Humans and the Environment, 600-1450 Flashcards
Vikings
● Migrating people in Europe
● Used longboats
● Expert mariners and fierce warrior-traders from Scandinavia
● THey were able to navigate on the open ocean
Mongol-Turkic horse pastoralists
● Migrating people in Middle East
Bantu
● People who migrated all over sub-Saharan Africa
● Brought new agricultural techniques, which increased the extent of African land under cultivation
● All the environmental impacts that entailed
- Increased reliance on water and the need to irrigate
● Spread the secret of ironworking, which encouraged mining and metallurgy and placed even more stress on African ecosystems
Polynesian migrations
● Beginning int he Indonesian and Philippine islands, these migrations led the Polynesian peoples on longe astward journeys
● Used outrigger canoes that allowed them to travel vast distances over water
Polynesians
● Root farmers
- Growing taro and sweet potatoes
- Supplementing their diet with pigs, chicken, and fish
● Carried these foods (and coconut palm) with them across hte Pacific
● Badly deforested some of the places they settled
- Easter Island civilization was destroyed by environmental stress and tribal war by the 1500s
Horse collar
● Originated in China
● improved agricultural production
Terrace farming
● On the sides of hills and mountains
● Used in the Americas
Chinampa
● Technique of growing crops on “floating islands” in lakes
● Used in Mesoamerica
Waru waru
● System of interspersing raised seedbeds (where the plants grew) and ditches (which allowed for irrigation and drainage alike)
● Arose in parts of hte ANdes as early as the 300s B.C.E.
Medieval climatic optimum
● A warming trend between 800-1300
● Greatly affected patterns of migration (allowing freer movement into northern reiongs by people like the Vikings)
● Agriculture (which became more productive)
● Fishing and whaling
● Interregional trade
Little Ice Age
● after hte late 1200s, a general cooling came
● Persisted until the early-to-mid 1800s, making agricultrual production more difficult in certain regions and also altering patterns of northern settlement and economic activities such as fishing, wahling, and fur-hunting
● May have contributed to the wave of peasant uprisings that broke out
What environmental factors cause large-scale migrations?
● Climate change
● Vanishing of food supplies
● Overpopulation
What effects do migrants have on the new state?
● Military threat posed by these invaders might force them to centralize (Europe)
● They also affected the continent ethnically by settling down, fouding their own states, and blending with existing populations
How did certain trade routes open or widen b/c migratory or nomadic peoples?
● The establishemtn of trans-Saharan caravan trade routes depended upon the camel-herding expertise of Arabs and Berbers in the Middle East and North Africa
● THe excellent horsemanship of pastoral peoples in the steppes of Central Asia had much to do with the development of the Silk Road
● The Vikings went to Iceland, Greenland, the British Isles, France and Sicily and Russia
- They established a trade route running all the way from Novgorod in Russia to COnstatntinople in Byzantine
What represented a particularly intrusive form of resource extraction?
● Mining and metallurgy
● Heightened demand for metals, gems, and jewels
What did the increase production of textiles create?
● A greater demand for wool and fibers such as cotton
- Requiring the grazing of larger number of sheep for wool
- Requiring more land to be placed under agricultural production for cotton
What were the risks of intensive agriculture and water management?
● Increesd risks of soil erosion, deforestation and other forms of major environemntal damage
What goods were spread as a result of increased trade?
● Bananas originated in Southeast Asia and reached hte middle East by the mid-600s and took root especially well in Africa between 700-1500
● Citrus, also from Southeast Asia, became common throughout the Islamic world and hte Mediterranean
● Sugar from New Guinea reached the Asian mainland by 1000 B.C.E. and was being produced in crystallized form in Gupta India by the 500s
● Cotton became more widespread thorughout Afro-Eurasia
● Rice cultivation were imported from Southeast Asia to China and East Asia in the form of drought-resistant Champa rice from Vietnam
● Coconut palm in Oceania spread throughout the Pacific due to the polynesian migration
What were some examples of how the environmenta cted on humans?
● Natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, the diversion of rivers, or earthquakes
● Diseases such as smallpox, measles, and bubonic plague
- The black death of the early 1300s was the deadliest epidemic
