluster Topoi. Was there any awareness of environmental problems among intellectuals and politicians of the ancient world? Did they even have notions of 'pollution', 'exploitation', and 'depletion' of natural resources? And what forms did human action take for the protection of the environment?

The authors - from the fields of Ancient History, Classical Archeology, Ancient Laws, and History of Medicine - focus on the environmental and ecological awareness in the ancient world, both in material evidence of daily life and in the intellectual thought. They analyse if there was a common awareness of environmental and ecological questions, or if there were only a few and isolated measures aimed at the interest of special social groups and at specific political goals. They discuss to which extent the ancient evidence can be used to identify the roots of modern environmental sensitivity.