And the correct answer is… cold bad – warm good. Not what we expect the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance to conclude though
A group of international scientists met here on Sunday to discuss the impact of climate change, one of the biggest issues facing the world today.
The scientists, all members of the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance, suggested looking back into history to learn lessons and better respond to the current and future challenges.
They believed archeology can play a contributing role in helping make better climate change policies, “because it investigates long sequences of social and climate change at multiple scales.”
Using Iceland, Greenland, Kuril Island, the central Arizona desert and the Caribbean Islands, all areas impacted by social and climate change over the centuries, as case studies, the group looked at long-term decisions, some made thousands of years ago, that had an impact on what society in those areas can do today.
Professor Andrew Dugmore of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoScience, who studied the archeological remains of Iceland and Greenland in the middle ages, said Iceland, which was colonized by the Vikings around 850 AD, started to thrive in the 15th century when it developed its fish and wool trades.
Greenland, in contrast, stuck to its medieval ways in trading such goods as walrus ivory. Eventually its 3,000 to 5,000 inhabitants died off.
