Apocalypse - How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures

A groundbreaking new perspective on catastrophes throughout human history, with vital lessons for our future''This book upended my understanding of the ancient world'' Zo-chlanger, author of The Light Eaters''Lizzie Wade is an exceptional journalist and a master storyteller'' Ed Yong, author of An Immense WorldThe history of humanity is one of devastating, once-in-a-thousand-year events: rising seas that make land uninhabitable, decades-long droughts, civilisational collapse, epidemics like the Black Death and the Spanish Flu that reduce a city-s population by fifty percent. And yet, despite enormous destruction and very real tragedy, these catastrophes all share one common denominator: we survived.In APOCALYPSE, Lizzie Wade reframes the story of human history to show how we can learn from these apocalyptic moments, seeing them not just as violent, world-ending events but as moments of progress and transformation. We travel back in deep time to when homo sapiens replaced other human sp