The Attacking Ocean (38 page)

(4)
Kooijmans, ed.,
The Prehistory of the Netherlands
, 569.

(5)
Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23–A.D. 79), was
a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, and also an army and naval commander. His multivolume
Natural History
summarized a lifetime of observations and became a model for many subsequent works. H. Rackham, trans.
Pliny, De Historia Naturalis
, vol. 14 (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1938), 1.

(6)
William Jackson Brodribb, ed. and trans.,
The History of Tacitus
, book 1 (London: Macmillan, 1898), 70. Publius Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 56–117) was a senator and historian of the Roman Empire. He wrote five works, of which
Germania
and the
Histories
are best known. Publius Vitellius was a commander under the Roman general Germanicus. Five years after the incident described by Tacitus, he successfully prosecuted the murderer of Germanicus, who died under suspicious circumstances in A.D. 19.

(7)
This section is based on Stephen Rippon,
The Transformation of Coastal Wetlands
(London: British Academy and Oxford University Press, 2000), 32–38.

(8)
Rippon,
The Transformation
, 84–90.

(9)
Rippon,
The Transformation
, 47.

(10)
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Part 3:
A.D.
920–1014
Accessed at
http://omacl.org/Anglo/part3.html
.

(11)
These paragraphs based on Lambert,
The Making
, 77–81.

(12)
The Day of Judgment featured prominently in medieval homilies, like the Blickling Homily for Easter, quoted here, preached at a monastic house near Lincoln, England, some time in the late tenth or early eleventh century. Quoted from Michael Swanton, ed.,
Anglo-Saxon Prose
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 67–96.

(13)
Bruce Parker,
The Power of the Sea
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 62–63.

(14)
Hubert Lamb and H. H. Lamb,
Historic Storms of the North Sea, British Isles, and Northwestern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), is the classic source on northern European storm surges.

(15)
Lamb and Lamb,
Historic Storms
, 74.

(16)
Parker,
The Power
, 63.

(17)
Saltwater-saturated peat was dried, then burned, the ash then being soaked in more saltwater, and then filtered before being allowed to dry into small cakes. The resulting salt served to preserve herrings, as well as being used for other purposes.

(18)
Lambert,
The Making
, 120–23.

(19)
The word “polder,” a tract of land protected by dikes, was first used in about 1138 in Flanders.

Chapter 6 “The Whole Shoreline Filled”

(1)
Homer, Samuel Butler, trans.,
The Iliad
(London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898), book XIV.

(2)
Strabo,
Geography
, Horace Leonard Jones, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1929), book 8, 1: 31.

Recent research: John C. Kraft et al., “Harbor Areas at Ancient Troy: Sedimentology and Geomorphology Complement Homer’s
Iliad
,”
Geology
31 (2003): 163–66.

(3)
Scylax of Caryanda is said to have completed his
Periplus
in about 350 B.C.E. Quote in this paragraph from Elpida Hadjidaki, “Preliminary Report of Excavations in the Harbor of Phalasarna in West Crete,”
American Journal of Archaeology
92, no. 4 (1988): 467, 468.

(4)
Hadjidaki, “Preliminary Report,” 463–79.

(5)
Strabo,
Geography
, book 9, 1.

(6)
Jean-Philippe Goiranet et al., “Piraeus, the Ancient Island of Athens: Evidence from Holocene Sediments and Historical Archives,”
Geology
39 (June 2011): 531–34.

(7)
Nick Marriner et al., “Holocene Morphogenesis of Alexander the Great’s Isthmus at Tyre in Lebanon,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
104, no. 22 (2007): 9218–23. Also: Nick Marriner et al., “Geoscience Rediscovers Phoenicia’s Buried Harbors,”
Geology
34 (2006): 1–4.

(8)
Eduard Reinhardt and Avner Raban, “The Tsunami of 13 December A.D. 115 and Destruction of Herod the Great’s Harbor at Caesarea Maritima, Israel,”
Geology
34 (2006): 1061–64.

(9)
David Blackman, “Ancient Harbours in the Mediterranean,”
International Journal of Nautical Archaeology
11 (1982): 79ff.

(10)
A first-rate website describes recent research at Ostia and reconstructs the harbors:
www.ostia-antica.org/med/med.htm#bib
.

(11)
Pliny the Younger, P. G. Walsh, trans.,
Complete Letters
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 6, 31.

(12)
A magisterial history of Venice: Roger Crowley,
City of Fortune
(New York: Random House, 2011).

(13)
MOSE Project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project
.

(14)
Yeduda Bock et al., “Recent Subsidence of the Venice Lagoon from Continuous GPS and Inferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar,”
Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems,
10.1029/2011 (2012).

Chapter 7 “The Abyss of the Depths Was Uncovered”

(1)
Gavin Kelly,
Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 141.

(2)
Franck Goddio et al.,
Alexandria: The Submerged Royal Quarters
(London: Periplus Publishing, 1998), also
Cleopatra’s Palace: In Search of a Legend
(New York: Discovery Books, 1998). See also
http://franckgoddio.org
.

(3)
Franck Goddio et al.,
Underwater Archaeology in the Canopic Region in Egypt: The Topography and Excavation of Heraklion-Thonis and East Canopus
(Oxford: Center for Maritime Archaeology, 2007).

(4)
Athenaeus, C. D. Yonge, trans.,
Deipnosophistae
(London: Henry Bohn, 1854), book 1, 33d. Athenaeus of Naukratis in the Egyptian delta was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian of the late second and early third centuries C.E. His
Deipnosophistae
, “dinner-table philosophers,” survives in fifteen books. He himself said he was the author of a treatise on fish, but it is lost.

(5)
Patrick McGovern,
Uncorking the Past
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 180–82 is the best guide.

(6)
Tutankhamun’s wines: See Maria Rosa-Guasch-June et al., “First Evidence for White Wine from Ancient Egypt from Tutankhamun’s Tomb,”
Journal of Archaeological Science
33, no. 8 (2006): 1075–80.

(7)
Barry Kemp,
Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization
, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2006), 10.

(8)
Orrin H. Pilkey and Rob Young,
The Rising Sea
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009), 101–116, has an excellent summary. Also Edward Maltby and Tom Barker, eds.,
The Wetlands Handbook
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

(9)
Alan K. Bowman and Eugene L. Rogan,
Agriculture in Egypt from Pharaonic to Modern Times
(London: British Academy, 1999), 1–32.

(10)
William Willcocks,
The Nile Reservoir Dam at Assuan, and After
, 2nd ed. (London: Spon and Chamberlain, 1903).

(11)
A huge literature surrounds the High Dam, much it from the years after it was built. A popular account: Tom Little,
High Dam at Aswan: The Subjugation of the Nile
(New York: John Day, 1965).

(12)
Daniel Jean Stanley and Andrew G. Warne, “Nile Delta: Recent Geological Evolution and Human Impact,”
Science
260, no. 55108 (1993): 628–634. See also M. El Raey et al., “Adaptation to the Impacts of Sea Level Rise in Egypt,”
Climate Research
12 (1999): 117–28.

Chapter 8 “The Whole Is Now One Festering Mess”

(1)
My description of Lothal is based on S. R. Rao,
Lothal and the Indus Civilization
(Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1973). The reconstruction drawing in the frontispiece (see figure 8.1) is the basis for my scenario.

(2)
The Harappan civilization is well described by Gregory Possehl,
The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective
(Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003). See also Jane R. McIntosh,
The Ancient Indus Valley: New Perspectives
(Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2008).

(3)
For a general description, see Brian Fagan,
Beyond the Blue Horizon
, (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012), Chap. 7.

(4)
W. C. Schoff, ed. and trans.,
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Trade and Travel in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century
(London: Longmans, 1912). Quotes from chaps. 40 and 45, both of which are little more than a sentence.

(5)
Cyclone summary:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_Indian_Ocean_cyclone_seasons
.

(6)
A harrowing description of this famine will be found in Mike Davis,
Late Victorian Holocausts
(Verso: New York, 2001), chaps. 1–3.

(7)
Bruce Parker,
The Power of the Sea
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), chap. 3, summarizes some of the material in this passage.

(8)
The Satapatha Brahmana (“Brahmana of one hundred paths”) is one of the prose texts describing the Vedic ritual, compiled between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C.E. The mythological sections include legends of the creation and of a great flood.

(9)
An authoritative account of this storm appears in J. E. Gastrell and Henry F. Blanford,
Report on the Calcutta Cyclone of the 5th
October 1864 (Calcutta: Military Orphan Press, 1864). I also drew on Sir John Eliot,
Handbook of Cyclonic Storms in the Bay of Bengal for the Use of Sailors
(Calcutta: Meteorological Department of the Government of India, 1894), chap. 3.

(10)
Quotes in these paragraphs from Eliot,
Handbook
, 143–44.

(11)
Gastrell and Blanford,
Report
, 35.

(12)
Gastrell and Blanford,
Report
, 38.

(13)
Gastrell and Blanford,
Report
, 121.

(14)
Eliot,
Handbook
, 151–62.

(15)
Eliot,
Handbook
, 162.

(16)
Well summarized at
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Bhola_cyclone
, with numerous contemporary references.

Chapter 9 The Golden Waterway

(1)
T. Healy et al., eds.,
Muddy Coasts of the World: Processes, Deposits, and Function, Proceedings in Marine Science
4 (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 2002),

(2)
Duncan A. Vaughan et al., “The Evolving Story of Rice Evolution,”
Plant Science
174, no. 4 (2008): 394–408.

(3)
These paragraphs are based on Li Liu et al., “The Earliest Rice Domestication in China,”
Antiquity
81 (2007), 313 Accessed at
http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/liuI/index.html
.

(4)
D. Q. Fuller et al., “Presumed Domestication? Evidence for Wild Rice Cultivation and Domestication in the Fifth Millennium BC of the Lower Yangtze Region,”
Antiquity
8, no. 1 (2007): 116–31.

(5)
Kwang-chih Chang,
The Archaeology of Ancient China
, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), covers this material. See chap. 4, 192–212.

(6)
For the 1954 flood:
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=395&catid=10&subcatid=65
.

(7)
Flood intervals: Fengling Yu et al., “Analysis of Historical Floods on the Yangtze River, China: Characteristics and Explanations,”
Geomorphology
113 (2009): 210–16.

(8)
Li Liu and Xingcan Chen,
State Formation in Early China
(London: Duckworth, 2003), 116–88 was the source for these paragraphs.

(9)
Marie-Claire Bergère,
Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

(10)
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom,
Global Shanghai, 1850–2010
(London: Routledge, 2009).

(11)
Coco Liu and ClimateWire, “Shanghai Struggles to Save Itself from the Sea,”
Scientific American
, September 27, 2011. Accessed at
www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shanghai-struggles-to-save-itself-from-east-china-sea
.

See also B. Wang et al., “Potential Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the Shanghai Area,”
Journal of Coastal Research
, Special Issue 14 (1998): 151–66. Zhongyuan Chen and Daniel Jean Stanley, “Sea-Level Rise on Eastern China’s Yangtze Delta,”
Journal of Coastal Research
14, no. 1 (1998): 360–66.

(12)
Quanlong Wei,
Land Subsidence and Water Management in Shanghai
(Delft, Netherlands: MA Thesis, Delft University of Technology, 2006). Accessed at
http://www.curnet.nl/upload/documents/3BW/Publicaties/Wei.pdf
.

(13)
The literature is enormous. For a summary of the Three Gorges Dam and its potential consequences, see:
http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/356?gclid=CKfbmsr8tK8CFYZgTAodo394HA
.