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2011 Jan 26 Monumental Adaptations: Landscapes of Redistribution and Diversion
1. Administrative:
1. Project prospectus
2. Article review due Monday next
3. Sign-up sheet for Week #5 Discussion assignments
HST 489
Week #3 Readings: Read for AP #2: Christian, pp. 79-105; 106-108, 112-125; 125-136; 138-148; 159-169
1. How did religious explanations of the universe influence scientific theories of evolution and Darwin’s idea of natural
selection?
2. How did the concept of historical time influence human theories of the origin of life?
3. How do energy flows in simple life forms relate to the emergence and organization of prehistoric human societies?
How does “complexity” relate to those energy flows, in human and natural history?
Week #4 Readings: Read for AP #2: Christian, pp. 171-203; 205-244; 245-282
1. What were ecological implications of agriculture-- its effects on human energy consumption and social structures?
2. What factors contributed to Neolithic transition and how did transition affect human patterns of residence and migration?
3. What was the “trap of sedentism”, and how did it relate to energy flows and Neolithic systems of social organization?
2. Last Meeting: What are the foundations of evolutionary theory and how do they relate to
environmental history?
A. Christian, pp. 79-105: The Origins of Life and the Theory of Evolution? Cory, James,
Amanda, Miles, Andrea)
1. How did the concept of historical time influence human theories of the origin of life?
2. Life as the antithesis of chaos (organizational energy) and energy flows
3. Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the mechanism for adaptation to environmental
circumstance/context:
a. Merging of history and environment as explanatory mechanisms for evolution
b. Scientific consciousness of environmental history becomes important
B. Christian, pp. 112--136: Life and the Biosphere—New Forms of Complexity/Primates
(Jerrod, Duke, Patrick, Heather, Joe)
1. How do energy flows in simple life forms relate to the emergence and organization of
prehistoric human societies?
2. How does “complexity” relate to those energy flows, in human and natural history?
3. Today: How do human systems of production affect ecological systems and ideas about
wilderness?
A. Christian, pp. 138-169: Evolution and Humans—Human History & Complex Societies
(Katie, Nick, Taylor, Brenna, Angelica)
1. Emergence of complexity in life forms and in human history as it relates to energy flows
2. Role of the Brain in the Neolithic transition and the concept of the Brain as an evolutionary
“mistake”/gamble
B. Christian, pp. 171-203: Beginnings of Human history—Language, Lifeways, Impacts
(Amanda, Duke, Miles, Patrick, Joe)
1. What is the relation between collective learning and the environment?
2. What does Christian mean by the term "giant regional brain"?
3. why do species extinctions coincide with human extensification?
4. What is firestick farming and how did it affect the biosphere in paleolithic times?
5. What happened to Neanderthals and how does that relate to human and environmental
history?
C. Christian, pp. 204-244: Intensification and the Origins of Agriculture—and impacts (Nick,
Taylor, James)
1. How does Christian define “agriculture” and “domestication”?
2. What is the relation between domestication and agriculture?
3. What were the ecological implications of agriculture?
4. what was the “trap of sedentism” and how did it relate to systems of social organization and
energy needs?
5. What areas of the world were centers of agricultural innovation in the Neolithic era, and why?
6. What is the relation between inter-regional exchange and agriculture?
7. What explains the shift?
8. What accounts for the acceleration of doubling time, 2000 BP to the present (chart, p. 209)
9. What is the significance of the relatively recent desertification of the Sahara?
D. Christian, pp. 245-282: Power over Nature and Power over People—“Civilization” (Katie,
Griselda, Rodman, Jerrod, Andrew)
1. When and how did urban systems begin to emerge? What were the implications for
environment/ecology?
2. What does Christian mean by “agrarian civilizations”? (see social structure chart, p. 249)
3. what is the relation between different forms of agriculture and population density?
4. how did draft animals and irrigation influence the nature of agrarian ecologies?
5. how does organization of power in a civilization relate to ecology of systems of production?
E. relations between ideas about nature and human strategies of production:
1. “natural” human priorities and needs as environmental processes/influences
2. different strategies of production as interactions with nature/natural processe?
3. How does agriculture affect perceptions of nature and wilderness? (the "garden" in JudeoChristian myth?)
4. what caused change in subsistence patterns? (paleolithic era 200,000 BCE to 10,000
BCE; then neolithic)
Week 3 Terms:
Charles Darwin
Natural selection
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Erasmus Darwin
Voyage of the Beagle (1831)
Senseless variation (Darwin)
On the Origin of Species (1859)
Gregor Mendel
Stephen Jay Gould
Chemical evolution (crystalline example)
Urey-Miller experiment (1952—“life”)
ammonia)
Panspermia
complexity)
Gaia hypothesis
Speciation
habitats and niches
adaptation
acquired characteristics (1809)
Thomas Malthus (extinctions)
Galapagos Islands
willful adaptation (Lamarck)
the archaeopteryx (disc. 1862)
genetic theory
punctuated equilibrium (1972)
in-organic evolution (Oparin & Haldane)
Amino Acids (from methane, water, and
clay crystals (coastal zones of organic
James Lovelock
population and range
Primates
Australopithecines
Homo erectus
Hominine radiation
Homo habilis
Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis
Commodity Frontiers
Core-periphery
Baltic colonization (1400s-1500s)
1700s)
Preciosities
Settler societies
The “world hunt”
“relay” cities
water-powered sawmills (Baltic trade,
Week 4 Terms:
Speciation
Allopatric speciation (isolated populations)
Collective learning
Totemic thought (social networks in spiritual plane)
“fire-stick farming”
BP)
Gifting economies
Wooly Mammoth
“soft drug” culture
plantation systems
population and range
cultural evolution
“giant regional brain” (exchange networks)
Extensification
Mezhirich (Dneiper River basin, 20,000
Kwakiutl (potlatch)
Venus figurines (Pyrenees, ca 20,000 bP)
Jericho (ca. 9000 BP)
Tehuacan Valley (ca 5500 BP)
Yellow River Valley (ca 8000 BP)
Yangtze River Valley (ca 9500 BP)
Fertile Crescent (ca 9500 BP
Subsaharan Africa (ca 4000 BP)
Catal Hüyük (ca 8000 BP)
maize
millett
rice
cattle cults
sorghum
Epic of Gilgamesh (3800 BP)
Intensification
Secondary products
Irrigation
Consent-based power
Uruk (ca 4700 BP)
shifting agriculture
draft animals
coercive power
tribute-taking societies