When it comes to climate change, attention should be fixated on amelioration and adaptation, since we seem to be too self-centered to make the sacrifices necessary for following generations to live comfortably. Some of the sources of adaptation may be a little surprising. For instance, in “The Threat of Climate Change,” Tamara Jager Stewart, American Archaeology (winter ♦ 2019-2020, print only, excerpt here), Rachel Loehman, a former archaeologist, current research landscape ecologist, and head of ArcBurn, which is part of the United States Geological Survey, points out the obvious thing about the past that would never otherwise occur to a culture mostly fixated on the present:
“Archaeology has huge relevance in discussions of ongoing climate impacts and management strategies, because we can provide context for human adaptations to changing environments and critical information on long-term ecosystem responses to human activities…” [AA, p 23]
Image source: SDO/HMI via SpaceWeather
The history of humanity is all about change, from abstract topics such as philosophy and religion, to the concrete such as improvements in medical treatments, sudden volcanic eruptions, crop successes, failures, and changes. Even what seems to be the most unchanging physical phenomenon of all, that ball of burning plasma we call the Sun, changes all the time as it bubbles along. Right at the moment, we’re at what’s called a solar minima, meaning no sunspots are visible.
Press a meteorologist about the best weather forecasting methodology, and they’ll eventually say Same weather as yesterday. But the weather changes, and so does everything else, and humanity has had to adapt to it. It makes a lot of sense to attempt to assess, understand, and abstract the various ad hoc strategies we’ve developed to deal with change.
And so I find that one of my less relevant hobbies, reading about archaeology, has great relevance to what’s happening right now, if only we can learn and distill the lessons our ancestors have to inadvertently teach us. It seems that our addiction to wealth – great wealth – cannot be broken, so in the near future, barring some unforeseen technological breakthrough, we’ll be needing adaptation strategies.
Speaking of change, that same issue of American Archaeology has another article, “Investigating The Vacant Quarter,” David Malakoff (again, print-only, although actually the web site provides excerpts), which is about investigations into the possibility that an essentially fertile and productive piece of North America was abandoned at roughly the same time. Oh, hey, look – that excerpt contains a description of the hypothesis!
In 1978, archaeologist Stephen Williams was touring ancient settlement sites around the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers when an intriguing “notion came to me,” he later recalled. Williams, a Harvard University professor who had worked in the Central and Southeastern United States for decades, knew that the archaeological evidence showed that many of the sites had hosted thriving communities, some with thousands of people, during the Mississippian Period, which lasted from roughly A. D. 800 to 1550. Some featured the huge earthen ceremonial mounds that were a hallmark of Mississippian peoples. But Williams was also aware of a growing number of studies suggesting that people had abandoned many of the sites at roughly the same time, beginning in the mid-1400s. And when he sketched a map of the abandoned settlements, he realized they formed a vast area that he called the “Vacant Quarter,” which covered some 50,000 square miles across eight states. It included some of the region’s largest and most studied Mississippian sites, including Cahokia in western Illinois and the Angel Mounds in Indiana, and also lesser-known sites far to the south in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi.
I found the article fascinating, not only for the various hypotheses which could explain the apparent abandonment, from disease to environmental to conflict to religion, and I cannot wait to hear what Williams’ successors discover and deduce, but also because, as I realized while writing this post, science, which means knowledge, isn’t just about static knowledge, such as the number of protons in the nucleus of an element, but also knowledge of the dynamics, such as how hydrogen converts to helium in the Sun, or how a human group reacts to an infringement on their territory by another human group, which is in turn driven by the hunger induced by poor agricultural practices, which in turn comes about because of a transition from nomadic to agricultural societies, which in turn …
My point? The only constant is change. I don’t want to turn this into a political screed, but failing to understand that simple rule seems to drive the current conservative movement.
Back to vacation reading!
