Big Bang from 10-15 billion years ago

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A Short History of the Universe and Planet Earth

• Big Bang from 10-15 billion years ago

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About 5 billion years ago Earth formed out of
gases and dust We are stardust. We are golden.
We are billion year old carbon Joni Mitchell

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First life forms about 4 billion years ago-single
celled organism
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Pleistocene-emergence of first human lineage
Australophithcus 5 million years ago
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First modern humans homo sapiens about 50,000
years ago, differentiated from Neanderthals.
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Evolution of Human Society

• For the first 30,000-40,000 years or so human
  beings lived exclusively in hunting and gathering
  societies or bands.
• Bands- depend on hunting, fishing, or the
  gathering of wild plants to provide basic food
  needs. The hunting and gathering economy demands
  extensive land, permanent settlements rarely
  possible.
• people have to keep moving whenever the local
  food supply becomes depleted.

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• Possessions are limited to what can be carried,
  and dwellings are very simple huts and tents.

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Hunting and Gathering Societies

• They are egalitarian.
• Little specialized knowledge
• Children socialised in all roles involved in
  everything
• Gathering is done more frequently/ hunting is
  sporadic (depends on availability of game)
• Completely dependent on environment.
• original affluent society - all need were met,
  lots of leisure time.

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Did Early Human Beings or Indigenous Peoples in
more recent times, live in harmony with the
environment?

• Human Beings-in-Nature vs Human
  Beings-above-Nature.
• Pleistocene Overkill.
• Use of Fire

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Pleistocene Overkill

• Pleistocene (1.8 million-10,000 years ago)
• Mammoths and their cousins the mastodons,
  longhorned bison, sabre-toothed cats, giant
  ground sloths, and many other large mammals in
  North America.
• Native horses and camels galloped across the
  plains of North America. Great teratorn birds
  with 25-foot wingspans stalked prey.
• Around the end of the Pleistocene, all these
  creatures went extinct (the horses living in
  North America today are all descendants of
  animals brought from Europe in historic times).

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Pleistocene Overkill II
The Pleistocene also saw the evolution and
expansion of our own species, Homo sapiens, and
by the close of the Pleistocene, humans had
spread through most of the world. According to a
controversial theory, first proposed in the
1960s, human hunting around the close of the
Pleistocene caused or contributed to the
extinction of many of the Pleistocene large
mammals
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Pleistocene Overkill III The Evidence

• 1)Large animals, over 100 lbs,suffered far more
  than small ones. If climate, you would expect
  small animals to suffer as much.
• 2) extinctions occurred in each particular
  location soon after the arrival of human beings.
• 3) The large mammals that survived and are still
  with us span 12 genera moose, white-tailed and
  mule deer. among hoofed animals. But North
  America had 45 genera of large animals. We lost
  four types of giant sloths .

• Large mammals that survived were largely of
  Eurasian origin and were accustomed to human
  beings. Survivors like moose are solitary, or
  like bison have unpredictable migrations.

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19th Century Evidence

• .capable of abusing their environments by, for
  example, driving great numbers of large game
  animals off cliffs and using only a few. And
  given more powerful technological means, such as
  guns, they were not necessarily better stewards
  of nature than people in industrial societies
  p. 41 Harper

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HOWEVER

• Native peoples lived much closer to nature and
  depended directly on nature for their
  livelihoods.
• There are important lessons on respect and
  reverence for nature in many indigenous religions
  and traditions.

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Indigenous Peoples and Fire

• Villages moved every 15 years-20 years, when
  local resources were exhaustedshifting
  agriculture /slash and burn. Created a mosaic of
  secondary succession.
• 10-20 of forests in clearing or secondary
  succession.
• Tallahassee means old fields ie secondary
  succession areas.

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Ancient Civilization The Rise of Agriculture

• Neolithic- beginning of agriculture 10,000 bp.
  domestication of plants and animals. Change, via
  ARTIFICIAL selection, from wild forms to a more
  useful form, such as wolf to dog, grasses to
  wheat, etc.
• Catal Huyuk, Turkey, 9000 bp. A town of 10,000
  people.. Not quite a city, no division of labor,
  occupied by farmers, decentralized. Individual
  residential structures with ovens, benches,
  storage areas. But had painted murals showing
  vultures attacking headless men, volcanoes,
  hunting. A rich symbolic life.

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Mesopotamia Babylonians, Sumerians
Environmental Degradation

• In Mesopotamia, irrigation was essential for crop
  production.
• Rivers were higher than the surrounding plain
  because of built-up silt in the river beds, so
  water for irrigation flowed into the fields by
  gravity. Once the water was on the fields, it
  could not readily drain away because the fields
  were lower than the river. As water evaporated,
  left its dissolved mineral salts behind. Over
  time, soil became toxic and no longer supported
  crops.
• By about 2300 B.C., agricultural production in
  Mesopotamia was reduced to a tiny fraction of
  what it had been. Many fields were abandoned as
  essentially useless. Mesopotamian cuneiform
  tablets tell of crop damage due to salts.

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• As late as 7000 BC, the Tigris and Euphrates
  valleys were covered with productive forests and
  grasslands. But increased salt buildup in the
  soil from irrigation evaporation in a hot climate
  caused food production to decline an estimated
  42 per hectare between 2400 and 2100 BC.
  Environmental degradation was clearly one of the
  factors, with climate change, invading armies.
  (p. 43 Harper)

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Chaco Canyon-New Mexico (800-1100 AD)
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During the middle and late 800s, the great houses
of Pueblo Bonito, Una Vida, and Peñasco Blanco
were constructed. These structures were often
oriented to solar, lunar, and cardinal
directions. Sophisticated astronomical markers,
communication features, water control devices,
and formal earthen mounds surrounded them
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By 1050, Chaco had become the ceremonial,
administrative, and economic center of the San
Juan Basin. Dozens of great houses in Chaco
Canyon were connected by roads to over 150 great
houses built throughout the region.
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"public architecture" that were used periodically
during times of ceremony, commerce, and trading
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But it CollapsedDisappeared. Why????

• A very arid environment, totally dependent on
  rain (but had overcome with careful irrigation).
• Probably overpopulation for available resources,
  combined with drought, very fragile environment.

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Mayan Civilization (400 BC-1150 AD)
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Collapse of the Mayan Civilization

• Theories
• over-population
• extensive warfare
• revolt of the farmer/laborer class
• drought

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Environmental Stress probably one of several
causes

• Now known that Maya region suffered extensive
  deforestation during the Classic Maya period.
• Many soils in region marginal.
• Also known there was a severe drought late in the
  Classic Mayan period.

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World Views in Agricultural Societies

• Cognized environments of hunter-gathers was a
  natural living wilderness. Man-in-nature.
• Cognized environment in agricultural societies is
  a garden. Human beings begin to push the
  wilderness away

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All of these civilizations lasted hundreds of
years before collapsing. Are we immune from this
history? Are we stressing our environment in the
same way they did? Could a change in the
environment like global warming cause widespread
failures of agriculture?