Ian Simmons
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748621583
- eISBN:
- 9780748670765
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748621583.001.0001
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology
In the last 12,000 years, human societies have moved through phases of forager, agricultural, industrial and ‘post-industrial’ economies. Each of these has been affected by the natural world and in ...
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In the last 12,000 years, human societies have moved through phases of forager, agricultural, industrial and ‘post-industrial’ economies. Each of these has been affected by the natural world and in turn has changed the workings of the non-human or ‘natural’ components of this planet. For each of these phases the author discusses questions of population growth and distribution together with the technologies available to the human groups of the time. Overall there is no doubt about the central role of access to energy flows and storage in making possible the life ways of many diverse groups. In addition to these basic chronicles the author is at pains to include the question of how these economies and ecologies are represented in today's cultural frameworks. The theme of scale pervades the book. A distinction is made between processes which affect many parts of the world but are not coalescent (‘worldwide’) and those which penetrate the entire biophysical entity and to which the term ‘global’ can truly be applied. Despite the current levels of anxiety about human-environmental relationships this book concentrates on environmental history and not prophecy. There is though a parting shot to the effect that history is probably not a good guide to human futures.Less
In the last 12,000 years, human societies have moved through phases of forager, agricultural, industrial and ‘post-industrial’ economies. Each of these has been affected by the natural world and in turn has changed the workings of the non-human or ‘natural’ components of this planet. For each of these phases the author discusses questions of population growth and distribution together with the technologies available to the human groups of the time. Overall there is no doubt about the central role of access to energy flows and storage in making possible the life ways of many diverse groups. In addition to these basic chronicles the author is at pains to include the question of how these economies and ecologies are represented in today's cultural frameworks. The theme of scale pervades the book. A distinction is made between processes which affect many parts of the world but are not coalescent (‘worldwide’) and those which penetrate the entire biophysical entity and to which the term ‘global’ can truly be applied. Despite the current levels of anxiety about human-environmental relationships this book concentrates on environmental history and not prophecy. There is though a parting shot to the effect that history is probably not a good guide to human futures.
Francis E. Mayle and Mark B. Bush
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198567066
- eISBN:
- 9780191717888
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198567066.003.0015
- Subject:
- Biology, Plant Sciences and Forestry
This chapter reviews previously published palaeovegetation and independent palaeoclimatic datasets to determine the responses of Amazonian ecosystems to changes in temperature, precipitation, and ...
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This chapter reviews previously published palaeovegetation and independent palaeoclimatic datasets to determine the responses of Amazonian ecosystems to changes in temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations that occurred since the last glacial maximum (LGM), about 21,000 years ago, and it uses this long-term perspective to predict the likely vegetation responses to future climate change. Amazonia remained predominantly forested at the LGM, although savannas expanded at the margins of the basin. The combination of reduced temperatures, precipitation, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations resulted in forests structurally and floristically quite different from those of today. Evergreen rainforest distribution increased during the glacial-Holocene transition due to ameliorating climatic and CO2 conditions. However, reduced precipitation in the early-mid Holocene (about 8000-3600 years ago) period caused widespread, frequent fires in seasonal southern Amazonia, with increased abundance of drought-tolerant dry forest taxa and savanna in ecotonal areas. Rainforests expanded once again in the late Holocene period as a result of increased precipitation. The plant communities that existed during the early-mid Holocene period may constitute the closest analogues to the kinds of vegetation responses expected from similar increases in temperature and aridity posited for the 21st century.Less
This chapter reviews previously published palaeovegetation and independent palaeoclimatic datasets to determine the responses of Amazonian ecosystems to changes in temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations that occurred since the last glacial maximum (LGM), about 21,000 years ago, and it uses this long-term perspective to predict the likely vegetation responses to future climate change. Amazonia remained predominantly forested at the LGM, although savannas expanded at the margins of the basin. The combination of reduced temperatures, precipitation, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations resulted in forests structurally and floristically quite different from those of today. Evergreen rainforest distribution increased during the glacial-Holocene transition due to ameliorating climatic and CO2 conditions. However, reduced precipitation in the early-mid Holocene (about 8000-3600 years ago) period caused widespread, frequent fires in seasonal southern Amazonia, with increased abundance of drought-tolerant dry forest taxa and savanna in ecotonal areas. Rainforests expanded once again in the late Holocene period as a result of increased precipitation. The plant communities that existed during the early-mid Holocene period may constitute the closest analogues to the kinds of vegetation responses expected from similar increases in temperature and aridity posited for the 21st century.
Heather McKillop
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813025117
- eISBN:
- 9780813039497
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813025117.001.0001
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology
This book reports the discovery, excavation, and interpretation of Late Classic Maya salt works on the coast of Belize, transforming our knowledge of the Maya salt trade and craft specialization ...
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This book reports the discovery, excavation, and interpretation of Late Classic Maya salt works on the coast of Belize, transforming our knowledge of the Maya salt trade and craft specialization while providing new insights on sea-level rise in the Late Holocene as well. Salt, basic to human existence, was scarce in the tropical rainforests of Belize and Guatemala, where the Classic Maya civilization thrived between A.D. 300 and 900. The prevailing interpretation has been that salt was imported from the north coast of the Yucatan. However, the underwater discovery and excavation of salt works in Punta Ycacos Lagoon demonstrate that the Maya produced salt by boiling brine in pots over fires at specialized workshops on the Belizean coast. The Punta Ycacos salt works are clear evidence that craft specialization took place in a nondomestic setting and that production occurred away from the economic and political power of the urban Maya rulers, thus providing new clues to the Maya economy and sea trade. The book presents new data on sea-level rise in the Late Holocene that extend geologists' and geographers' sea-level curves from earlier eras. Likewise, it enters the environmental-versus-cultural debate over the Classic Maya collapse by evaluating the factors that led to the abandonment of the Punta Ycacos salt works at the end of the Classic Period, synonymous with the abandonment of inland Maya cities.Less
This book reports the discovery, excavation, and interpretation of Late Classic Maya salt works on the coast of Belize, transforming our knowledge of the Maya salt trade and craft specialization while providing new insights on sea-level rise in the Late Holocene as well. Salt, basic to human existence, was scarce in the tropical rainforests of Belize and Guatemala, where the Classic Maya civilization thrived between A.D. 300 and 900. The prevailing interpretation has been that salt was imported from the north coast of the Yucatan. However, the underwater discovery and excavation of salt works in Punta Ycacos Lagoon demonstrate that the Maya produced salt by boiling brine in pots over fires at specialized workshops on the Belizean coast. The Punta Ycacos salt works are clear evidence that craft specialization took place in a nondomestic setting and that production occurred away from the economic and political power of the urban Maya rulers, thus providing new clues to the Maya economy and sea trade. The book presents new data on sea-level rise in the Late Holocene that extend geologists' and geographers' sea-level curves from earlier eras. Likewise, it enters the environmental-versus-cultural debate over the Classic Maya collapse by evaluating the factors that led to the abandonment of the Punta Ycacos salt works at the end of the Classic Period, synonymous with the abandonment of inland Maya cities.
Ian Simmons
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197262863
- eISBN:
- 9780191734076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262863.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Population and Demography
The domestication of the earth entails the enfolding of ‘nature’ into human life and society. This chapter focuses on the millennia of the Holocene, when human societies consisted of food collectors ...
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The domestication of the earth entails the enfolding of ‘nature’ into human life and society. This chapter focuses on the millennia of the Holocene, when human societies consisted of food collectors and agriculturalists who essentially lived off recently fixed solar energy. In the course of its last 100 years, geography has from time to time taken in, and focused its attention on, diverse approaches to its subject matter. But as a ground bass to these variations, the relation between humans and the environment has persisted, though sometimes virtually at sotto voce level. In part, geography's attention has concentrated on landscapes as visible demonstrations, past and present, of these interrelations, but it has also taken an approach based explicitly on late-twentieth-century ecological theory. This chapter examines humans as hunter-gatherers during prehistoric times, along with the emergence of agriculture in Britain.Less
The domestication of the earth entails the enfolding of ‘nature’ into human life and society. This chapter focuses on the millennia of the Holocene, when human societies consisted of food collectors and agriculturalists who essentially lived off recently fixed solar energy. In the course of its last 100 years, geography has from time to time taken in, and focused its attention on, diverse approaches to its subject matter. But as a ground bass to these variations, the relation between humans and the environment has persisted, though sometimes virtually at sotto voce level. In part, geography's attention has concentrated on landscapes as visible demonstrations, past and present, of these interrelations, but it has also taken an approach based explicitly on late-twentieth-century ecological theory. This chapter examines humans as hunter-gatherers during prehistoric times, along with the emergence of agriculture in Britain.
Eric Post
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691148472
- eISBN:
- 9781400846139
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691148472.003.0002
- Subject:
- Biology, Ecology
This chapter explores the dynamics of plant and animal species and species assemblages during the Earth's most recent period of rapid warming to garner insights into the potential consequences of ...
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This chapter explores the dynamics of plant and animal species and species assemblages during the Earth's most recent period of rapid warming to garner insights into the potential consequences of future rapid climate change. From the perspective of climate change ecology, the Late Pleistocene and the Pleistocene–Holocene transition are relevant because they represent the end of a prolonged period of climatic fluctuation on multiple temporal scales followed by rapid warming. Not only did Earth's major biomes undergo extensive compositional changes during the late Quaternary and near the termination of the Pleistocene epoch, they also underwent geographically large-scale redistributions, and did so rapidly, in some cases on the scale of decades. If rapid warming during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition contributed to—or even acted as the main driver of—mass extinctions, such a scenario would seem to suggest that contemporary climate change has a similar capacity to precipitate species losses.Less
This chapter explores the dynamics of plant and animal species and species assemblages during the Earth's most recent period of rapid warming to garner insights into the potential consequences of future rapid climate change. From the perspective of climate change ecology, the Late Pleistocene and the Pleistocene–Holocene transition are relevant because they represent the end of a prolonged period of climatic fluctuation on multiple temporal scales followed by rapid warming. Not only did Earth's major biomes undergo extensive compositional changes during the late Quaternary and near the termination of the Pleistocene epoch, they also underwent geographically large-scale redistributions, and did so rapidly, in some cases on the scale of decades. If rapid warming during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition contributed to—or even acted as the main driver of—mass extinctions, such a scenario would seem to suggest that contemporary climate change has a similar capacity to precipitate species losses.
Anson W. Mackay
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199535095
- eISBN:
- 9780191715754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199535095.003.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
The Holocene is the Earth's most recent interglacial, which began approximately 11,500 years ago. Environmental change across this interval and the preceding Late Glacial, driven by factors such as ...
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The Holocene is the Earth's most recent interglacial, which began approximately 11,500 years ago. Environmental change across this interval and the preceding Late Glacial, driven by factors such as orbital forcing and solar variability, can be reconstructed from archives with annually-deposited layers or annual growth layers and through the use of empirical and physical models. The early Holocene climatic optimum was an interval of warmer climate than the present day, and was followed by orbitally-related cooling which began to occur in the last 4,000–3,000 years ago. Over the last c.1200 years, three distinct climate phases are apparent in palaeo-records: the Medieval Warm Period (Ad 800–1300), the Little Ice Age (14th–16th century Ad to Ad 1850), and recent warming since AD 1850. Anthropogenic influence on global ecosystems has increased steadily since the Late Glacial, culminating in a modern-day system for which few analogues for past environments now exist.Less
The Holocene is the Earth's most recent interglacial, which began approximately 11,500 years ago. Environmental change across this interval and the preceding Late Glacial, driven by factors such as orbital forcing and solar variability, can be reconstructed from archives with annually-deposited layers or annual growth layers and through the use of empirical and physical models. The early Holocene climatic optimum was an interval of warmer climate than the present day, and was followed by orbitally-related cooling which began to occur in the last 4,000–3,000 years ago. Over the last c.1200 years, three distinct climate phases are apparent in palaeo-records: the Medieval Warm Period (Ad 800–1300), the Little Ice Age (14th–16th century Ad to Ad 1850), and recent warming since AD 1850. Anthropogenic influence on global ecosystems has increased steadily since the Late Glacial, culminating in a modern-day system for which few analogues for past environments now exist.
Koen Bostoen
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- October 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198723813
- eISBN:
- 9780191791154
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198723813.003.0013
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Language Families, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
The Bantu Expansion, the foremost linguistic, cultural, and demographic event in Late Holocene Africa, has sparked a fervent interdisciplinary debate, especially regarding its driving forces. As is ...
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The Bantu Expansion, the foremost linguistic, cultural, and demographic event in Late Holocene Africa, has sparked a fervent interdisciplinary debate, especially regarding its driving forces. As is often the case with hotly debated issues, certain ‘factoids’ bearing little relation to factual evidence emerge. Two such factoids are that (1) the Bantu Expansion would have been a single migratory macro-event and (2) it would have been driven by agriculture. These two widely held beliefs are critically assessed here. Regarding (1), the chapter argues that the Bantu Expansion did involve the actual migration of Bantu speakers but that backward and forward migration occurred after the initial spread and that Bantu languages also expanded through adoption by autochthonous hunter-gatherers. As for (2), the chapter argues that the earliest Bantu speakers had their own archeologically visible culture, but they were not farmers. Therefore, the Bantu Expansion is not a textbook example of a farming/language dispersal.Less
The Bantu Expansion, the foremost linguistic, cultural, and demographic event in Late Holocene Africa, has sparked a fervent interdisciplinary debate, especially regarding its driving forces. As is often the case with hotly debated issues, certain ‘factoids’ bearing little relation to factual evidence emerge. Two such factoids are that (1) the Bantu Expansion would have been a single migratory macro-event and (2) it would have been driven by agriculture. These two widely held beliefs are critically assessed here. Regarding (1), the chapter argues that the Bantu Expansion did involve the actual migration of Bantu speakers but that backward and forward migration occurred after the initial spread and that Bantu languages also expanded through adoption by autochthonous hunter-gatherers. As for (2), the chapter argues that the earliest Bantu speakers had their own archeologically visible culture, but they were not farmers. Therefore, the Bantu Expansion is not a textbook example of a farming/language dispersal.
Geoffrey F. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195372090
- eISBN:
- 9780199893485
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372090.003.0013
- Subject:
- Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter proposes that the field of evolutionary psychology must take seriously the notion that evolution has accelerated during the Holocene. This rapid recent evolution might call into question ...
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This chapter proposes that the field of evolutionary psychology must take seriously the notion that evolution has accelerated during the Holocene. This rapid recent evolution might call into question three foundational assumptions of evolutionary psychology: that the most important environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) for explaining individual differences resides in the Pleistocene; that evolutionary equilibrium models such as balancing selection are the most relevant theories for explaining heritable variation in personality, cognitive, and mental health traits; and the degree to which psychic unity or species-typicality characterizes human psychology.Less
This chapter proposes that the field of evolutionary psychology must take seriously the notion that evolution has accelerated during the Holocene. This rapid recent evolution might call into question three foundational assumptions of evolutionary psychology: that the most important environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) for explaining individual differences resides in the Pleistocene; that evolutionary equilibrium models such as balancing selection are the most relevant theories for explaining heritable variation in personality, cognitive, and mental health traits; and the degree to which psychic unity or species-typicality characterizes human psychology.
Ellen Wohl
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190943523
- eISBN:
- 9780197559949
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190943523.003.0004
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Applied Ecology
The beaver meadow is quiet in January. For many plants and animals, winter is a season of subdued activity, or of waiting. North St. Vrain Creek remains open along the ...
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The beaver meadow is quiet in January. For many plants and animals, winter is a season of subdued activity, or of waiting. North St. Vrain Creek remains open along the main channel, the water flowing clear but tinted brown as pine bark between snowy banks. Densely growing thickets of willow closely line the banks. Each stem starts pale brown near the ground, then grades upward to shades of maroon or yellowish orange at the branch tips. In a bird’s-eye view, these startling colors make the meadow stand out distinctly from the dark green conifers that define the edges of the meadow. Spruce and fir trees grow sharply pointed as arrows; pines present a slightly more rounded outline. Snow falls silently in thick flakes from the low, gray sky. The upper edges of the valley walls fade into snow and clouds. The sun appears briefly as a small, pale spotlight behind the clouds to the south. Snow mounds on the patches of ice in the shallow channel. The water flowing beneath creates flickers through the translucent ice like a winter fire of subdued colors and no heat. Tussocks form humps of straw-colored grass above the dark, frozen soil. Rabbit tracks line the snowy bank, sets of four paw marks with a large gap between each set. Something small crossed the bank, leaping one to two feet at a bound, two paws with slight drag marks behind them. In places the powdery snow has drifted deeply, but mostly it is shallow over a frozen crust. Beaver-gnawed sticks and stumps poke up through the snow. A large flood came through four months ago, in mid-September, washing out dams that the beavers have not yet rebuilt. Chunks of wood deposited among the willow stems by the floodwaters stand far above the January flow of the creek. A dipper fishes the creek, wading rather than swimming, at home in the cold water. The slate-gray bird is the only visible animal, busily probing the bed with its short bill, then pausing to stand and bob up and down.
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The beaver meadow is quiet in January. For many plants and animals, winter is a season of subdued activity, or of waiting. North St. Vrain Creek remains open along the main channel, the water flowing clear but tinted brown as pine bark between snowy banks. Densely growing thickets of willow closely line the banks. Each stem starts pale brown near the ground, then grades upward to shades of maroon or yellowish orange at the branch tips. In a bird’s-eye view, these startling colors make the meadow stand out distinctly from the dark green conifers that define the edges of the meadow. Spruce and fir trees grow sharply pointed as arrows; pines present a slightly more rounded outline. Snow falls silently in thick flakes from the low, gray sky. The upper edges of the valley walls fade into snow and clouds. The sun appears briefly as a small, pale spotlight behind the clouds to the south. Snow mounds on the patches of ice in the shallow channel. The water flowing beneath creates flickers through the translucent ice like a winter fire of subdued colors and no heat. Tussocks form humps of straw-colored grass above the dark, frozen soil. Rabbit tracks line the snowy bank, sets of four paw marks with a large gap between each set. Something small crossed the bank, leaping one to two feet at a bound, two paws with slight drag marks behind them. In places the powdery snow has drifted deeply, but mostly it is shallow over a frozen crust. Beaver-gnawed sticks and stumps poke up through the snow. A large flood came through four months ago, in mid-September, washing out dams that the beavers have not yet rebuilt. Chunks of wood deposited among the willow stems by the floodwaters stand far above the January flow of the creek. A dipper fishes the creek, wading rather than swimming, at home in the cold water. The slate-gray bird is the only visible animal, busily probing the bed with its short bill, then pausing to stand and bob up and down.
Ann L. W. Stodder and Ann M. Palkovich
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813038070
- eISBN:
- 9780813043135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813038070.003.0007
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology
This chapter presents the osteobiography of a man who lived in predynastic Egypt, between 3200 B.C. and 2000 B.C.. One of only a few Neolithic skeletons representing the early Neolithic use of this ...
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This chapter presents the osteobiography of a man who lived in predynastic Egypt, between 3200 B.C. and 2000 B.C.. One of only a few Neolithic skeletons representing the early Neolithic use of this large oasis, the bones and teeth present many clues about the mobile herders and foragers and the early stages of agriculture in the Western Desert of Egypt.Less
This chapter presents the osteobiography of a man who lived in predynastic Egypt, between 3200 B.C. and 2000 B.C.. One of only a few Neolithic skeletons representing the early Neolithic use of this large oasis, the bones and teeth present many clues about the mobile herders and foragers and the early stages of agriculture in the Western Desert of Egypt.
Clark Spencer Larsen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813036670
- eISBN:
- 9780813041803
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813036670.003.0003
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology
This chapter presents an overview of the archaeological record of three sites occupied during the Deccan Chalcolithic period (2200–700 B.C.) in India. It describes archaeological investigations at ...
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This chapter presents an overview of the archaeological record of three sites occupied during the Deccan Chalcolithic period (2200–700 B.C.) in India. It describes archaeological investigations at Nevasa, Daimabad, and Inamgaon, with particular attention to evidence for subsistence practices and mortuary treatment. The chapter also focuses specifically on evidence for culture change through time at Inamgaon, the only Deccan Chalcolithic site to yield an archaeological record and human skeletal material from the Late Jorwe phase, when most other sites had already been abandoned. The apparent success of adaptive diversity as a strategy for dealing with semi-arid monsoon climate uncertainty during the Early Jorwe phase is contrasted with the severe reductions in subsistence activity, shifts in species preferences, and evidence for culture change in the Late Jorwe phase.Less
This chapter presents an overview of the archaeological record of three sites occupied during the Deccan Chalcolithic period (2200–700 B.C.) in India. It describes archaeological investigations at Nevasa, Daimabad, and Inamgaon, with particular attention to evidence for subsistence practices and mortuary treatment. The chapter also focuses specifically on evidence for culture change through time at Inamgaon, the only Deccan Chalcolithic site to yield an archaeological record and human skeletal material from the Late Jorwe phase, when most other sites had already been abandoned. The apparent success of adaptive diversity as a strategy for dealing with semi-arid monsoon climate uncertainty during the Early Jorwe phase is contrasted with the severe reductions in subsistence activity, shifts in species preferences, and evidence for culture change in the Late Jorwe phase.
Harvey Weiss (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199329199
- eISBN:
- 9780190607920
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199329199.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Non-Classical
This is the first book to treat the major examples of megadrought and societal collapse, from the late Pleistocene end of hunter–gatherer culture and origins of cultivation to the 15th century AD ...
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This is the first book to treat the major examples of megadrought and societal collapse, from the late Pleistocene end of hunter–gatherer culture and origins of cultivation to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer Empire capital at Angkor, and ranging from the Near East to South America. Previous enquiries have stressed the possible multiple and internal causes of collapse, such overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, warfare, and poor leadership and decision-making. In contrast, Megadrought and Collapse presents case studies of nine major episodes of societal collapse in which megadrought was the major and independent cause of societal collapse. In each case the most recent paleoclimatic evidence for megadroughts, multiple decades to multiple centuries in duration, is presented alongside the archaeological records for synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from paleoclimate proxy sources (lake, marine, and glacial cores; speleothems, or cave stalagmites; and tree-rings) and are explained by researchers directly engaged in their analysis. Researchers directly responsible for them discuss the relevant current archaeological records. Two arguments are developed through these case studies. The first is that societal collapse in different time periods and regions and at levels of social complexity ranging from simple foragers to complex empires would not have occurred without megadrought. The second is that similar responses to megadrought extend across these historical episodes: societal collapse in the face of insurmountable climate change, abandonment of settlements and regions, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural landscapes. As we confront megadrought today, and in the likely future, Megadrought and Collapse brings together the latest contributions to our understanding of past societal responses to the crisis on an equally global and diverse scale.Less
This is the first book to treat the major examples of megadrought and societal collapse, from the late Pleistocene end of hunter–gatherer culture and origins of cultivation to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer Empire capital at Angkor, and ranging from the Near East to South America. Previous enquiries have stressed the possible multiple and internal causes of collapse, such overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, warfare, and poor leadership and decision-making. In contrast, Megadrought and Collapse presents case studies of nine major episodes of societal collapse in which megadrought was the major and independent cause of societal collapse. In each case the most recent paleoclimatic evidence for megadroughts, multiple decades to multiple centuries in duration, is presented alongside the archaeological records for synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from paleoclimate proxy sources (lake, marine, and glacial cores; speleothems, or cave stalagmites; and tree-rings) and are explained by researchers directly engaged in their analysis. Researchers directly responsible for them discuss the relevant current archaeological records. Two arguments are developed through these case studies. The first is that societal collapse in different time periods and regions and at levels of social complexity ranging from simple foragers to complex empires would not have occurred without megadrought. The second is that similar responses to megadrought extend across these historical episodes: societal collapse in the face of insurmountable climate change, abandonment of settlements and regions, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural landscapes. As we confront megadrought today, and in the likely future, Megadrought and Collapse brings together the latest contributions to our understanding of past societal responses to the crisis on an equally global and diverse scale.
Thomas N. Sherratt and David M. Wilkinson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780199548606
- eISBN:
- 9780191917769
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199548606.003.0013
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Applied Ecology
As we wrote the first draft of this chapter (during early summer 2007), the potential dangers of ‘global warming’ had moved up the news agenda to a point where most ...
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As we wrote the first draft of this chapter (during early summer 2007), the potential dangers of ‘global warming’ had moved up the news agenda to a point where most major politicians were starting to take the problem seriously. Our opening quotation comes from a book published in early 2006, which seemed to coincide with the growth of this wider concern with global warming. Lovelock was not alone in trying to raise awareness of the problem; around the same time another book on climate change by the zoologist and palaeontologist Tim Flannery also attracted global attention to this issue, as did the lecture tours (and Oscar-winning film) of Al Gore—the former US presidential candidate and campaigner on the dangers of climate change. Indeed, in his role as a climate campaigner Gore won a share in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. It is possible that future historians will see the period 2005–2007 as the start of a crucial wider engagement with these problems. Things may not be as bad as James Lovelock suggests—in his book he deliberately emphasized the most worrying scenarios coming from computer models, and other evidence, in an attempt to draw attention to the critical nature of the problem. However, all these worst case scenarios were drawn from within the range of results that most climate scientists believed could plausibly happen—not extreme cases with little current evidence to support them. That one of the major environmental scientists of the second half of the twentieth century could write such prose as science—rather than science fiction—is clearly a case for concern about future climate change. It also raises another important question, relating to the history of human influence on our planet: when in our history did we start to have major environmental impacts on Earth as a whole? This is clearly an important issue from a historical perspective, but the answers may also have implications for some of our attempts to rectify the damage. Our discussion of this question comes with various caveats. Many of the arguments we consider in this chapter are still the subject of academic disagreement.
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As we wrote the first draft of this chapter (during early summer 2007), the potential dangers of ‘global warming’ had moved up the news agenda to a point where most major politicians were starting to take the problem seriously. Our opening quotation comes from a book published in early 2006, which seemed to coincide with the growth of this wider concern with global warming. Lovelock was not alone in trying to raise awareness of the problem; around the same time another book on climate change by the zoologist and palaeontologist Tim Flannery also attracted global attention to this issue, as did the lecture tours (and Oscar-winning film) of Al Gore—the former US presidential candidate and campaigner on the dangers of climate change. Indeed, in his role as a climate campaigner Gore won a share in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. It is possible that future historians will see the period 2005–2007 as the start of a crucial wider engagement with these problems. Things may not be as bad as James Lovelock suggests—in his book he deliberately emphasized the most worrying scenarios coming from computer models, and other evidence, in an attempt to draw attention to the critical nature of the problem. However, all these worst case scenarios were drawn from within the range of results that most climate scientists believed could plausibly happen—not extreme cases with little current evidence to support them. That one of the major environmental scientists of the second half of the twentieth century could write such prose as science—rather than science fiction—is clearly a case for concern about future climate change. It also raises another important question, relating to the history of human influence on our planet: when in our history did we start to have major environmental impacts on Earth as a whole? This is clearly an important issue from a historical perspective, but the answers may also have implications for some of our attempts to rectify the damage. Our discussion of this question comes with various caveats. Many of the arguments we consider in this chapter are still the subject of academic disagreement.
John S. Dryzek and Jonathan Pickering
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198809616
- eISBN:
- 9780191846892
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198809616.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
The Politics of the Anthropocene is a sophisticated yet accessible treatment of how human institutions, practices, and principles need to be re-thought in response to the challenges of the ...
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The Politics of the Anthropocene is a sophisticated yet accessible treatment of how human institutions, practices, and principles need to be re-thought in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene, the emerging epoch of human-induced instability in the Earth system and its life-support capacities. However, the world remains stuck with practices and modes of thinking that were developed in the Holocene – the epoch of around 12,000 years of unusual stability in the Earth system, toward the end of which modern institutions such as states and capitalist markets arose. These institutions persist despite their potentially catastrophic failure to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene, foremost among them a rapidly changing climate and accelerating biodiversity loss. The pathological trajectories of these institutions need to be disrupted by advancing ecological reflexivity: the capacity of structures, systems, and sets of ideas to question their own core commitments, and if necessary change themselves, while listening and responding effectively to signals from the Earth system. This book envisages a world in which humans are no longer estranged from the Earth system but engage with it in a more productive relationship. We can still pursue democracy, social justice, and sustainability – but not as before. In future, all politics should be first and foremost a politics of the Anthropocene. The arguments are developed in the context of issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and global efforts to address sustainability.Less
The Politics of the Anthropocene is a sophisticated yet accessible treatment of how human institutions, practices, and principles need to be re-thought in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene, the emerging epoch of human-induced instability in the Earth system and its life-support capacities. However, the world remains stuck with practices and modes of thinking that were developed in the Holocene – the epoch of around 12,000 years of unusual stability in the Earth system, toward the end of which modern institutions such as states and capitalist markets arose. These institutions persist despite their potentially catastrophic failure to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene, foremost among them a rapidly changing climate and accelerating biodiversity loss. The pathological trajectories of these institutions need to be disrupted by advancing ecological reflexivity: the capacity of structures, systems, and sets of ideas to question their own core commitments, and if necessary change themselves, while listening and responding effectively to signals from the Earth system. This book envisages a world in which humans are no longer estranged from the Earth system but engage with it in a more productive relationship. We can still pursue democracy, social justice, and sustainability – but not as before. In future, all politics should be first and foremost a politics of the Anthropocene. The arguments are developed in the context of issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and global efforts to address sustainability.
Michael H. Fox
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780199344574
- eISBN:
- 9780197562895
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199344574.003.0019
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nuclear Issues
Time is running short! When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first scientific report in 1990 on the possibility of ...
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Time is running short! When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first scientific report in 1990 on the possibility of humancaused global warming, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) was 354 ppm. When I began writing this book about four years ago, the concentration of CO2 was 387 ppm. It is now 397 ppm and rising. In spite of Kyoto, in spite of Copenhagen and Cancun, atmospheric CO2 continues its inexorable upward path. And the earth continues to warm. The United States and the world are not yet serious about changing policies to stop this spiral. Too many politicians and others have their heads buried in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the continuing deluge of data showing that the world is indeed warming. 2010 was the warmest year—and the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest decade—for at least the last 100,000 years. A serious debate is ongoing among geologists to decide if the earth has formally passed out of the Holocene epoch of the last 12,000 years into the Anthropocene epoch, in which 7 billion humans are the primary factor driving climate. Sea levels continue to rise, the oceans are acidifying, glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt, the Arctic will likely be ice-free during the summer sometime this century, and weather extremes have become commonplace around the earth. Plant and animal species are migrating to higher latitudes at 17 kilometers per decade on average, and alpine species are moving to higher altitudes at 11 meters every decade. Changes like this have occurred in the past, but over time spans of thousands to tens of thousands of years, giving species time to adapt. There are those who argue that species have always had to adapt to a changing climate or die and therefore they will handle the current changes. While there is some truth to that, it ignores the fact that many species are already under great pressure from the impact of humans on habitat.
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Time is running short! When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first scientific report in 1990 on the possibility of humancaused global warming, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) was 354 ppm. When I began writing this book about four years ago, the concentration of CO2 was 387 ppm. It is now 397 ppm and rising. In spite of Kyoto, in spite of Copenhagen and Cancun, atmospheric CO2 continues its inexorable upward path. And the earth continues to warm. The United States and the world are not yet serious about changing policies to stop this spiral. Too many politicians and others have their heads buried in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the continuing deluge of data showing that the world is indeed warming. 2010 was the warmest year—and the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest decade—for at least the last 100,000 years. A serious debate is ongoing among geologists to decide if the earth has formally passed out of the Holocene epoch of the last 12,000 years into the Anthropocene epoch, in which 7 billion humans are the primary factor driving climate. Sea levels continue to rise, the oceans are acidifying, glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt, the Arctic will likely be ice-free during the summer sometime this century, and weather extremes have become commonplace around the earth. Plant and animal species are migrating to higher latitudes at 17 kilometers per decade on average, and alpine species are moving to higher altitudes at 11 meters every decade. Changes like this have occurred in the past, but over time spans of thousands to tens of thousands of years, giving species time to adapt. There are those who argue that species have always had to adapt to a changing climate or die and therefore they will handle the current changes. While there is some truth to that, it ignores the fact that many species are already under great pressure from the impact of humans on habitat.
Michael H. Fox
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780199344574
- eISBN:
- 9780197562895
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199344574.003.0006
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nuclear Issues
We, the teeming billions of people on earth, are changing the earth’s climate at an unprecedented rate because we are spewing out greenhouse gases and are ...
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We, the teeming billions of people on earth, are changing the earth’s climate at an unprecedented rate because we are spewing out greenhouse gases and are heading to a disaster, say most climate scientists. Not so, say the skeptics. We are just experiencing normal variations in earth’s climate and we should all take a big breath, settle down, and worry about something else. Which is it? A national debate has raged for the last several decades about whether anthropogenic (man-made) sources of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and other so-called “greenhouse gases“ (primarily methane and nitrous oxide) are causing the world to heat up. This phenomenon is usually called “global warming,” but it is more appropriate to call it “global climate change,” since it is not simply an increase in global temperatures but rather more complex changes to the overall climate. Al Gore is a prominent spokesman for the theory that humans are causing an increase in greenhouse gases leading to global climate change. His movie and book, An Inconvenient Truth, gave the message widespread awareness and resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize for him in 2008. However, the message also led to widespread criticism. On the one hand are a few scientists and a large segment of the general American public who believe that there is no connection between increased CO2 in the atmosphere and global climate change, or if there is, it is too expensive to do anything about it, anyway. On the other hand is an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists who have produced enormous numbers of research papers demonstrating that increased CO2 is changing the earth’s climate. The scientific consensus is expressed most clearly in the Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 by the United Nations–sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the fourth in a series of reports since 1990. The IPCC began as a group of scientists meeting in Geneva in November 1988 to discuss global climate issues under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.
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We, the teeming billions of people on earth, are changing the earth’s climate at an unprecedented rate because we are spewing out greenhouse gases and are heading to a disaster, say most climate scientists. Not so, say the skeptics. We are just experiencing normal variations in earth’s climate and we should all take a big breath, settle down, and worry about something else. Which is it? A national debate has raged for the last several decades about whether anthropogenic (man-made) sources of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and other so-called “greenhouse gases“ (primarily methane and nitrous oxide) are causing the world to heat up. This phenomenon is usually called “global warming,” but it is more appropriate to call it “global climate change,” since it is not simply an increase in global temperatures but rather more complex changes to the overall climate. Al Gore is a prominent spokesman for the theory that humans are causing an increase in greenhouse gases leading to global climate change. His movie and book, An Inconvenient Truth, gave the message widespread awareness and resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize for him in 2008. However, the message also led to widespread criticism. On the one hand are a few scientists and a large segment of the general American public who believe that there is no connection between increased CO2 in the atmosphere and global climate change, or if there is, it is too expensive to do anything about it, anyway. On the other hand is an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists who have produced enormous numbers of research papers demonstrating that increased CO2 is changing the earth’s climate. The scientific consensus is expressed most clearly in the Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 by the United Nations–sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the fourth in a series of reports since 1990. The IPCC began as a group of scientists meeting in Geneva in November 1988 to discuss global climate issues under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.
Patrick Roberts
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198818496
- eISBN:
- 9780191917264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198818496.003.0005
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Environmental Archaeology
Friedrich Wöhler was referring to the field of organic chemistry during the early 1800s when he wrote the above but his comments would not be out of place in the ...
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Friedrich Wöhler was referring to the field of organic chemistry during the early 1800s when he wrote the above but his comments would not be out of place in the context of embarking upon a global study of past and present human relationships with tropical forests. Dense vegetation, difficulty of navigation, issues of preservation, political and health concerns, poisonous plants, animals, and insects, and the prospect of carrying out sampling or excavation in high humidity have all meant that our knowledge of human history and prehistory in these environments is under-developed relative to temperate, arid, or even polar habitats. There have been theoretical questions as to what kind of human activity one would even expect to find in tropical forest environments, which seem hostile to human foraging (Hart and Hart, 1986; Bailey et al., 1989) let alone thriving agricultural or urban settlements (Meggers, 1971, 1977, 1987). This has, until relatively recently, left the state of archaeological tropical forest research in a similar position to popular conceptions of these environments—untouched, primeval wilderness. Public ideas of an archaeologist investigating a tropical forest are probably synonymous with someone in a shabby-looking leather hat being chased, if not by a large stone boulder then by a group of Indigenous people with blowpipes, as they wade through dense undergrowth and vines while clutching a golden discovery that has been lost to the western world for thousands of years (Spielberg, 1981). The more recent development of the best-selling Uncharted video game series has done little to change these ideas amongst the next generation of media consumers, with players taking on the role of Francis Drake’s mythical ancestor in search of long lost treasure, frequently hidden within caves and ruins surrounded by vines and dense canopies (Naughty Dog et al., 2016). The idea of treasure hidden within tropical forest is also not a modern conception. The long-term myth of El Dorado, a city covered in gold, fuelled exploration of the tropical forests of South America by renowned individuals, including Sir Walter Raleigh, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries (Nicholl, 1995).
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Friedrich Wöhler was referring to the field of organic chemistry during the early 1800s when he wrote the above but his comments would not be out of place in the context of embarking upon a global study of past and present human relationships with tropical forests. Dense vegetation, difficulty of navigation, issues of preservation, political and health concerns, poisonous plants, animals, and insects, and the prospect of carrying out sampling or excavation in high humidity have all meant that our knowledge of human history and prehistory in these environments is under-developed relative to temperate, arid, or even polar habitats. There have been theoretical questions as to what kind of human activity one would even expect to find in tropical forest environments, which seem hostile to human foraging (Hart and Hart, 1986; Bailey et al., 1989) let alone thriving agricultural or urban settlements (Meggers, 1971, 1977, 1987). This has, until relatively recently, left the state of archaeological tropical forest research in a similar position to popular conceptions of these environments—untouched, primeval wilderness. Public ideas of an archaeologist investigating a tropical forest are probably synonymous with someone in a shabby-looking leather hat being chased, if not by a large stone boulder then by a group of Indigenous people with blowpipes, as they wade through dense undergrowth and vines while clutching a golden discovery that has been lost to the western world for thousands of years (Spielberg, 1981). The more recent development of the best-selling Uncharted video game series has done little to change these ideas amongst the next generation of media consumers, with players taking on the role of Francis Drake’s mythical ancestor in search of long lost treasure, frequently hidden within caves and ruins surrounded by vines and dense canopies (Naughty Dog et al., 2016). The idea of treasure hidden within tropical forest is also not a modern conception. The long-term myth of El Dorado, a city covered in gold, fuelled exploration of the tropical forests of South America by renowned individuals, including Sir Walter Raleigh, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries (Nicholl, 1995).
Jonathon Keats
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780195398540
- eISBN:
- 9780197562826
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195398540.003.0008
- Subject:
- Computer Science, Programming Languages
In geological time, the human life span is almost immeasurably brief. The seventeenth-century archbishop James Ussher famously calculated from biblical ...
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In geological time, the human life span is almost immeasurably brief. The seventeenth-century archbishop James Ussher famously calculated from biblical events that Earth was formed in 4004 BCE; scientists now estimate that the planet is 4.6 billion years old, and that the six millennia since the apocryphal Creation have probably contributed less than 10 millimeters of sediment to the geological record. Geological eras are unfathomable by ordinarily temporal measurements, such as the daily spin of the planet or its annual orbit, leading some scientists to adopt the galactic year—the 250 million terrestrial years it takes our solar system to rotate around the center of the galaxy—as a standard time unit. On that scale, Homo sapiens has been around for less than a week. Yet as the technology to study the planet has improved, so too has the technology to alter it. Earth increasingly disproportionately bears our imprint, as if geological time were being accelerated to the beat of our biological clock, with the consequence that the planet seems increasingly mortal, its legacy and ours entangled. In geological terms we are in the Holocene epoch—a designation formulated from Greek roots meaning “wholly recent,” officially adopted at the 1885 International Geological Congress—and have been in the Holocene for the past ten thousand years. The question, given all that we’ve done to the planet, is whether the label remains valid, or whether we’ve now buried the stratum of our Neolithic ancestors beneath our own rubbish. The atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen was the first to effectively challenge the conventional geological thinking. In a 2003 interview with New Scientist he recollected the circumstances: “This happened at a meeting three years ago. Someone said something about the Holocene, the geological era covering the period since the end of the last ice age. I suddenly thought this was wrong. In the past 200 years, humans have become a major geological force on the planet. So I said, no, we are not in the Holocene any more: we are in the Anthropocene. I just made up the word on the spur of the moment.
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In geological time, the human life span is almost immeasurably brief. The seventeenth-century archbishop James Ussher famously calculated from biblical events that Earth was formed in 4004 BCE; scientists now estimate that the planet is 4.6 billion years old, and that the six millennia since the apocryphal Creation have probably contributed less than 10 millimeters of sediment to the geological record. Geological eras are unfathomable by ordinarily temporal measurements, such as the daily spin of the planet or its annual orbit, leading some scientists to adopt the galactic year—the 250 million terrestrial years it takes our solar system to rotate around the center of the galaxy—as a standard time unit. On that scale, Homo sapiens has been around for less than a week. Yet as the technology to study the planet has improved, so too has the technology to alter it. Earth increasingly disproportionately bears our imprint, as if geological time were being accelerated to the beat of our biological clock, with the consequence that the planet seems increasingly mortal, its legacy and ours entangled. In geological terms we are in the Holocene epoch—a designation formulated from Greek roots meaning “wholly recent,” officially adopted at the 1885 International Geological Congress—and have been in the Holocene for the past ten thousand years. The question, given all that we’ve done to the planet, is whether the label remains valid, or whether we’ve now buried the stratum of our Neolithic ancestors beneath our own rubbish. The atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen was the first to effectively challenge the conventional geological thinking. In a 2003 interview with New Scientist he recollected the circumstances: “This happened at a meeting three years ago. Someone said something about the Holocene, the geological era covering the period since the end of the last ice age. I suddenly thought this was wrong. In the past 200 years, humans have become a major geological force on the planet. So I said, no, we are not in the Holocene any more: we are in the Anthropocene. I just made up the word on the spur of the moment.
C. JOSH DONLAN, PAUL S. MARTIN, and GARY W. ROEMER
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520248847
- eISBN:
- 9780520933200
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520248847.003.0003
- Subject:
- Biology, Aquatic Biology
This book addresses the question of how the removal of whales in various fisheries influenced the workings of modern oceans. Despite the recent and dramatic nature of these events, their consequences ...
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This book addresses the question of how the removal of whales in various fisheries influenced the workings of modern oceans. Despite the recent and dramatic nature of these events, their consequences are both controversial and poorly documented. This chapter presents a comparative view of other systems in which food web reorganization has apparently followed anthropogenic disturbances to key vertebrates. It argues that prehistoric, historic, and present-day reductions in some vertebrate populations may have been initially triggered by human action. These reductions subsequently distorted ecological dynamics, leading to ecosystem simplification or decay. The chapter turns to deep history in an effort to examine terrestrial vertebrate extinctions in the late Pleistocene and Holocene. It also discusses historic and contemporary examples of strong species interactions and ecosystem decay, starting on land and moving to coastal seas.Less
This book addresses the question of how the removal of whales in various fisheries influenced the workings of modern oceans. Despite the recent and dramatic nature of these events, their consequences are both controversial and poorly documented. This chapter presents a comparative view of other systems in which food web reorganization has apparently followed anthropogenic disturbances to key vertebrates. It argues that prehistoric, historic, and present-day reductions in some vertebrate populations may have been initially triggered by human action. These reductions subsequently distorted ecological dynamics, leading to ecosystem simplification or decay. The chapter turns to deep history in an effort to examine terrestrial vertebrate extinctions in the late Pleistocene and Holocene. It also discusses historic and contemporary examples of strong species interactions and ecosystem decay, starting on land and moving to coastal seas.
K. O. Emery and David Neev
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780195090949
- eISBN:
- 9780197560655
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195090949.003.0009
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Biblical Archaeology
About 7800 B.P. after the first effects of warmings and droughts associated with the Atlantic Interval, many people of the Mideast moved into river floodplains where ...
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About 7800 B.P. after the first effects of warmings and droughts associated with the Atlantic Interval, many people of the Mideast moved into river floodplains where suitable agricultural soils and freshwater were available. Prominent examples are in Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, and along the Jordan-Dead Sea rift. The extremely dry climates occasionally improved because of small fluctuations within the Chalcolithic and a larger one during Early Bronze II, when there was a 250-year wet interval. These climatic changes explain the settling, flourishing, and abandonment by the Ghassulians about 6000 B.C. and of the city of Arad, 4900 to 4650 B.P. at the fringe of the desert (R. Amiran and Gophna, 1989, n. 18; D. Amiran, 1991; Gilead, 1993). During the Early Bronze ages overall the climatic conditions in the Dead Sea region were not appreciably different from those at present, as attested by fossil flora found in excavations at Bab edh-Dhr’a and Numeira (McCreery, 1980). High yields of agriculture in fertile irrigated areas were an incentive to settle in the Plain of Sodom. This settling gradually intensified within the fertile plains of the Jordan-Dead Sea region as well as in Canaan through Early Bronze I and II but weakened toward the end of Early Bronze III. This is indicated by the pattern of settlements that developed from individual villages to city-states with satellite villages—mostly because of economic and social motivations— which later were changed into fortified communities (Esse, 1989). A gradual increase in fortification of Early Bronze settlements along the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley basins and the position of some of them along the narrow elevated step-faulted strip of the east foothills (Zori, 1962;Ben-Arieh, 1965; Rast, 1987 and personal communication, 1989) indicate increased need for defense by settlers against raids and invasions. These evidences of stress probably resulted from gradual climatic drying and warming. Investments in defense facilities were worthwhile if increased productivity was tempting enough. Such areas could have been found not only along the east foothills but also at the foot of the Amazyahu fault escarpment and in the delta of Nahal Zohar north of Mount Sedom if fresh or slightly brackish water was available there during the Early Bronze age.
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About 7800 B.P. after the first effects of warmings and droughts associated with the Atlantic Interval, many people of the Mideast moved into river floodplains where suitable agricultural soils and freshwater were available. Prominent examples are in Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, and along the Jordan-Dead Sea rift. The extremely dry climates occasionally improved because of small fluctuations within the Chalcolithic and a larger one during Early Bronze II, when there was a 250-year wet interval. These climatic changes explain the settling, flourishing, and abandonment by the Ghassulians about 6000 B.C. and of the city of Arad, 4900 to 4650 B.P. at the fringe of the desert (R. Amiran and Gophna, 1989, n. 18; D. Amiran, 1991; Gilead, 1993). During the Early Bronze ages overall the climatic conditions in the Dead Sea region were not appreciably different from those at present, as attested by fossil flora found in excavations at Bab edh-Dhr’a and Numeira (McCreery, 1980). High yields of agriculture in fertile irrigated areas were an incentive to settle in the Plain of Sodom. This settling gradually intensified within the fertile plains of the Jordan-Dead Sea region as well as in Canaan through Early Bronze I and II but weakened toward the end of Early Bronze III. This is indicated by the pattern of settlements that developed from individual villages to city-states with satellite villages—mostly because of economic and social motivations— which later were changed into fortified communities (Esse, 1989). A gradual increase in fortification of Early Bronze settlements along the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley basins and the position of some of them along the narrow elevated step-faulted strip of the east foothills (Zori, 1962;Ben-Arieh, 1965; Rast, 1987 and personal communication, 1989) indicate increased need for defense by settlers against raids and invasions. These evidences of stress probably resulted from gradual climatic drying and warming. Investments in defense facilities were worthwhile if increased productivity was tempting enough. Such areas could have been found not only along the east foothills but also at the foot of the Amazyahu fault escarpment and in the delta of Nahal Zohar north of Mount Sedom if fresh or slightly brackish water was available there during the Early Bronze age.