Cultural Evolution and Global Change

01/25/2005

I. Cultural Evolutionary Advances

The development of complex technology depended upon the advances of Upper Paleolithic tools. These included implements for individual tasks (e.g., a variety of stone tools for different purposes), tools of multiple materials (e.g., carved wood, baskets and woven bags, bone), and compound tools that combined several different materials (e.g., stone and bone/wood harpoons and sickles). Most were used to procure natural resources for food or clothing. Others to transport these materials from the point of origin to the place of consumption. And still others for cooking or the chemical transformation of natural materials into forms that could be used for other purposes, e.g., adhesives or dyes.

The technological devises, which were developed in the Upper Paleolithic, became the bases for more complex tools of subsequent periods – Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages.

A. Drivers

During the course we have examined, and will continue to do so, those forces – natural and cultural – that can change the environment. From a cultural perspective we must consider:

1. Technological Developments

a. Efficient Tools – tools that conserve human energy when they are used, those that conserve natural material when they are made, and those that are most effective to procure natural resources.

b. Fire – could be used to transform natural products, e.g., cooking food, or changing the composition of material, e.g., clay to pottery, or e.g., ore to metal. Fire can also be used to transform the natural environment.

2. Domestication of Plants and Animals

Domesticated plants and animals are artifacts. Humans for the purposed they desire determine their form. Humans select the necessary genetic changes. Domesticated plants and animals are dependent upon humans for breeding, for their care, and in short for their vary survival. Domesticated organisms allowed people to predict where they would be found and in what quantity. They reduced the risk of failure or low return during food quests.

3. Complex Social Organizations

There are many forms of social organization. Each organizes human populations for different tasks, for the resolution of disputes, and for providing services essential for particular ways of life.

Kinship is the basis of organization for the smallest population units. It is augmented by people from within the group with particular skills, e.g., hunting or mid-wives, experiences, often based on age.

Social scientists classify social organizations many different ways. One simple way is to use population size and institutional functions that support it.

BANDS. These are the smallest units of population (10-50) that reside together but usually on the move from one patch of plant and animal foods to another. The basic economic mode is hunting and gathering. Most social functions relate to subsistence, social continuity (marriage, socialization), and physical and spiritual well being. There is no overarching authority or even permanent leaders. Disputes or feuds are often resolved by simply moving away from another family.

TRIBES. These are larger population units (up to 500) that reside together most of a year. Kinship is still the basis of social life but many families may live together. Integration is achieved by special task groups drawn from related families, e.g., clans, or sodalities that cross-cut families to assure group survival, e.g., hunt or war societies. The economic base depends to a major part or agriculture or a “domesticated landscape,’ gatherers who manage extensive stands of wild plants to assure a minimal level of production. Leaders emerge from kin groups but depend appreciably on achievement to benefit society.

CHIEFDOMS. Chiefs hold inherited positions that distinguish them as superior to others in the population. Chiefs hold together groups of several thousand permanent residents. The chiefs often have important religious functions to assure crop production and good health in the community. The economy is based on agriculture but also managed products from different ecological areas within the dominion of the chiefdom. The chief and his associates redistribute these products. Special symbols are used to distinguish the ranks of people and the respect they deserve. Some of these are exotic goods that are reserved for higher ranked individuals – sumptuary goods.

STATES. States organize large numbers of people, many from different ethic groups, and effect internal tranquility through permanent institutions. These include a legal system, standing army, taxation, currency, craft specialists, markets, and bureaucracy. The geo-political area is often very large and ecologically diverse. Although cities may be present, other sized residential units are also occupied, especially those that provide special products for the market, e.g., firewood.

EMPIRES. These are large units of millions of people that have been able to conquer other states. Their geographic hold can be intercontinental.

B. Responses to Constellations of Drivers

When we examine complex societies (Chiefdoms, States, Empires), we find that they usually respond to a constellation of drives, e.g., several simultaneously. In some situations we will find a single driver is important but it is usually a catastrophic event – natural (volcano, El Nino, drought) or cultural (world war, nuclear event).

1. Increased Population. There are many reasons for population expansion and in the terms of this course the drivers include technological change, the security of new (exotic) crops, and social organization to accommodate the new people.

2. Globalized Biodiversity. The drivers of this post-AD 1500 environmental change are new technology for transoceanic navigation and transportation, exploration and colonization sponsored by empires, the deliberate introduction of new plants and animals, and the accidental arrival of weeds, insect and animal pests (rats and mice), and diseases.

3. Anthropogenic Ecosystems. Several drivers enabled the globe to become a mosaic of anthropogenic ecosystems (human configured and controlled landscapes). These included fire, the technological means to clear forests, dependence upon domesticated plants and animals, and social organization to link expanding or colonizing groups together.

CASE STUDY: Prehistoric Forest Clearance in Northern Europe

The Elm Decline – this radical change in forest cover ca. 500 years ago was noted in pollen records across northern Europe more than a half century ago. The prehistoric people who ocupied the area at the time were farmers who possessed

Neolithic technology – domesticated plants and animals that originated in the Near East, new tools in the form of ground stone ax to clear large trees, and pottery to cook grain and meat. Once the loss of elm forest cover was correlated with climatic change to Atlantic/Sub Boreal – cool and wet period as the cause but no more.

More recent pollen records from across Europe reveal that this event did not happen simultaneously and is difficult to correlate with a single climatic cause. From France to Scotland forest change occurred from 5000 to 3000 years ago as a wave rather than a single event.

In Denmark the idea was proposed that the elm decline resulted from pasturalists cutting branches to feed nutritious leaves to cattle.

A closer examination of the pollen records reveals that as the elm pollen declined there were many more herbaceous (weed) pollen types and cereal grain pollens than before the decline. The explanation is that the elm decline is a result of farmers clearing the forest extensively to plant grain and to raise animals in the fallow land that became pastures. This has been the prevailing interpretation of the pollen diagrams from Europe. They reflect the emergence of extensive anthropogenic ecosystems and a transformed landscape.

Now some argue for Dutch Elm Disease as the cause of the elm decline. There is some tantalizing evidence but from most sites spores from the fungal agent or damaged wood are absent. This hypothesis remains to be substantiated.

4. Human System Maladaptation

All human interactions with the environment are not beneficial in the long run. Humans can use many drivers to adapt to the land but find they cannot sustain a successful way of life over time. The results can be studied best in colonized habitats.

CASE STUDY: Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

Easter Island was contacted by Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen in 1722. His crew found a barren volcanic island of 64 square miles surrounded by the sea. There were virtually no trees and agricultural production was marginal. The inhabitants were miserable – starving, fighting, living in caves. Yet there were some 200 standing carved volcanic statues (moai) – 2-10 meters tall, 20-50 tons; on platforms and some had heavy red stone hair caps. What they had to do with the residents was a mystery to them. Only 4 leaky, 10 foot canoes that not seaworthy served for transportation and kept the 2000 inhabitants bound to their impoverished land.

The misery continued in 1774 when Captain Cook arrived. He found all statues already uprooted and the population had declined to 630.

What do archaeologists tell us?

By using plant and animal remains, pollen, and artifacts, archaeologists can reconstruct past environments and human lifeways. People arrived by large sea-going canoes (cataman-like) ca. AD 400. Some speculate that just a few boats arrived with a small founding population of 40-50 people. Their language, artifacts, DNA points to Polynesians from Marquesas in the eastern Pacific as the source of the original population. The island was forested with 80’ tall Chilean palm trees, other trees with some yielding quantities of bark for rope, many land based nesting birds. Very fertile land was a paradise for growing taro, bananas, sweet potatoes, and sugarcane they brought. They carried chickens with them and inadvertently Polynesian rats.

AD 400-800 They cleared the land to grow taro and other food but needed protein from porpoises and seabirds procured with boats made from the palm logs. Their population grew and the island provided bountiful harvests. To organize the population, they imposed the religious and social organization ideas they brought with them.

AD 1200-1500 Complex Chiefdom evolved with extensive resource redistribution across island. Clan rivalry expressed itself with ever larger moai.

Population started doubling each century –0.3% per year or = developing countries; some claim 20,000 but more likely 7000-10000 maximum.

Erected ceremonial statues – some 200 using log sleds pushed over rollers to sea-facing ceremonial locations where they erected them on platforms. This was an island activity with human labor and simple tools, not the works of South American Indians or extraterrestrial beings with lasers to quarry stone! As some archaeologists have claimed.

AD 1500 Ecological destruction underway- forests gone; no palm for

boats

Stone quarries abandoned leaving some 700 unfinished; no new

statues erected.

No porpoise meat because no wood to build seaworthy boats. Warfare prevailed with weapons abundant in the archaeological record. Warriors became social leaders in place of the heredity chiefs of old. Human fertility down with little food and chickens and rats the main protein.

AD 1680 Biodiversity gone – no insects, no land birds, seabird breeding ground decimated , forest destroyed (people cut, burned, and pollinators gone), soil eroded to degree it would not support crops.

Food shortage – cannibalism, no porpoises, birds decline, eat rats, famine

Population crash: 1722=2,000; 1774=630; 1877=150 (small pox brough by sailors added to woes)

As an example of systemic maladaptation. Eastern Islanders did not correct practices on the landscape as they progressively destroyed it and their culture. Lesson: ecological overshoot – exceeded carrying capacity of land and could not reverse it. Degraded environment, famine, warfare, social collapse, and population decline.

CASE STUDY: Norse Settlement of Greenland

Norse arrived from Iceland ca. AD 985 as herders, farmers and resource traders (ivory and hides). The climate – Medieval warm ca. AD 800-1250 – 5-6 degrees warmer – enabled successful farming and open sea navigation.

The colonizing Norse experienced and successful adaptation to the environment and a cultural Peak – 1000-1260. They were part of regional economic system that allowed them to stay economically and socially connected to other Norse settlements. Colonists owned land and had slaves to help work. Overall they were part of a political hierarchy that did not include the colonists at the top but they were quite comfortable according to the sagas and archaeological evidence.

Population expansion to some 5,000 allowed new settlements up West Coast of Greenland. By AD 1000 some had tried to colonize Newfoundland.

Then things changed in the face of climatic change designated the “Little Ice Age” AD 1250-1500. Summers were shorter and colder. Social order economic system broke down. Farmers lost land because of debt to absent landlord-client system. Stressed economic life in all phases– sailing became difficult with more sea ice and farming was problematic on low fertility and eroded land. Their economic crisis led to loss of local decision-making. Evidence from beetles and insects indicate that hay for livestock was of poor quality. Starvation was at hand and they were forced to eat the last of their cattle and hunting dogs, which they needed to hunt caribou.

AD 1300 Norse kept trying to live a traditional life and died out through starvation and migration..

Cold conditions limited farming and pack ice curtailed sailing.

Cultural system maladapted for adapting to severe climatic change.

AD 1350 – abandoned Greenland.

However, a model existed for them to cope with these changing conditions. By way of culture contrast – Inuit Thule Eskimos also lived in western Greenland.

They used same area but had technology to hunt deep-sea resources – baleen whales and holes in sea ice for seals and fish – skin clothing, harpoons rejected by the Norse helped they to survive.

II. Evidence for Global Environmental Change

When discussing the past or time series trends, scientific evidence is required to substantiate any claims. This is particularly true to comprehend climatic changes that can be imperceptible to the average person. Beyond written records, evidence commonly derives from two sources – biological and ice cores. With the exception of tree rings that can yield precise annual dates about precipitation, most biological evidence is relatively dated and is not precise enough to monitor actual events. Ice cores, on the other hand, for the most part consist of ice varves that can be counted backwards and give reliable calendrical dates for climatic events.

A. Biological Evidence – pollen, paleontological plant and animal fossils, and archaeological date of plants and animal remains. Together these can be used to reconstruct past environments.

B. Ice Cores – are drilled from glaciers or major accumulations of ice. The individual carves can be examined with precise instruments to identify and to measure the amount of gases trapped in the ice, isotopes of oxygen to measure temperatures, and aerosol dust. Ice core results can be compared from many global regions.

Vostok, Antarctica – 11,900’ or 420,000 years Summit and Dyes 3, Greenland back to 110,000 years Peru, Bolivia, China, Russia

1. Temperature

Ice cores demonstrate numerous temperature fluctuations. Most cultures actually adapted to these fluctuations – land use, trade, redistribution, migration.

CASE STUDY: Confirmation of Rapid Climatic Change

Younger Dryas – ca. 11,000-10,000 years ago. This severe cold interrupted the post-glacial melting phase. It was first recognized in pollen records but the ice core evidence is more precise and narrows the beginning and termination to a few decades at most. The ice cores from Greenland reveal that climate can change rapidly.

Cold glacial melt water from the Great Lakes flowed out St. Lawrence into the North America and covered warm salt water in North Atlantic. Shut down and changed position of conveyor belt bringing warm, tropical water North.

Ice cores reveal many temperature fluctuations that could stress a cultural system if they persist for several years. Some were known from other sources but the ice cores add new evidence.

Mesa Verde, Colorado. Decades ago dendrochronology (tree ring dating) revealed that a major drought existed in this region between AD 1276-AD 1298. Ice cores also suggest that the temperature was reduced because of the Little Ice Age. This double climatic situation stressed high elevation farming and led to final abandonment of the area as solution. The inhabitants migrated to better-watered areas in northern New Mexico

Akkadian civilization in Middle East faced 2200BC severe warm period.

Maya in Peten, Guatemala, AD 800 faced a cold, dry period –culture on edge and such an event could have stressed this civilization further leading to migration and political turmoil.

2. Pollution

CASE STUDY : Greek/Roman Metallurgy (500 BC-AD 300)

Ice cores show first anthropogenic pollution with lead and copper dust in the ice from metallurgy during Roman and Greek times. Removal of silver from lead ore – cupellation – led to atmospheric pollution of a measurable quantity.

Industrial Revolution detectable in Greenland ice cores. Here can witness rise of lead in gasoline as driving became more frequent. The core also shows its reduction with the systematic elimination of leaded gas.

Lead deposition at Summit (central Greenland) over the last 30,000 years. R.J. Delmas and M. Legrand, 1998

Other changes in the core reveal the beginning of the Industrial Revolution beginning ca. 1790 and major industrial pollution starting ca. 1900

Ice cores record Global environmental changes – volcanoes – that impacted weather

Remember Global Anthropogenic Environmental changes are recent and happen after the Industrial Revolution.

III. Global Change Consequences

A. Anthropogenic Environmental Changes

If we examine the human impact on the environment through biological and ice core records, it is quite minimal until two centuries ago. Prior to that we find no human produced change until Homo sapiens entered Australia and used hunting and fire to transform the biodiversity. With agriculture as the major mode of subsistence after 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, we get evidence for land clearance and the creation of patchy habitats. Human dominance of the global biodiversity begins ca. AD 1500 with the intercontinental exchange of exotic food plants and animals and other biological organisms. Hints of potential changes in atmospheric chemistry begin with silver metallurgy by the Greeks but it becomes global in scale with the Industrial Revolution and continues to today.

B. Population Trends over Time

Human population growth was very slow until 10,000 years ago. Prior to then we are concerned with migrations by Homo erectus to tropical and warm temperate regions outside Africa. In the Old World we have the beginnings of plant and animal domestication, improved subsistence security, and sedentary living to help store food surpluses. As the population grew society became more complex. The social organization of empires fostered and new technology fostered colonization and the global spread of non-native foods. These permitted agriculture in previously marginal land and after AD 1500 in Asia and Africa we get new population explosions.

Self-Test

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