$112.58
2007th Edition
This volume presents the work of researchers at many sites spanning the East African Pliocene. The authors take a broad approach that seeks to compare paleoenvironmental and paleoecological patterns across localities and among various taxonomic groups. This volume aims to synthesize large amounts of faunal data, and to present the evolution of East African vertebrates in the context of environmental and climatic changes during the Pliocene.
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2015th Edition
by Daniel G. Gavin (Author), Linda B. Brubaker (Author)
This study brings together decades of research on the modern natural environment of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, reviews past research on paleoenvironmental change since the Late Pleistocene, and finally presents paleoecological records of changing forest composition and fire over the last 14,000 years. The focus of this study is on the authors’ studies of five pollen records from the Olympic Peninsula. Maps and other data graphics are used extensively. Paleoecology can effectively address some of these challenges we face in understanding the biotic response to climate change and other agents of change in ecosystems. First, species responses to climate change are mediated by changing disturbance regimes. Second, biotic hotspots today suggest a long-term maintenance of diversity in an area, and researchers approach the maintenance of diversity from a wide range and angles (CITE). Mountain regions may maintain biodiversity through significant climate change in ‘refugia’: locations where components of diversity retreat to and expand from during periods of unfavorable climate (Keppel et al., 2012). Paleoecological studies can describe the context for which biodiversity persisted through time climate refugia. Third, the paleoecological approach is especially suited for long-lived organisms. For example, a tree species that may typically reach reproductive sizes only after 50 years and remain fertile for 300 years, will experience only 30 to 200 generations since colonizing a location after Holocene warming about 11,000 years ago. Thus, by summarizing community change through multiple generations and natural disturbance events, paleoecological studies can examine the resilience of ecosystems to disturbances in the past, showing how many ecosystems recover quickly while others may not (Willis et al., 2010).
1st Edition
by Alfred W. Crosby (Author)
In Throwing Fire, historian Alfred W. Crosby looks at hard, accurate throwing and the manipulation of fire as unique human capabilities, allowing us to create simple weapons, atomic bombs, and to venture into space. He examines the effects of throwing fire on life on our planet, including species extinctions, the rise of empires and the advance of European Imperialism, and the peril of destructive wars. Throwing fire, which might make Earth uninhabitable for humans, may make it possible for our species to migrate to other bodies of our solar system and even other star systems.
Paperback – April 1, 2013
by Bill Gammage (Author)
Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park, with extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands, and abundant wildlife. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than most people have ever realized. For more than a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and this book reveals how. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires Australians now experience. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, this book rewrites the history of the continent, with huge implications for today.
Paperback – Illustrated, January 5, 2006
by J.E. Rehder
Because pyrotechnology was considered a demeaning craft, there is very little about its practice in ancient texts; our knowledge of early developments is based almost entirely on interpretation of artifacts recovered by archaeology during the past century and a half. Literature in archaeology and anthropology, however, tends to concentrate on the artifact found rather than on how it was produced - on the pot or spearhead rather than the kiln or furnace.
Paperback – January 15, 2012
by David John Goldstein (Author)
Kindle Edition
by Frances D. Burton (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
The association between our ancestors and fire, somewhere around six to four million years ago, had a tremendous impact on human evolution, transforming our earliest human ancestor, a being communicating without speech but with insight, reason, manual dexterity, highly developed social organization, and the capability of experimenting with this new technology. As it first associated with and then began to tame fire, this extraordinary being began to distance itself from its primate relatives, taking a path that would alter its environment, physiology, and self-image. Based on her extensive research with nonhuman primates, anthropologist Frances Burton details the stages of the conquest of fire and the systems it affected. Her study examines the natural occurrence of fire and describes the effects light has on human physiology. She constructs possible variations of our earliest human ancestor and its way of life, utilizing archaeological and anthropological evidence of the earliest human-controlled fires to explore the profound physical and biological impacts fire had on human evolution.
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