In the past few years civilisation has begun to look more vulnerable. The future may no longer be a development of the present. There are alarming prospects of climate change, a growing realignment of wealth and power worldwide, and widening gaps between rich and poor. There is pressure on the resources that maintain us all.

These two remarkable books – A New Green History of the World by Clive Ponting, and Dirt by David R. Montgomery – show that it was ever thus. We have simply lacked the right perspective. For many people, history is simply to do with kings, queens and battles. But now we can see more clearly the outlines of what has happened to human society during the warm patch of time since the last ice age ended some 12,500 years ago. It is a different sort of history, and is highly relevant to the problems of our own time.

There is a rhythm of change which is identified in both books. Hunter-gatherers fitted easily – although sometimes uncomfortably – into changing environments. They moved when they had to. Their impact on the earth was small. The first big transition in human society was the gradual introduction of farming with land clearance between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago. This led to a vast increase in the population and the creation of more settled communities. Over generations, this resulted in the erosion of topsoils, increases in pollution and the deterioration of fertility. The only way to cope was to export the problem by clearing more land to satisfy ever rising demand for food and other materials.

The growth of towns and then cities led to spreading rings of exhausted soils, treeless deserts and, sometimes, salinated irrigation systems. The classic case is Easter Island in the eastern Pacific. A few migrants arrived, cut down the trees, multiplied in numbers, destroyed the topsoil and caused their society to collapse. Such devastation takes a long time to mend.

The second big transition was the switch from traditional sources of energy – human, animal, wood, wind and water – to fossil fuels, like coal, oil and natural gas. This transition was rapid. It has vastly increased energy consumption. How we are now to cope with a need for alternative sources as supplies diminish during the next half century is one of the biggest problems we now face.

We also face fundamental issues of human thinking about nature and the environment. Ponting shows how certain attitudes developed – from the belief that the earth was made for human pleasure and exploitation to ideas of almost inevitable human progress. Classic market economics came next – these implicitly regarded the earth’s resources as inexhaustible and ignores long-term costs or externalities. In intellectual terms we suffer from the same short-term illusions as our ancestors over the last 10,000 years.

The Green History of the World was first published in 1991, and has now been revised and brought up to date. It is a formidable work of scholarship and persuasive argument, and deserves to be widely read. The author can be forgiven some polemics and a certain feeling of despair at the human ability to cope. It is, he says, too soon to judge whether modern industrial societies are environmentally sustainable. The implication is that they are not.

The focus of Dirt is on the role of soils – well described as the skin of the earth – in the growth of society. Montgomery begins with a fascinating analysis of what soils are, and the part worms play in constituting them (he picks up an analysis by Darwin in 1881). Thereafter he shows in copious detail the pattern of rise and fall of societies in response to their treatment of the agricultural base on which they depend.

In his last chapter the author demonstrates the shortcomings of industrial agriculture. He also makes plain the need to think again about use of fertilisers and pesticides, and the prospects for small-scale, no-till and organic cultivation according to different circumstances. He concludes that the survival of civilisation “depends on treating soil as an investment, as a valuable inheritance rather than a commodity – as something other than dirt”.

Together these books tell a story which we cannot afford to ignore. In each case it is well and eloquently told.

Sir Crispin Tickell is Director of the Policy Foresight Programme in the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford University

A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilisations
By Clive Ponting
Vintage Books £8.99, 464 pages
FT bookshop price: £7.19

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
By David R. Montgomery
University of California Press £15.95, 295 pages
FT bookshop price: £12.76