Cronon 2
How did the early settlers see the new world?
- Europeans looked at North America first in
terms of commodities, things of value in their economy
- why were they focused on what they could
sell?
- they needed to make money to pay the costs
of settling and things they needed to buy
- capitalist mind-set: they thought in terms
of profit and getting ahead
- they valued having things that were in
short supply in England
- they changed the land before they had a
chance to describe it
What impressed them about the new world? How
accurate was that
- what first struck them was how plentiful
plants and animals were
- some of this was exageration
- but animals were very plentiful
- there were many different ecosystems,
kinds of forest
- forests were generally open and there were
areas with no trees
- they saw the resources as limitless
-
Areas that had had major forest fires were dominated by
pines--Europeans mistakenly expected they would find them
everywhere
Why does the type of tree matter?
salt marshes were of value for migratory birds and hay
we need to be careful about talking about how the ecosystem
changed
- The environment was a complex patchwork
- it had been changing already
Notice:
- what we think of is natural is after the colonists
brought their own animals
When the pilgrims arrived in Plymouth they described what they
saw as a "hideous and desolate wilderness" (William Bradford)
Continental drift
200 million years ago all the continents had combined to form
Pangaea
when they split North America stayed with Europe at first, so the
plants and animals are less different
the plants and animals in Australia and New Zealand were more
different because they were isolated for so long
What is result of the
continents separating?
- plants and animals developed differently in each one
- partly to fit the local environment and partly by
accident of what plants and animals were there in the
first place
- you would think in each place the animals would
evolve to be best suited to the local environment, so
animals coming in from outside wouldn't have much chance
- but it turns out to be more complicated than that
- why were European plant and animals in many cases
able to take over and displace the native plants and
animals
What happened when the first human beings arrived in some of
the isolated areas?
- the ice
ages lowered sea level and connected the continents that
had been isolated
- human beings are able to quickly adapt to new areas--they
don't have to wait for evolution
- humans arrived in Australia about 40,000 years ago, North
America later
- some 10,000 years ago with the end of the ice ages
isolation resumed
- they changed the environment
- some large
mammals
disappeared shortly thereafter (extinction of the
megafauna), but probably at least in part from hunting
- human-started
fires shaped the longleaf pine-wiregrass ecosystem of
the sandhills other environments
