Mediterranean culture and climatic change: past patterns and future trends

The Mediterranean basin has always featured, and still has, ' extremely rich environmental and cultural biodiversity. The ( mosaic of habitats distributed around the Mediterranean ) basin was primarily transformed by climatic changes occur- !* ring at a global scale. In the meantime, the environment has !! been continuously exploited and the landscape shaped. !" Mediterranean is in fact a key region that is worldwide as the !# house for many of the most ancient civilizations.
!$ Since the passage from hunting and gathering to stock- !% breeding and cultivation, that would have meant a more !& stable occupation of lands and intense action on a limited !' area, the different scenarios for resource exploitation have !( been natural sets for the advance of different cultures !) (Table 30.1). This led to the onset and expansion of the "* relevant different cultural landscapes (Bottema et al. 1990; "! Butzer 2005; Mercuri et al. 2011; Mikhail 2012; Pons and "" Quézel 1985). The presence of large human groups and "# well-developed civilizations had remarkable effects on the "$ environment. Changes to biotic and abiotic systems have "% been so dramatic that human ecologists focused their atten- "& tion on the impact of human activities on the biotic world, "' and geologists proposed a new epoch the Anthropocene