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PLA 4579 Introduction to Environmental Planning Peter J. Marcotullio 15 September 2016 Human Impact on Ancient Environments • Who is Charles L. Redman? • What is the main argument(s)/question of the study? • What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? • How does Redman attempt to answer the main question? (method) • What were the main findings/results of the study? • What are the caveats, if any? Who is Charles Redman Who is Charles Redman Charles Redman received his BA from Harvard University, and his MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. He taught at New York University and at SUNYBinghamton before arriving at Arizona State University (ASU) in 1983. Since then, he served nine years as Chair of the Department of Anthropology, seven years as Director of the Center for Environmental Studies and, in 2004, was chosen to be the Julie Ann Wrigley Director of the newly formed Global Institute of Sustainability. From 2007-2010, Redman was the founding director of ASU's School of Sustainability. Who is Charles Redman Redman's interests include human impacts on the environment, sustainable landscapes, rapidly urbanizing regions, urban ecology, environmental education, and public outreach. He is the author or co-author of 14 books. Redman believes in collaborative learning, transdisciplinary approaches, and problem-oriented training to address the environmental, economic, and social challenges of the 21st Century. What are the main arguments in Human Impact on Ancient Environments? What are the main arguments in Human Impact on Ancient Environments? Overarching question(s) (in terms of humanenvironment interactions): "Is humankind on a fast track to destruction? Is there a realistic balance that can be reached? Or, in fact, are the problems not as grave as some would have us believe?” What are the main arguments in Human Impact on Ancient Environments? • Archeology, with its long time scale of study can provide understanding to ecological processes and the role of humans in ecological change, which cannot be identified in other disciplines; – There is evidence suggesting that human impact on the environment in antiquity has been underestimated. “The archeological record is ‘strewn with the wrecks’ of communities that obviously had not learned to cope with their environment in a sustainable manner” What are the main arguments in Human Impact on Ancient Environments? • The forces that determine human-environment relationships are multiple and cannot be reduced to a single factor, such as increasing population, a fuelhungry technology or misguided leaders. More likely understanding this complex issue lies in the recognition of how productive strategies, social institutions and natural environments have “coevolved,” each helping to shape the characteristics of the others. What are the main arguments in Human Impact on Ancient Environments? The dominant question focuses on the manner in which humans have developed productive strategies to extract sufficient food, commodities and other resources from the natural environment. Humans are distinctive because they have developed institutions to help regulate and direct behavior These institutions are based on perceived benefits of cooperative action and shared ideas, hence perception is a fundamental aspect of the humanenvironment relationship What are the main arguments in Human Impact on Ancient Environments? • Human-environmental relations cannot be modeled in a strictly mechanistic way on some maximization theory; one must account for the “human” factor. Productive strategies, social institutions, and virtually every human interaction with the environment have been conditioned by the existence of that very uniquely human phenomenon – culture; What are the main arguments in Human Impact on Ancient Environments? • The organizing theme throughout the book is that humans as individuals, communities and entire societies are continually making decisions on land use that profoundly affect the condition of the surrounding environment and therefore determine their own future What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? Seven elements to the framework: 1. Changes in land use take many forms and are at the center of various human impacts on the environment. What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? Seven elements to the framework: 2. The forces that drive this process emanate from a variety of sources, but it is easiest to conceive of them as either from the human environment, such as demand for food and commodities, or from the natural environment, such as climate change or natural disasters. What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? Seven elements to the framework: 3. Decision makers work within their own context of knowledge of the environment and potential productive strategies in order to determine changes in the land use system that both meet demands and are socially appropriate. What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? Seven elements to the framework: 4. These changes in land use will have impact on the land cover and soil conditions. What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? Seven elements to the framework: 5. Over time this land-use change will result in more fundamental changes in the landscape and the biogeochemical processes that support it. What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? Seven elements to the framework: 6. As the process continues humans will respond based on a variety of inputs to either expand the scope of the change, intensify it, or abandon it altogether. What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? Seven elements to the framework: 7. Results can be immediate, they may become obvious in a few years or their true implications may not be apparent for centuries What is the theoretical framework by which Prof. Redman does the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? What are the tasks necessary to provide the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? According to Redman there are 5 critical tasks to this work including: 1. Debunk the widespread and important misconception that the natural landscape, untouched by human hands, exists and that societies before European contact, lived in a utopian paradise What are the tasks necessary to provide the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? According to Redman there are 5 critical tasks including: 2. Demonstrate the human impacts in antiquity, not just climate change, have lead to significant environmental alterations; and relatedly 3. Demonstrate the importance of humanbiological-physical interactions over sufficient time depth to allow meaningful conclusions about the role of human in the environmental change What are the tasks necessary to provide the analysis? Human Impact on Ancient Environments? According to Redman there are 5 critical tasks including: 4. Document the human activities and decisions that led to sustainable situations or to environmental degradation at various points in the past 5. Examine the decisions that conditions the humanenvironment interactions to better understand why people frequently adopted strategies that may have made sense in the short term, but had dire long-term consequences How does Redman attempt to answer his questions? How does Redman attempt to answer his questions? • Redman organizes the study (and his argument) as follows: – Introduction (overview and outline) – 2 chapters of background/theory (attitudes and concepts) – 4 chapters of “case studies” focused on different environmental impacts: • • • • Domestication of animals; Agriculture; Urbanization; and Growth in forces of complexity – Conclusion (summation and final thoughts) Perceptions: Attitudes toward the environment Perceptions: Attitudes toward the environment • Redman emphasizes the importance of attitudes in shaping action in the past as well as the present. He examines the historical development of attitudes towards the environment among Western Civilizations, then considers attitudes prevalent in non-Western societies and concludes this background with a discussion of contemporary attitudes on the environment. Attitudes toward the environment • He focuses the discussion on three ideas: – That the world was created in a “perfect” form – That the environment has shaped humans and their cultures – That humans have modified the environment in order to develop and that nature are a set of resources to satisfy human demands Attitudes toward the environment • Redman suggests that there are multiple and often conflicting ideas and attitudes during any period in both Western and non-Western civilizations. • He seems to suggest that utilitarianism won out over conservationism in the West • He also suggests that despite notions and attitudes of nature conservation and protection (balancing) in Non-Western societies (e.g. Asia), they also degraded their environments significantly Attitudes toward the environment • He puts forth the idea that rather than thinking of the dichotomy of attitudes about the environment as being Western/non-Western attitudes, it is better to conceptualize the dichotomy as large-scale versus small scale societies. – In small scale societies humans are perceived as part of nature on a par with animals. The dominant theme is mutuality; existing under a moral order that binds together humans, nature and sometimes even the gods into one family. Yet, even in these societies, there was cases of environmental impact. Were these impacts serious and enduring? Attitudes toward the environment • During the contemporary period, Redman suggests the utilitarian attitude (use the environment for maximum benefit to humankind) wins out. • He concludes that only recently have scientists and philosophers began to conceptualize an integration of humans and nature (starting with George Perkins Marsh) • Yet, even today popular attitudes are not congruent with scientific studies. There are many different attitudes toward the environment held by different people Attitudes toward the environment Attitudes toward the environment • Redman ends this chapter with questions about actions to preserve the environment. He states if there are different notions of what an ideal environment is and therefore different notions of what can be done to improve the environment, how are we to decide which way to go? • The answer to what actually constitutes a natural landscape or a pristine habitat lies at the core of our environmental future Concepts that organize our thoughts Concepts that organize our thoughts • Redman uses ecological concepts such as, biotic, abiotic, biosphere, organism, population, community, niche, system, ecosystem, threshold, feedbacks, predictability, resistance, resilience, food chain, trophic levels, ecological succession and ecological efficiency. • He also introduces concepts related to the social sciences, as human dominated ecosystems differ in fundamental ways from other biological systems: information, technology, economics, and social organization play greater roles. Concepts that organize our thoughts • Other concepts related to human decision making include driving and mitigating forces, which give rise to stress (nutritional, disease, demographic, climatic, etc.) and human adaptation Concepts that organize our thoughts • Stress and responses to stress form a central set of concepts for Redman. According to him, human responses can be genetic, physiological or behavioral. – Behavioral responses are the most important and include either population control ( reproductive control or population migration) or resource management (new patterns of movement or area integration of settlements, environmental alteration and altered technologies of resource production) Concepts that organize our thoughts • Stress responses are conditioned by strategies. Two different strategies include “least-cost” (Zipf 1949) which states that people try to get jobs done with the least outlay of energy. Von Thunen theory of land use is a “least-cost” strategy. • The other is to “optimize” a situation in terms of economic alternatives (Simon 1957). • Pre-industrial producers are conservative and typically reduce the risk for their families survival. Models for preventing economic disasters are probably more appropriate than those that assume a maximizing strategy. Concepts that organize our thoughts • Key among the alternatives available to producing individuals to manipulate are 1) to gather or produce; 2) to raise crops or domestic animals; 3) to rely on a range of food sources or a single course; and 4) to extract resources intensively or not. Decision makers narrow the set of feasible answers and ranks alternatives Concepts that organize our thoughts • As agrarian societies develop into complex social systems, new forces reshape the decision-making process, seriously threatening human-land relationships. That is, many decisions are not made by those who actually produce food and goods, but by individuals and groups who may not be under the same constraints as the producers and may view risks and rewards differently. Concepts that organize our thoughts • That is, the institutions and belief system that legitimize the elites must be designed to influence those producing goods to generate a agricultural surplus (including livestock) that can be used to maintain those who are not involved with producing goods. • As such, in complex societies, there are a number of interdependent sub-systems and as a whole the system does not always act in an adaptive manner when faced with stress. Concepts that organize our thoughts • Maldaptation occurs internally, not by creating stress but when actions reduce survival changes by inhibiting the effectiveness of its response to stress. – These include poor detection of deviation of variables from crucial ranges, breaks in feedback loops, excessive delay of information transmissions, distortion of information in transit and failure of higher order regulators to understand the information they have received (Rappaport, 1978) Concepts that organize our thoughts • If one accepts both conclusions that large scale civilization are maladaptive and that at the same time these civilization appear to be the inevitable product of the evolution of small-scale societies, then we must ask ourselves whether the evolution of culture and the entire human experience is in fact maladaptive. Concepts that organize our thoughts • Redman argues, as opposed to the notion that people, a community or nation are in conscious control of the environment and thus their destiny, people and the environment have coevolved, gradually, with changes in each affecting the other. Benefits were not always observable, and once noticed could not always be sought, as events and dynamics could not be removed from context Case studies Animal exploitation • Animals are important, if not crucial to human development. They provide meat, hides, bone, antlers, oil and ligaments. They can also provide milk and wool, serve as beasts of burden carrying goods, pulling carts and moving people. Animals are also mobile, so they can migrate with people, if their meat and other resources aren’t immediately needed. Finally, animals and herbivores in general store food energy, sometimes food that is not available to people. Animal exploitation • Humans have impacted animals in three ways: – Domestication – Dispersal/expansion and – Extinction/contraction Domestication • One of the greatest themes in the study of human influence on nature is domestication. Domestication • Domestication has been one of the most profound ways in which humans have affected animal. Relatively few animals species have been domesticated in comparison with plant species, but for those that have been the consequences are so substantial that the differences between breeds of animals of the same species often exceed those between different species under natural conditions. – Simply look at the range of shapes and sizes of modern dog and cat breeds. Domestication Holstien Guernsey Ayrshire Or look at the domestication of cattle Domestication • Wild ancestors of cattle gave no more than a few ounces of milk daily • In 1900, the 17 million USA dairy cows provided over 3,000 lbs per cow of milk a year, • By 1944, the 25.6 million cows provided 5,314 lbs of milk per cow annually • By 2005 there were 9.1 million cows in the US and they each provided 17,000 lbs of milk annually • Note: 1 gallon of milk would weigh between 8.5 and 8.8 pounds. • By 2005, a single cow could produce ~1,800 gallons a year! Domestication • Redman (1978) and Diamond (1997) argue that the differences in the availability of draft animals had a major impact on the developmental trajectories of the Old World and New World civilizations. – Diamond argues that Eurasia had advantages such as many potentially productive wild plants and animals (13 species of draft mammals compared to 0 in the New World), large land mass to support more people and and east-west orientation that was environmentally efficient for transportation of ideas and resources. Dispersal and invasion Dispersion Dispersion • Humans have been the most successful dispersing species in Earth’s history. Modern societies, by moving wildlife from place to place, consciously or otherwise, are breaking down these classic distinct faunal realms. • Human have introduced a new order of magnitude into distances over which dispersal, invasion and colonization take places: – Through designed or accidental transport of seeds or other propagules – Through the disturbance of nature plant and animal communities and of their habitat – By the creation of new habitats and niches Dispersion • Redman notes that the transported landscapes (Kirch, 1982) have been caused by demand for: – – – – – – Reliable food sources Recreation Comfortable and aesthetically pleasing surroundings Provision of familiar landscapes in insecure places Control of pests Revenue Dispersion of Brown Trout (Brown trout, taken in Willow Creek of Star Valley Wyoming.) Brook trout , fish on display at an Iowa DNR exhibit Dispersion • In the eighteenth century there were few oceangoing vessels of more than 300 tons • International seaborne trade in 2007, driven by emerging and transition economies, surpassed a record 8 billion tons • Of the total weight: – 1866 million tons was crude oil, – 815 million tons was other oil products and – 5341 million tons was dry goods Dispersion Dispersion Dispersion Expansion Expansion • There is also a large class of beasts which profit from the environmental conditions wrought by humans and therefore have become closely linked to them. These animals are often referred to as synanthropes. Pigeons, sparrows, rats and mice, squirrel, etc. The House Sparrow covers one quarter of Earth’s surface and over the past 100 years it has doubled the areas that it inhabits as settlers, immigrants and other have carried it form one continent to another. It is found around settlements both in Amazonian and the Arctic Circle (Doughty, 1978). Expansion Expansion Expansion • The saline Lake Nakuru in Kenya before 1961 was not a particularly diverse ecosystem. There were essentially one or two species of algae, one copepod, one rotifer, corixids, notonectids, and some 500,000 flamingos belonging virtually to one species. • In 1962, however, a fish (Tilapia graham) was introduce in order to check mosquitoes. As a result, its numbers increased greatly. Then some 30 species of fish eating birds (pelicans, anhinga, cormorants, herons, egrets, grebes, terns and fish eagles) have colonized the area to make Lake Nakuru a much more diverse system. Expansion Extinction Extinction • There are several general conclusions about the nature of extinctions: – There is an inverse relations between extinction rates and population size – Among species with similar population size, the one showing wider fluctuations in abundance is more susceptible to extinction – There is a natural susceptibility of mega fauna for extinctions due to their lower population densities and the slower rate or reproduction and population replacement. Extinction Extinction • There are particularly important environments conducive to high species diversity and such biodiversity ‘hot spots’ need to be made priorities for conservation. – Myers et al (2000) has argued that as many as 44% of all species of vascular plants and 35% of all species in four groups of vertebrate animals are confined to just 25 hot spots that comprise a mere 1.4% of Earth’s land surface.. Extinction Extinctions • Humans are versatile exterminators. Overkill is the theory that humans have exploited animals and driven them to extinction. • Secondary drivers that have lead to human induced extinctions include habitat destruction, fragmentation, introduction of competitors, degradation and trophic cascades Extinctions Extinctions • Redman offer two case studies of extinctions: – Avifauna on Pacific Islands – Megafaunal extinctions Extinctions • In Polynesia, an examination of extinction of birds on Hawaii by Kirch (1982) estimates that no less than half of the bird species native to the island were driven to extinction in prehistoric times. Among these were flightless birds that had evolved because they had no terrestrial competitors and large flying birds that had vulnerable nests • Steadman (1995) asserts that fully 60 endemic species of land birds became extinct during that period compared to only 20-25 during the historic period Extinctions Extinctions The impact of agrarian systems The impact of agrarian systems • The human impact on vegetation is central to understanding our influence on the planet • The introduction of agriculture is regarded as the single most important transformation in human history • Redman argues that the invention of agriculture was not an “aha moment,” but occurred slowly, such that the inventors did not recognize its introduction as something new The impact of agrarian systems • Agriculture resulted in three important changes to society: – 1) sedentary communities; – 2) changes in family and social values (private property); and – 3) changes in the organization of productive tasks and consequently to changes in the social and political organization of communities The impact of agrarian systems • Redman then examines three case studies of the impact of human agrarian systems on the environment including the Early Levant, Ancient Greece, Italy and Spain and the American Southwest • While each of these stories is slightly different they seem to follow a similar pattern The impact of agrarian systems The impact of agrarian systems • Why did people who were able to take into account so many forces during development, make decisions that led to environmental degradation, especially when they recognized that it was occurring? • Farmers basically have three domains of decisions: 1) land use allocation, 2) what crops to grow and 3) how intensively to pursue agriculture The impact of agrarian systems • Despite the growing complexity influences on farmer decision making, he seems to suggest that a limited number of factors basic to human organization have guided the way agrarian societies developed and that these factors are responsible for the decisions to degrade environmental conditions The growth of world urbanism The growth of world urbanism • With an increasing reliance on an expanding food base provided by agrarian innovations and improvements in the transport of foodstuffs, it became possible for larger and larger numbers of people to exist and to live in nucleated locations • The emergence of urban society introduced a whole new set of human-environmental interactions. New impacts include: 1) a larger number of people and their consumption needs; 2) Increased demand for building materials; 3) Land use for settlements; 4) New behaviors including industry, trade and hierarchical administration The growth of world urbanism • The resultant changes in the landscape include increased land under production, irrigation (with salinization) and amplified soil erosion (and checkdams/retaining walls/terracing). The growth of world urbanism • In Mesopotamia, salinization is often pointed to a major problem leading to the region’s reduced political importance • Four thousand years ago, the Ur III Dynasty was situated in the southern half of Mesopotamia and consisted of numerous cities, each of several tens of thousands of people, supported by an associated hinterland of farms and villages. The economic system relied on irrigated fields of winter-cultivated cereals, secondary crops and herding sheep The growth of world urbanism • Centralization of control facilitated the expansion of agricultural production and greater irrigation projects • Studies suggest that wheat farming declined from 2000 to 1700 BC, when villages were abandoned. Uplands areas were deforested, forcing people to use dung for fuel and that regionally, there was a loss of the deciduous Oak and Juniper forest. The growth of world urbanism • In Mexico and Central America, Mayans grew corn, slowing increasing the size of the kernal and the number of kernel rows. From 2000 to 1000 BC corn foodstuff and gourds, squash and beans allowed for establishment of year-round villages • Mayans used slash and burn agriculture across vast territories supporting 8 to 10 million people prior to 1000 AD. • Mayan civilization was well known for its carefully ornamental temples, the focus of religious activities, trade relations and whatever political integration existed • By 1000 AD, however, there is evidence of drop in population, political and social breakdown and environmental degradation The growth of world urbanism • The picture that emerges suggests a vast anthropogenic ecosystem through much of the Holocene. High forest was replaced by farming and settlement. The drain on the land of dense population, intensive agricultural manipulation and construction of massive settlements increased to the point were the system was no longer sustainable. • By the end of the tenth century AD, most of the large settlements of the Maya uplands and southern lowland had been abandoned or seriously depopulated • Deterioration coincided with a relatively dry period The growth of world urbanism • The Hohokam of Southern Arizona, developed a distinctively enduring settlement system that outlasted most of their southwestern and North American neighbors. Renewal of fields through waterborne additives permitted a sustainable agriculture. The yield of domestic crops was supplemented by tended and weedy indigenous species. The growth of world urbanism • Because settlements were localized along watercourses, the large surrounding expanses were left uninhabited, allowed for the continued growth of wild vegetation for fuel, craft materials and edible wild resources. An overarching social organization that acted to spread agricultural risks over a sufficient number of environmental zones and allowed for shortfalls that would be buffered through social connections. Nevertheless Hohokam society came to an end in the fourteenth century Chapter 6 – The growth of world urbanism • Despite conservation methods, the longer the Hohokam existed in the same location, the more pressure they put on floodplain dynamics and on the fertility of the soil. There society was maintained, however through an exchange system. When the climate changed, entering into a long period of greater variability, including disastrous flooding, it put an additional pressure on the Hohokam system that could not be easily sustained. Chapter 6 – The growth of world urbanism • After two centuries (800-1000 AD) of consistency, the river water (flood) levels started to fluctuate, signaling a changing climate • During years of stability, the population expanded • During the years of variability, starting around 1075 AD) the Hohokam system weakened • Following 1250 AD climatic patterns become even more erratic The growth of world urbanism • Around 1350 AD, the highest flood levels were followed by the driest years. The weakened system could not recover and that ended this civilization The growth of world urbanism • The main point of the examples is that in preindustrialized societies, short term political stability economic maximization were only achieved by weakening the capacity of the productive system to react to internal and external challenges (weakened resilience) and hence, undermined its long-term survival. The growth of world urbanism • Cooperative activities in many contexts may help survival of small-scale systems in the short run, but as those cooperative ventures become larger and more formalized, their adaptive potential does not always operate. The growth of world urbanism • Moreover, state ideologies asserted at that time, as do many today, that everyone’s interest were served when the interests of the central rulers were served, was not true. • The underlying cause of mismanagement seems to emanate at least in part from the hierarchical nature of complex societies. Forces that grew society Forces that grew society • While many forces that are part of the development of complex societies are negative in terms of the long term relationship with the environment, they provide improvements in human society • So, are they positive or negative attributes? Depends on your viewpoint… Forces that grew society • Expanding food production is a fundamental aspect of human development • With these decisions, ancient societies decided to divert produce and personnel from the food production system and allocate them to the support of activities, items and individuals not directly related to producing food. This factor is key to sedentary lifestyles • Anthropologists have identified four strategies of intensified production Forces that grew society • Redman believes that all these strategies demand a structure of decision making in complex societies that exacerbates the tendency to overexploit both laborers and the landscape by building a system that benefits from increasing quantities of goods • However successful these strategies are at most times and in most places, they do introduce several weaknesses into the system – mal-adaptations that make them more vulnerable to crisis Forces that grew society • Population is a factor in creating an imbalance between society and the environment. • Redman presents the concept of carrying capacity, or the biomass and other resources within an area that can support a population. • This concept, however, conceptualizes population as a dependent variable. That is, population will change once levels reach capacity (Malthus, 1878) • Other suggest, however, that population can be an independent variable. Population determines, for example, agricultural developments Forces that grew society • Boserup (1965) for example, see post-war population growth not caused only by technological innovation. Rather she suggests that the key decisions farmers made about land use were not separate choices. It wasn’t 1) extending cultivation into new lands, yes or no; and then 2) intensifying cultivation on current fields, yes or no; but in which way do we use any piece of land. • Some lands were fallow, but they still provided food (from hunting). Other lands were cultivated. Therefore the value of land was not constant, but depended on human use Forces that grew society • In this way Boserup hypothesized five types of agricultural land use in order to increase intensity of exploitation Forces that grew society • Boserup’s essential element was that food output per labor hour input decreases as one shortens the fallow and increases the intensity of cultivation. • Communities only intensify when they have too. That is, technological fixes are found when the population grows. Forces that grew society • How does population expand (what are the long term trends)? Forces that grew society • Others see population changes in waves, in nonsynchronic fashion, associated with environmental degradation with significant declines Forces that grew society • Disease and community health are equally important to soil erosion, deforestation, or species extinction • The origins, spread and evolution of the most dangerous infectious diseases are closely tied to decision humans made to domesticate animals, intensify agricultural production and pursue an urban way of life. Forces that grew society • Probably the single most significant human decision to impact the nature of disease was the widespread adoption of a sedentary urban life. – Diseases are transmitted through contact (eaten, vector, water borne, etc), which keep it alive – Zoonosis – smallpox and tuberculosis (cattle), measles (dogs) influenza (pigs and chickens), common cold (horses), etc. – Large number of hosts close together – Context that facilitates disease growth and transmission (life cycles of disease compatible with human condition – water, waste, etc) – Trade and contact with individuals from far away Forces that grew society • Community nutrition is assumed to have improved with agriculture, but some argue whether this was true. There is evidence supporting both sides of this question. • It is likely that during the early stages of agriculture, when domestic plants were primarily a supplement to the gathered array of foods, community nutrition may have improved. Once it became dominant, however, dietary balance would have diminished. Some argue that hunters and gatherers were in better health than early agriculturalists Forces that grew society • At the same time, agriculture allowed for larger populations. Population growth occurred in spite of a general diminution of both child and adult life expectancies, a questionable advance in human diet and a quantum increase in contagious diseases • This suggests that forces, social and otherwise, that encouraged the adoption of agriculture and eventually of urbanisms were extremely powerful, being able to override the negative impacts of early farming on those that attempted it. Forces that grew society • Ancient industry and trade facilitated specialization of labor within communities and specialization of production between communities and regions • Early industry facilitated mining and smelting. Industrial production was substantial enough to produce significant hemisphere-wide air pollution. Lead concentration levels were 400% high than natural during the Greek and Roman times • Trade began, at the latest by 7000 BC, during early farming village development. Obsidian was traded in the Near East. As village life developed other goods such as turquoise and copper were traded Forces that grew society • Hierarchical government run by a minority of elites is one of the fundamental aspects of a complex society. The other is that it is comprised of many people. • Elites were in a favorable position for a number of reasons: 1) they could redistribute goods back to the commoners in popular ways; 2) they could arm themselves and disarm others; 3) the could use their monopoly of force to maintain order, improving personal security; and 4) they could formulate an ideology or religion to justify their position and the advantages it confers • Elites act in self-interest Forces that grew society • Population growth, community health, industrial production, trade and hierarchical government (I would also add technology) are the cornerstones of modern civilization, each of them an essential element of social change and each of them with dramatic environmental implications The past as prologue Redman’s viewpoints about the human impact on ancient environments The summary of the argument The past as prologue Redman’s viewpoints about the human impact on ancient environments 1. For a very long time and in every part of the globe, humans have demonstrated that they are extraordinarily talented, able to understand the intricacies of their environment and willing to take action to promote their continued survival 2. Humans have developed cultural traditions and technological innovations that have allowed them to successfully exist in virtually every locality on Earth, in ever-increasing numbers and in more densely packed settlements 3. Whether the problems confronting them were a changing climate, deteriorating soil fertility, or too many people to feed, human groups have reorganized themselves to meet these challenges, and in most circumstances and by most measures they have succeeded The past as prologue Redman’s viewpoints about the human impact on ancient environments 4. Response to environmentally related stresses have included new techniques of subsistence, new modes of transport and exchange, new social organizational forms, changes in residential mobility, downsizing of communities and outright abandonment of regions 5. Local environments, in virtually all cases, have been significantly altered by human presence. Pre-human ecosystemic balances have been replaced by new sets of relationships, with their own balances and trajectories that include human impacts. Many of these local situations have demonstrated a degree of sustainability, at least on the time scale of human generations The past as prologue Redman’s viewpoints about the human impact on ancient environments 6. Human impacts on the environment vary with each situation, but in general they transform biota so that their net yield for human consumption is increased and natural plant and animal conditions often are degraded 7. Human decisions about resource use and the environment are usually predicated on maximizing short-term returns, and only secondarily take into account long-term consequences of these actions The past as prologue Redman’s viewpoints about the human impact on ancient environments 8. The trajectory of the human career appears to be irreversible. The factors that give rise to the social condition at any point in time are so complex that attempting to reconstruct former conditions in the present is almost impossible. Social change, like biological evolution, will not allow the recreation of extinct conditions, although it may be possible to duplicate some of their characteristics in a new form The past as prologue Redman’s viewpoints about the human impact on ancient environments • “Seeing the world through the eyes of a human, it is a good world, because we have acted to make it so…I do hold a fundamentally optimistic view that despite the maladapations we have created in developing the urban society of today, we also have built in balances that continue to bring the system back in line.” The past as prologue Redman’s viewpoints about the human impact on ancient environments • There are two questions that remain, those that haven’t been addressed by ancient conditions: – 1) The scale of the problem has changed and it remains a question of whether in the past the problems have been too small to be globally threatening – 2) The nature of human impacts themselves have changes so that we are now far more threatening to nature The past as prologue Redman’s viewpoints about the human impact on ancient environments “With the continued pressure on the decision-makers of our society by those who are concerned with environmental preservation, I predict that there is a substantially better chance than ever for use to survive each threat…The stakes are very high when we are taking chances with the world’s environment. I do not think we can treat these decisions as we would evaluate risk in a normal game of chance”