Ten millennia in the Mono Lake Basin, showing how this complex ecosystem came to be what it is today
Nestled at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California sits a stunning landscape overlooking a saline lake with picturesque tufa towers and flocks of phalarope birds. This is the Mono Lake Basin.
In this sweeping 10,000-year history, Robert Marks examines the forces that have shaped its rich and complex ecosystem. The story starts with the Indigenous peoples, followed by the mid-nineteenth-century arrival of Euro-American settlers and the dispossession of the Kootzaduka'a people of their land. Control over water was at the center of dramas that led to hydroelectric development and the sale of land and water rights to Los Angeles, which then diverted nearly all fresh water out of the Basin, precipitating an ecological crisis by the 1970s and spurring an ecological restoration movement.
As Marks shows, the Basin reveals a larger story of how human actions and natural forces shape the environment. A dramatic and ultimately hopeful environmental history, Deep Time in the Mono Lake Basin explores a beloved region to illuminate questions of water, power, and our relationship with the natural world that echo far beyond the American West.
Published Works by Robert B. Marks
Robert B. Marks has published four major books examining how human societies and natural environments shape each other across time and geography. His work spans Chinese environmental history, global economic transformation, and the deep time history of California's Mono Lake Basin. Each book challenges conventional historical narratives by placing environmental forces at the center of the story.
Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China
This pioneering work explores how environment and economy interacted in southern China's Guangdong and Guangxi provinces between 1400 and 1850. Marks examines how population growth, agricultural expansion, and commercial development transformed the landscape—leading to deforestation, changing land use patterns, and new ecological pressures. The book demonstrates how communities adapted to both climatic shifts and human-created environmental changes, revealing the complex costs and benefits of economic growth in late imperial China.
The Origins of the Modern World
This global history challenges the traditional "rise of the West" narrative by examining how Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas all shaped modernity from 1400 to the present. Marks argues that China, India, and Europe were comparably advanced until the 1800s, when England broke free from ecological constraints that limited all agricultural societies. Now in its fifth edition, the book explains how industrial development, nation-states, and global inequality emerged from historical contingencies rather than inevitable Western superiority.
China: An Environmental History
Spanning 5,000 years from prehistoric times to the present, this comprehensive synthesis examines how human activity transformed China's environment over millennia. Marks explores the long-term consequences of land use, deforestation, species extinction, and agricultural practices that initially appeared sustainable but created lasting ecological damage. The book challenges traditional narratives of Chinese civilization's relationship with nature and argues that China's environmental future matters for all humanity.
