The social impact of global climate change is one of the hotspots in the current research. To deal with the challenges from climate change, it could be learned from the adapting experiences and lessons to climate change in the history. The main achievements of cognition on the historical impacts of climatic change in China and on coping with the climate changes in the future based the published papers in recent years is summarized. The followings are the main conclusions. ①The general characteristics of the impacts of climatic change in the history was negative in the cold periods and positive in the warm periods, but there were regional differences in the impact and responses. ②The cooling trend on centurial scale and the socialeconomic decline run concurrently. The rapid development supported by better resources and environment in the warm period could lead to the increase of the social vulnerability when the climate turned to the cold period. ③Strategies and policies to cope with the climate change in the history were adopted according to the temporal and spatial circumstances and the subjects. Initiative adaptation promoted by governments was an effective way.