Earth in Our Care: Ecology, Economy, and Sustainability

2: Our Ever-Changing Landscape Patterns

25 2 Our Ever-Changing Landscape Patterns There are single-minded, idealistic people who perceive us humans merely as a blight on the face of the Earth, a species whose sole purpose appears to be the despoliation of the planet. We, however, have a right to be here by the very fact that we exist as an inseparable part of the global ecosystem. In this sense, what we do is natural, despite the fact that our actions are often shortsighted, unwise, and destructive. Nevertheless, I submit that people’s destructive behavior is born not of intentional malice but rather of their unconscious, yet palpable fear of living in a world governed by the uncertainties of perpetual change and its unpredictable novelty. When people feel their very survival is threatened, either individually or collectively , they retreat to their assumptions and don fear’s armor in an irrational and ultimately impossible attempt to control the universal process of continual change. Early Landscapes In the beginning, humanoids had relatively little impact on the landscapes in which they lived. Their impact increased, however, as they evolved languages, cultures , and societies because they could then participate with nature in more intensely organized ways. Today, the human species has essentially altered the landscapes of the entire world through airborne and waterborne pollution and through the unbridled exploitation of nature’s bounty. Human society changes the dynamics and the design of every landscape with which it interacts, and it has been doing so for thousands of years. The history of England is illustrative. About , years ago, the northern hemisphere was locked in a sheet of ice over half a mile thick that covered Scandinavia, most of Britain, and much of the North Sea. During this time, the water carried by Europe’s northward-flowing rivers collected in an immense glacial lake along the ice sheet’s southern boundary, in what today is northern Europe. The lake was contained by a tenuous link—the bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Weald-Artois chalk ridge, which had connected southeast England and northwest France for millions of years. Eventually, as the ice age began to end and the world warmed up, the lake spilled over the isthmus. The spillage grew rapidly, turning into a torrent, and then a megaflood, one of the largest scientists have ever identified. Although megafloods, which involve sudden discharges of exceptionally large volumes of water, are rare, they can significantly affect the evolution of landscapes and continental-scale drainage patterns, as well as change regional climate. In a matter of days, the water sliced through the chalk ridge and down to bedrock, thereby creating the Strait of Dover, which, just over twenty miles wide, is the narrowest part of today’s English Channel. However, the early humanlike creature, known scientifically as erect man, was already living on the newly formed island. The megaflood not only isolated erect man from the continent and influenced later human travel to and from the island but also reorganized the largescale palaeodrainage patterns of northwestern Europe. Erect man was eventually replaced by the more modern Paleolithic humans (Old Stone Age, earlier than twelve thousand years ago). As the Pleistocene epoch drew to a close between twelve thousand and ten thousand years ago, the ice withdrew, although not in a single smooth recession. During this time, groups of Paleolithic humans occupied the warmer places in the south of what today is England, where they seem to have had an ecological impact with their selective dependence on wild horses and reindeer for food and raw materials. As the climate ameliorated, the trees in southern Europe and the Caucasus, which had survived the glaciation, gradually spread again to the once-glaciated areas until a self-sustaining mixed deciduous forest was established about eight thousand years ago. (The Caucasus is the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which covers some , square miles.) Then, about seven thousand years ago, present-day England separated from the mainland. By this time, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had replaced the Paleolithic humans on the newly formed island, where they remained until the coming of agriculture about five thousand years ago. (Middle Stone Age, between twelve thousand and five thousand years ago.) The earliest cultural landscapes of the area—those purposely manipulated with fire—were formed in the middle to late Mesolithic period, between seven thousand and five thousand years ago. As far as we know, that first cultural landscape came from the conversion of a mixed deciduous forest into a mosaic of high...