Basics of Canadian Environmental History

Question 1

What is Historiography?

Answer 1

The study of how stories in the past have changed over time.
shifts with new evidence, ways of analyzing, theories values and beliefs

Question 2

what are the 3 overlaping clusters of Environmental history?

Answer 2

Nature - the earth
Social/economiic - how we use/abuse it
Thought - making connections (industrial revolution = polution)

Question 3

what is ecological Grief?

Answer 3

Trauma associated with the potential distruction of earth

Question 4

Survival in a Garason

Answer 4

a shift on the view of the environment as dangerous & harsh to a place where we can extract resources, settle, and learn from.

Question 5

What is the Pleistocene Epoch?

Answer 5

2.9 million years ago, there were 8 major glacial cycles

Question 6

What was the Holocene Epoch?

Answer 6

Ended the wisconsin ice age (little ice age)
growth of human movement and survival
more moderate temperatures

Question 7

Anthropocene Epoch

Answer 7

started in the 1950’s, age of man, nucular, bones, emissions.

Question 8

how does ice thaw?

Answer 8

due to shifting ocean currents & the earth tilting in relation to the sun. called Milankovitch cycles

Question 9

Succession

Answer 9

when uninhabited landscapes are recolonized with life. this happened when the ice melted in NA

Question 10

What were the Megafauna?
what happened to them?

Answer 10

massive animals of north america - mass extinction
2 theories of extinction

1. overkill hypothesis
   - when humans came to NA, they killed them all off. big and slow, warm climates, easy to hunt
   Problems: limited evidence of humans being mobile.
2. Cliamate change hypothesis
   - younger drias - colder temperatures, decline in megafauna, less food, reproduction, scarcer ecosystems
   Problems: there were animal declines in austrailia, not cased by climate change.
   animals seemed healthy - mammoth tusks tested
   they went extinct around the time humans showed up

Question 11

what was the Pre colonial Era?

Answer 11

between the little iceage and christopher columbus in 1492

Question 12

What were the 2 main glaciers in Canada?

Answer 12

Laurntide and cordilleran, started to melt 6000 years ago.
through temperature changes, emerged an open path between them where people traveled through

Question 13

Who were the Paleo Indians?

Answer 13

mobile bands who hunted megafauna
hunter + gatherers.
when the megafauna died, they were forced to find other food sources, turned to aggreculte and settlement.