Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization

Humanity’s last major source of food from the wild, and how it enabled and shaped the growth of civilization

In this history of fishing—not as sport but as sustenance—archaeologist and best-selling author Brian Fagan argues that fishing was an indispensable and often overlooked element in the growth of civilization. It sustainably provided enough food to allow cities, nations, and empires to grow, but it did so with a different emphasis. Where agriculture encouraged stability, fishing demanded movement. It frequently required a search for new and better fishing grounds; its technologies, centered on boats, facilitated movement and discovery; and fish themselves, when dried and salted, were the ideal food—lightweight, nutritious, and long-lasting—for traders, travelers, and conquering armies. This history of the long interaction of humans and seafood tours archaeological sites worldwide to show readers how fishing fed human settlement, rising social complexity, the development of cities, and ultimately the modern world.

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• The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World
• The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (The Princeton History of the Ancient World)
• Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction
• The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
• The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World
• The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850
• Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
• Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy