Anasazi America

History / By /
Anasazi America

Author: David E. Stuart

Publisher: UNM Press

ISBN: 9780826354792

Category: History

Page: 344

View: 700

At the height of their power in the late eleventh century, the Chaco Anasazi dominated a territory in the American Southwest larger than any European principality of the time. Developed over the course of centuries and thriving for over two hundred years, the Chacoans’ society collapsed dramatically in the twelfth century in a mere forty years. David E. Stuart incorporates extensive new research findings through groundbreaking archaeology to explore the rise and fall of the Chaco Anasazi and how it parallels patterns throughout modern societies in this new edition. Adding new research findings on caloric flows in prehistoric times and investigating the evolutionary dynamics induced by these forces as well as exploring the consequences of an increasingly detached central Chacoan decision-making structure, Stuart argues that Chaco’s failure was a failure to adapt to the consequences of rapid growth—including problems with the misuse of farmland, malnutrition, loss of community, and inability to deal with climatic catastrophe. Have modern societies learned from the experience and fate of the Chaco Anasazi, or are we risking a similar cultural collapse?

Pueblo Indian Agriculture

Irrigation farming / By /
Pueblo Indian Agriculture

Author: James A. Vlasich

Publisher: UNM Press

ISBN: 0826335047

Category: Irrigation farming

Page: 392

View: 785

Presents a chronological account of Pueblo Indian agriculture, examining its refinements, challenges and changes up to the present, detailing its sophisticated irrigation systems and crop production.

Breaking History: Lost America

History / By /
Breaking History: Lost America

Author: Don Rauf

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

ISBN: 9781493033973

Category: History

Page: 240

View: 776

Breaking History books offer a front row seat to history as it broke (like “breaking news”) and give the blow-by-blow of historical discovery—what we learned, when we learned it, who made the discovery, and how. Lost America is an illustrated look at fascinating places in the United States that have existed only in myth and have never been found, those that were abandoned and why, and those that were lost to social upheaval or natural disaster. The book reviews the history behind these places—how they began, how long they endured, why they were lost, and how many have been rediscovered. Included are accounts of the mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi from the Southwest, the abandonment of the Roanoke Colony in 1590, the environmental disaster that caused the population of Centralia, Pennsylvania to evacuate the town in the 1980s, and the nearly-intact ghost town of Bodie, California. The book also includes places that were thought to exist, but did not--or not yet, anyway: legendary Norse settlements, lost cities of gold, and The Fountain of Youth.

Prehistoric America

Social Science / By /
Prehistoric America

Author: Betty Jane Meggers

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

ISBN: 9780202368139

Category: Social Science

Page: 201

View: 647

During the past 30 years, the relationship between humans and the environment has changed more drastically than during any previous period in human history. Local sustainable exploitation of natural resources has been overridden by global interests indifferent to the detrimental impact of their activities on local environments and their inhabitants. Increasingly efficient technology has reduced the need for human labor, but improved medical treatment favors reproduction and survival, creating a growing imbalance between population density and food supply. Rapid transportation is introducing alien species to distant terrestrial and aquatic environments, where they displace critical elements in the local food chain. This succinct and profusely illustrated volume applies evolutionary and cultural theory to the interpretation of prehistoric cultural development in the western hemisphere. After reviewing cultural development in Mesoamerica and the central Andes, Meggers examines adaptation in North and South American regions with similar environments to evaluate the influence of adaptive constraints on cultural content. What made the human species dominant on the planet is the substitution of cultural behavior for biological behavior. Prehistoric Americans applied this ability to develop sustainable relationships with their environments. Many succeeded and others did not. Paleoclimatic reconstructions can be compared with archeological sequences and ethnographic descriptions to identify cultural behavior responsible for the difference. Comparison of the responses of Amaonians and Mayans to episodes of severe drought provides useful insights into what we are doing wrong. Betty J. Meggers has been a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution since 1951. She has conducted fieldwork in Brail, Guyana, Veneuela, and Ecuador. Her publications include archeological monographs, edited volumes, general books on Amaonia and Ecuador, and over 200 articles on cultural ecology, cultural diffusion, pottery analysis, and transpacific contact. Her contributions have been recognied by six honorary doctorates from universities in Brail, Argentina, and Ecuador.

One Vast Winter Count

History / By /
One Vast Winter Count

Author: Colin G. Calloway

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

ISBN: 0803264658

Category: History

Page: 660

View: 710

A professor of history offers a sweeping new history of the Native American West from the earliest arrival of ancient peoples to the early nineteenth century, before the Lewis and Clarke expedition opened it to exploration, focusing particular attention on the period of conflict that preceded this period. Reprint.

America's Urban History

History / By /
America's Urban History

Author: Lisa Krissoff Boehm

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781317813323

Category: History

Page: 427

View: 586

The history of the American city is, in many ways, the history of the United States. Although rural traditions have also left their impact on the country, cities and urban living have been vital components of America for centuries, and an understanding of the urban experience is essential to comprehending America’s past. America’s Urban History is an engaging and accessible overview of the life of American cities, from Native American settlements before the arrival of Europeans to the present-day landscape of suburban sprawl, urban renewal, and a heavily urbanized population. The book provides readers with a rich chronological and thematic narrative, covering themes including: The role of cities in the European settlement of North America Cities and westward expansion Social reform in the industrialized cities The impact of the New Deal The growth of the suburbs The relationships between urban forms and social issues of race, class, and gender Covering the evolving story of the American city with depth and insight, America's Urban History will be the first stop for all those seeking to explore the American urban experience.

Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America

Science / By /
Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America

Author: Dan Flores

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

ISBN: 9781324006176

Category: Science

Page: 478

View: 733

One of Kirkus Review's Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 A deep-time history of animals and humans in North America, by the best-selling and award-winning author of Coyote America. In 1908, near Folsom, New Mexico, a cowboy discovered the remains of a herd of extinct giant bison. By examining flint points embedded in the bones, archeologists later determined that a band of humans had killed and butchered the animals 12,450 years ago. This discovery vastly expanded America’s known human history but also revealed the long-standing danger Homo sapiens presented to the continent’s evolutionary richness. Distinguished author Dan Flores’s ambitious history chronicles the epoch in which humans and animals have coexisted in the “wild new world” of North America—a place shaped both by its own grand evolutionary forces and by momentous arrivals from Asia, Africa, and Europe. With portraits of iconic creatures such as mammoths, horses, wolves, and bison, Flores describes the evolution and historical ecology of North America like never before. The arrival of humans precipitated an extraordinary disruption of this teeming environment. Flores treats humans not as a species apart but as a new animal entering two continents that had never seen our likes before. He shows how our long past as carnivorous hunters helped us settle America, initially establishing a coast-to-coast culture that lasted longer than the present United States. But humanity’s success had devastating consequences for other creatures. In telling this epic story, Flores traces the origins of today’s “Sixth Extinction” to the spread of humans around the world; tracks the story of a hundred centuries of Native America; explains how Old World ideologies precipitated 400 years of market-driven slaughter that devastated so many ancient American species; and explores the decline and miraculous recovery of species in recent decades. In thrilling narrative style, informed by genomic science, evolutionary biology, and environmental history, Flores celebrates the astonishing bestiary that arose on our continent and introduces the complex human cultures and individuals who hastened its eradication, studied America’s animals, and moved heaven and earth to rescue them. Eons in scope and continental in scale, Wild New World is a sweeping yet intimate Big History of the animal-human story in America.

America's Ancient Forests

Nature / By /
America's Ancient Forests

Author: Thomas M. Bonnicksen

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 0471136220

Category: Nature

Page: 614

View: 817

At the time of European discovery, the ancient North Americanforests stretched across nearly half the continent. And while todaylittle remains of this past glory, efforts are underway to bringback some of the diverse ecosystems of that era. America's AncientForests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery providesscientists and professionals with essential information for forestrestoration and conservation projects, while presenting acompelling and far-reaching account of how the North Americanlandscape has evolved over the past 18,000 years. The book weaves historical accounts and scientific knowledge into adynamic narrative about the ancient forests and the events thatshaped them. Divided into two major parts, it covers first theglaciers and forests of the Ice Age and the influences of nativepeoples, and then provides an in-depth look at these majesticforests through the eyes of the first European explorers. Changesin climate and elevation, the movement of trees northward, theassembly of modern forests, and qualities that all ancient forestsshared are also thoroughly examined. A special feature of this book is its self-contained introductionto the early history of Native American peoples and theirenvironment. The author draws on his roots in the Osage nation aswell as painstaking research through the historical record,offering a complete discussion of how the cultural practices ofhunting, agriculture, and fire helped form the ancient forests.