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guzmankid20 · Joined: 28 Jan 2020 Posts: 3

I learned that the idea of environmental history started to appear in the 1970s. People started realizing that there are many layers of history. What they had known of the past was just a scratch of the surface, and if they wanted a clearer picture of what transpired in previous times, they had to dig deeper into those layers. I found it interesting that they used layers to talk about going deeper into the past, creating and using multiple sources. It made me really understand what Donald Worster was trying to say. I thought it was intriguing to find out about this language of the natural scientist. I just never really put into thought that like historians should have such a large vocabulary, so yeah it is like it’s own language. I just thought that was cool. Agglomeration was a new word I learned from the reading tonight. I like the idea that Jared Diamond suggested which is that history did not shape the environment, but the environment is actually what shaped our history. Reading this just really made me see how there is so much more that goes into history that I thought. I always that certain places or environments I guess, were based off of people or other living things and how they like behaved there, but it was the opposite this whole time. Really crazy to think about.

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mlevine · Joined: 28 Jan 2020 Posts: 4

Going off Lucas's questions, I think it is interesting that we understand "true nature" to be untouched by humankind or at the very least not created by people. But aren't we also animals? What distinguishes humans from nature. It seems like a rather arbitrary line. I am also confused about whether environmental history includes all environments or only what we consider nature? I feel like in class we included all environments while the readings focused more on nature.

Rachel S. · Joined: 28 Jan 2020 Posts: 7

Rachel S. · Joined: 28 Jan 2020 Posts: 7

Neloy · Joined: 28 Jan 2020 Posts: 2

I was surprised to read that ecology was the most powerful tool for environmental historians. It is not something that at first made sense to me. But the way Donald Worster describes its importance, “when the cane was burned and grazed and chopped out, bluegrass sprouted in its place. And bluegrass was all that any farmer … could want”(pg 6). Thus by looking at plants growing before and after a time period one can reconstruct what happened and predict what will happen. There is another thing that he mentions on that page which I would push back on or disagree with. He says “There is a further unresolved problem in translating ecology into history. Few scientists have perceived people or human societies as being integral parts of their ecosystems.” (pg 6). I would ask how could they not include humanity in parts of their ecosystem. We transform ecosystems everywhere we go, So has no scientist up to this(being when the article was written) point looked at how Animal and plant life is affected when humans arrive?

I am also trying to wrao my head around the idea that Diamond proposes throughout the article about the connection between domestic animals and conquering the “New World”. I just don't see the direct connection that he is talking about.

Neloy · Joined: 28 Jan 2020 Posts: 2

rmoss2021 · Joined: 29 Jan 2020 Posts: 1

Response to Mia's question:
"Question (based on 2nd thought and my confusion): What do others think about the quote above? Do you believe that the civilization’s development was not dependent on the individual but instead on there geographical location and resources?"

I would say that before reading this article, I would have believed that the development of a particular civilization is up to the individuals who inhabit this space as opposed to the location and resources due to the fact that a society is what you make it. It makes sense for the people who live in a place to develop it, but these individuals can not create a civilization if the resources are not sufficient. For example, individuals can not harvest there own food when food is scarce if they currently live in an environment that is cold; it will be beyond impossible to grow crops. Now that I have the knowledge that Worster and Diamond has presented in this article, I do believe that the geographical placement plays a huge role in the development of a civilization. On page 10 of the reading it states, " By the year 1500 the approximate year that Europe's overseas expansion was just beginning, peoples of the different continents already differed greatly in technology and political organization." This paragraph after this quote clearly maps out the development differences of these different civilizations due to there placement in the world. There were different rates of development in different continents because of the geographical location as well as the resources present. With these factors, it is then the responsibility of the individuals to do the work of advancement. : Very Happy

adostie3 · Joined: 29 Jan 2020 Posts: 2

I took issue with the author's characterization of culture as something that exists only within the confines of human civilization. Although he makes it clear that scholarly definitions of culture vary, he asserts that "nothing distinguishes people from other creatures more sharply than the fact that it is people who create culture" (7). Neurobiologist/primatologist/Stanford lecturer Robert Sapolsky has recently identified a sort of culture among Kenyan orangutangs, in that tools and technologies, as well as their uses, are passed down through the intergenerational relationships between mothers and babes. I've focused myopically on this detail because--as I am arguing--if culture is common to societies at large (rather than human society exclusively), the proposition that "culture should be viewed as setting people apart from and outside of nature" (7) becomes untenable. In turn, the propositions that culture, technology, and production should be viewed as integral aspects of the natural world becomes a little more plausible.

julias · Joined: 29 Jan 2020 Posts: 2

In Donald Worster's "Doing Environmental History" I was intrigued with the methods and foundations Worster mentions when dissecting the three levels this interdisciplinary form of history is built off of. A theme which prevails in the practicing of Environmental History is "step beyond the self-reflecting world of humankind to encounter the nonhuman sphere."(4) However, a valid question would be if a crucial component of a Historians motives is to discover and study the causality of events in the human world, why would the "nonhuman sphere" ever come in to consideration? Is the historian now a scientist? Well, not really.

What I extracted from both Worster's and Diamond's readings in regards of societal cultivation, is that the environmental context of a civilization has an influence which ultimately trumps the agency of politics and great leaders. In the perspective of an environmental historian, this claim spawns from the first fundamental mode of observing the past; through natural science and ecology. This is essentially our "data" per se. Concepts of geology, graphs from climatology, the chemistry of soil and its cycles, and even ecosystems set the terms to study not just a civilizations agricultural system but why people "did what they did" and how the rearrangement human societies inflicted upon the land describes their values, ability to flourish, and political systems. This determining which includes aspects of anthropology and theology which are the second and third aspects of foundation all eventually boil down to causality. (the way in which Historians view the world) As Worster suggests, "the historian must understand that mental culture does not spring all on its own."(9) Through a cross-disciplinary perspective in redefining the past, historians may be closer to obtain the "Truth".

Is a historian ever truly able to synthesize the multitude of representations the concept of Nature inhibits to just one "right" idea?

-Julia

ndolny · Joined: 29 Jan 2020 Posts: 2

Donald Worster argues that environmental history has come to light in recent decades due to globalization creating "a more global point of view" (3) and a more worldly political perspective. I agree less with this part of his argument and more with his second part; that environmental history has a bigger focus not because of a broader worldview, but a more focused and "a more democratic one" (3). There is more of a focus on the smaller voices that make up a country; their individual experiences adding up to a more varied and in depth account of how a country formed outside of the system that runs it. In other words, the story of a nation is no longer told about the establishment, because it is no longer being told by the establishment (at least not just the establishment). It is an interesting example of how shifts in social climates affect not just how we process the present, but how we consider the past.

Later in the passage Worster states that the enduring presence of natural disasters "...is evidence of how far we are from controlling the environment to our complete satisfaction" (4). This is an observation that really grabbed me, and made me realize that the goal of humanity has always been to control our environment so that it suits us; from the first farmers planting crops to modern-day amenities like heating and A/C. My question then is: In what ways does controlling the environment separate us from it? In what ways does it destroy it? At what point does (...or did) human progress become too much for the environment to handle?[/i]

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