Abstract:         An analysis of the corresponding relationship between climate change and social development over the last two millennia in China, leads to the following conclusion that how historical climate change impacted aspects of ancient society. Firstly, warm period was beneficial to social development while cold period was not. The law was appropriate for most of ancient times. Secondly, historical climate change imposed impacts of five levels on the society, which were transmitted step by step from nature subsystem to economic and humane subsystems. Thirdly, when climate became terrible, social unrest was often closely related to the poor whose living conditions were limited by regional environmental vulnerability to a large extent. Fourthly, climate change was only the external conditions for social development, while the reform of production relations was the most important impetus to the social development. At last, with advances in science and technology, the negative impacts of climate change on society were generally reduced.

Key words: last two millennia, climate change, social development, impact, adaptation