Do ecocritics only work with modern texts?

With the growth of technological modernity, which began to accelerate in the 16th and 17th centuries, came increasing interest in the implications of technology, industrialization, urbanization, and other environmentally important topics.  Because these issues began appearing regularly in early modern and modern literature, ecocritics have paid a good deal of attention to these relatively recent texts. However, literature of nearly any period can be read ecocritically.  For example, The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is nearly five thousand years old, is a fascinating text to consider as it explores how a culture came to grips with the fact that it needed to deforest vast tracts of land in order to thrive.  Similarly, in a fascinating (and controversial) essay from the 1960s, Lynn White Jr. argued that the opening chapters of the Bible can tell us much about our current attitudes toward the environment.  Once you get in the habit of reading “greenly,” it sometimes seems as if every book that you pick up has environmental implications!