Humans and the Environment, 600-1450

Question 1

Vikings

Answer 1

● Migrating people in Europe
● Used longboats
● Expert mariners and fierce warrior-traders from Scandinavia
● THey were able to navigate on the open ocean

Question 2

Mongol-Turkic horse pastoralists

Answer 2

● Migrating people in Middle East

Question 3

Bantu

Answer 3

● 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

Question 4

Polynesian migrations

Answer 4

● 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

Question 5

Polynesians

Answer 5

● 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

Question 6

Horse collar

Answer 6

● Originated in China

● improved agricultural production

Question 7

Terrace farming

Answer 7

● On the sides of hills and mountains

● Used in the Americas

Question 8

Chinampa

Answer 8

● Technique of growing crops on “floating islands” in lakes

● Used in Mesoamerica

Question 9

Waru waru

Answer 9

● 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.

Question 10

Medieval climatic optimum

Answer 10

● 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

Question 11

Little Ice Age

Answer 11

● 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

Question 12

What environmental factors cause large-scale migrations?

Answer 12

● Climate change
● Vanishing of food supplies
● Overpopulation

Question 13

What effects do migrants have on the new state?

Answer 13

● 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

Question 14

How did certain trade routes open or widen b/c migratory or nomadic peoples?

Answer 14

● 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

Question 15

What represented a particularly intrusive form of resource extraction?

Answer 15

● Mining and metallurgy

● Heightened demand for metals, gems, and jewels

Question 16

What did the increase production of textiles create?

Answer 16

● 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

Question 17

What were the risks of intensive agriculture and water management?

Answer 17

● Increesd risks of soil erosion, deforestation and other forms of major environemntal damage

Question 18

What goods were spread as a result of increased trade?

Answer 18

● 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

Question 19

What were some examples of how the environmenta cted on humans?

Answer 19

● 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