30. Mediterranean culture and climatic change: past patterns and future trends.

This chapter illustrates the main trends of interlaced forces acting on the development of the Mediterranean landscape during the Holocene. The mosaic of habitats distributed in the Mediterranean basin has been continuously transformed by climatic changes occurring at a global scale during the early, mid and late Holocene. In the meantime, the environment has been exploited and the landscape shaped by different civilizations. Climate changes and human activities are observed through the lens of pollen found in terrestrial and marine sediment cores and in archaeological layers. Joint actions of increasing dryness, climate oscillations, and human impact are hard to disentangle, and this becomes particularly true after the mid-Holocene onset of Bronze Age cultures. Regional differences and similarities are reported for eastern, central and western Mediterranean, and for northern Africa and Sahara. The mixing of cultures accelerated the exchanges of ideas, technologies, raw materials and people along the coasts of this ‘great lake’, making the different civilizations linked between them as one network of regions belonging to the ‘Mediterranean culture’.