Impact: the effect of climatic change on prehistoric and modern cultures in Texas (first progress report) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Some remarks on climate impact on prehistoric societies
Vita Antiqua , 2020
In some archaeological studies there is a tendency emphasize climate with special strength as a driving force of cultural change in studies covering larger areas over longer periods of time. Migrations are often linked to climate change. In contrast, in small-region studies, researchers are more likely to explore internal factors of change, such as inequality and conflict. On the other hand, in publications postulating the impact of climate on changes in prehistoric societies, it is quite easy to notice the dependence of their authors on a specific theoretical option. For this reason, this article provides an overview of them (classical evolutionism, anthropogeography, culture-historical school, some processualists). For the same reason, selected examples of positive references to climate as a driving force for change and examples where researchers point to other causes are included here. The conclusion stated that even the best documented influence of climatic factors did not affect people directly. As a component of the natural environment that remains outside human culture, climate cannot influence migration or culture change directly. It is part of so called border conditions of cultural and civilizational phenomena, and it may be a necessary condition of cultural change, but never its sufficient condition. Reconstruction of necessary and sufficient conditions requires knowledge of images of the world prevalent in a given society, which involve moral and practical suggestions about how to solve organizational and legal problems in an essential framework of world – view and religion.
Warm climates of the past--a lesson for the future?
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2013
This Discussion Meeting Issue of the Philosophical Transactions A had its genesis in a Discussion Meeting of the Royal Society which took place on 10–11 October 2011. The Discussion Meeting, entitled ‘Warm climates of the past: a lesson for the future?’, brought together 16 eminent international speakers from the field of palaeoclimate, and was attended by over 280 scientists and members of the public. Many of the speakers have contributed to the papers compiled in this Discussion Meeting Issue. The papers summarize the talks at the meeting, and present further or related work. This Discussion Meeting Issue asks to what extent information gleaned from the study of past climates can aid our understanding of future climate change. Climate change is currently an issue at the forefront of environmental science, and also has important sociological and political implications. Most future predictions are carried out by complex numerical models; however, these models cannot be rigorously te...
Climate Change and Cultural Response in the Prehistoric American Southwest
KIVA, 2009
Comparison of regional tree-ring cutting-date distributions from the southern Colorado Plateau and the Rio Grande region with tree-ring-based reconstructions of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and with the timing of archaeological stage transitions indicates that Southwestern Native American cultures were periodically impacted by major climatic oscillations between A.D. 860 and 1600. Sitespecifi c information indicates that aggregation, abandonment, and out-migration from many archaeological regions occurred during several widespread megadroughts, including the well-documented middle-twelfth-and late-thirteenthcentury droughts. We suggest that the demographic response of southwestern Native Americans to climate variability primarily refl ects their dependence on an inordinately maize-based subsistence regimen within a region in which agriculture was highly sensitive to climate change.
Climatic change, culture, and civilization in North America
World Archaeology, 1981
Analysis of modern climatic data suggests a pattern of response to global cooling for precipitation in Mesoamerica and North America. Also research in palaeoclimatology has defined a series of globally warm and cold periods for the Holocene. This paper joins the study of modern and palaeoclimate into a time-series model which appears to explain some of the florescences and declines of civilizations in the region during the last 3,000 years. Economic buffering and local invulnerability to climatic change for specifiable reasons appear to cover those cases which defy climatic explanation. Article: The potential threat that climatic change poses to twentieth-century world civilization has fostered massive efforts by many palaeoclimatic researchers over the last decade and added a considerable amount of detail to our knowledge of the sequence of climatic events, particularly over the last 10,000 years (National Academy of Science 1975, Quaternary Research issue July 1979). In this paper the details of climatic chronology of the northern hemisphere are compared to the cultural chronologies of Mesoamerica and North America. When the beginnings and ends of outstanding periods of civilized activity are compared with climatic changes, these events in many instances appear to correspond. In the cases where they do not, alternative explanations are often satisfactory; that is, the effects of economic buffering and invulnerability to climatic change due to favourable local conditions. The detailed histories and prehistories of many North American civilizations offer interesting sequences of interaction in the give-and-take battle between urban man and the forces of nature. We do not undertake the arduous task of proving in a concrete sense the cause-and-effect relationships between culture change and climatic change in North America. On the other hand, we do propose what we feel to be a reasonable array of relationships which can be tested by regional specialists. The issue of environmental effects on people and social groups or cultures has been debated from time to time, so perhaps it is advisable to make explicit assumptions concerning culture change and environment. As is indicated in figure 1, we assumed that culture change is fostered by at least three forcing variables, of which environment is one. The amount of culture change observable over a given period in time may be attributable to any one or all, or any continuation of the forcing variables. Also, the proportion of contribution is variable, X per cent, Y per cent and Z per cent. Thus, when climate is changing radically, culture change may be accounted for almost wholly in terms of X per cent. On the other hand, during times of climatic stability, changes are attributable to internal forces such as powerful individuals in a proportion of Y per cent, or to external sources such as invasion by outsiders, Z per cent.
List of Periods and Events in Climate History * “12,800–11,500 years ago Younger Dryas sudden cold and dry period in Northern Hemisphere.” And “11,500 years ago, agricultural development.” “Mace heads and the rise of power: from the sites of Hallan Cemi and Körtik Tepe in Turkey, at 11,500 to 10,500 years ago." * “9,500–5,900 years ago Neolithic Subpluvial/African humid period in North Africa, wet period.” * 8.2 ka event (increased rise of elite power) * 7.2 ka event (rise of paternal clan wars) *5,900 ka event (beginning of the Bronze Age and the invention of writing) *5,200 ka event (rise of rulers) * 4.2 ka event (linked to the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia) * 3.2 ka event (Late Bronze Age collapse)