Norse Greenland has been seen as a classic case of maladaptation by an inflexible temperate zone society extending into the arctic and collapse driven by climate change. This paper, however, ...recognizes the successful arctic adaptation achieved in Norse Greenland and argues that, although climate change had impacts, the end of Norse settlement can only be truly understood as a complex socioenvironmental system that includes local and interregional interactions operating at different geographic and temporal scales and recognizes the cultural limits to adaptation of traditional ecological knowledge. This paper is not focused on a single discovery and its implications, an approach that can encourage monocausal and environmentally deterministic emphasis to explanation, but it is the product of sustained international interdisciplinary investigations in Greenland and the rest of the North Atlantic. It is based on data acquisitions, reinterpretation of established knowledge, and a somewhat different philosophical approach to the question of collapse. We argue that the Norse Greenlanders created a flexible and successful subsistence system that responded effectively to major environmental challenges but probably fell victim to a combination of conjunctures of large-scale historic processes and vulnerabilities created by their successful prior response to climate change. Their failure was an inability to anticipate an unknowable future, an inability to broaden their traditional ecological knowledge base, and a case of being too specialized, too small, and too isolated to be able to capitalize on and compete in the new protoworld system extending into the North Atlantic in the early 15th century.
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Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security Nelson, Margaret C.; Ingram, Scott E.; Dugmore, Andrew J. ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
01/2016, Volume:
113, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This paper identifies rare climate challenges in the long-term history of seven areas, three in the subpolar North Atlantic Islands and four in the arid-to-semiarid deserts of the US Southwest. For ...each case, the vulnerability to food shortage before the climate challenge is quantified based on eight variables encompassing both environmental and social domains. These data are used to evaluate the relationship between the “weight” of vulnerability before a climate challenge and the nature of social change and food security following a challenge. The outcome of this work is directly applicable to debates about disaster management policy.
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During a spectacular excavation in 1921 at the Norse farm of Herjolfsnes (Ikigaat) on the southern tip of Greenland, Poul Nørlund found 58 wooden crosses of driftwood in the graves at the site. ...These vary in size from c. 10 to 70 cm. Since then, more crosses have been found in other churchyards, as well as a few in a more “profane” context in dwellings. Nearly all of these crosses are quite simple. But six of them are more elaborately carved with specific traits, which enable closer comparison with prototypes from Europe. Four crosses have Doric capital ends, which must be derived from the design of German and English crosses dating to the beginning of the 11th century and spread to Scandinavia in the 12th century. A regular crucifixion group (Calvary) has English and Norwegian antecedents dating to the mid-13th century, and a panel crucifix displays elements from a period as long c. 1200–1350, suggesting extreme lateness in style. There is nothing to stop us assuming that dissemination of influences essentially occurred through Norway and perhaps Iceland. Several stylistic traits, such as the Doric capitals, acanthus leaf and classical drapery, can be traced all the way back to classical antiquity and represent their earliest occurrence in the western hemisphere.
Greenland climate change: from the past to the future Masson-Delmotte, Valérie; Swingedouw, Didier; Landais, Amaëlle ...
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Climate change,
September/October 2012, Volume:
3, Issue:
5
Journal Article, Web Resource
Peer reviewed
Climate archives available from deep sea and marine shelf sediments, glaciers, lakes, and ice cores in and around Greenland allow us to place the current trends in regional climate, ice sheet ...dynamics, and land surface changes in a broader perspective. We show that, during the last decade (2000s), atmospheric and sea surface temperatures are reaching levels last encountered millennia ago, when northern high latitude summer insolation was higher due to a different orbital configuration. Records from lake sediments in southern Greenland document major environmental and climatic conditions during the last 10,000 years, highlighting the role of soil dynamics in past vegetation changes, and stressing the growing anthropogenic impacts on soil erosion during the recent decades. Furthermore, past and present changes in atmospheric and oceanic heat advection appear to strongly influence both regional climate and ice sheet dynamics. Projections from climate models are investigated to quantify the magnitude and rates of future changes in Greenland temperature, which may be faster than past abrupt events occurring under interglacial conditions. Within one century, in response to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Greenland may reach temperatures last time encountered during the last interglacial period, approximately 125,000 years ago. We review and discuss whether analogies between the last interglacial and future changes are reasonable, because of the different seasonal impacts of orbital and greenhouse gas forcings. Over several decades to centuries, future Greenland melt may act as a negative feedback, limiting regional warming albeit with global sea level and climatic impacts. WIREs Clim Change 2012 doi: 10.1002/wcc.186
This article is categorized under:
Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Modern Climate Change
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7.
The genetic prehistory of the New World Arctic Raghavan, Maanasa; DeGiorgio, Michael; Albrechtsen, Anders ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
08/2014, Volume:
345, Issue:
6200
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The New World Arctic, the last region of the Americas to be populated by humans, has a relatively well-researched archaeology, but an understanding of its genetic history is lacking. We present ...genome-wide sequence data from ancient and present-day humans from Greenland, Arctic Canada, Alaska, Aleutian Islands, and Siberia. We show that Paleo-Eskimos (~3000 BCE to 1300 CE) represent a migration pulse into the Americas independent of both Native American and Inuit expansions. Furthermore, the genetic continuity characterizing the Paleo-Eskimo period was interrupted by the arrival of a new population, representing the ancestors of present-day Inuit, with evidence of past gene flow between these lineages. Despite periodic abandonment of major Arctic regions, a single Paleo-Eskimo metapopulation likely survived in near-isolation for more than 4000 years, only to vanish around 700 years ago.
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There is increasing evidence to suggest that arctic cultures and ecosystems have followed non-linear responses to climate change. Norse Scandinavian farmers introduced agriculture to sub-arctic ...Greenland in the late tenth century, creating synanthropic landscapes and utilising seasonally abundant marine and terrestrial resources. Using a niche-construction framework and data from recent survey work, studies of diet, and regional-scale climate proxies we examine the potential mismatch between this imported agricultural niche and the constraints of the environment from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. We argue that landscape modification conformed the Norse to a Scandinavian style of agriculture throughout settlement, structuring and limiting the efficacy of seasonal hunting strategies. Recent climate data provide evidence of sustained cooling from the mid thirteenth century and climate variation from the early fifteenth century. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Norse made incremental adjustments to the changing sub-arctic environment, but were limited by cultural adaptations made in past environments.
Human parvovirus B19 (B19V) is a ubiquitous human pathogen associated with a number of conditions, such as fifth disease in children and arthritis and arthralgias in adults. B19V is thought to evolve ...exceptionally rapidly among DNA viruses, with substitution rates previously estimated to be closer to those typical of RNA viruses. On the basis of genetic sequences up to ∼70 years of age, the most recent common ancestor of all B19V has been dated to the early 1800s, and it has been suggested that genotype 1, the most common B19V genotype, only started circulating in the 1960s. Here we present 10 genomes (63.9–99.7% genome coverage) of B19V from dental and skeletal remains of individuals who lived in Eurasia and Greenland from ∼0.5 to ∼6.9 thousand years ago (kya). In a phylogenetic analysis, five of the ancient B19V sequences fall within or basal to the modern genotype 1, and five fall basal to genotype 2, showing a long-term association of B19V with humans. The most recent common ancestor of all B19V is placed ∼12.6 kya, and we find a substitution rate that is an order of magnitude lower than inferred previously. Further, we are able to date the recombination event between genotypes 1 and 3 that formed genotype 2 to ∼5.0–6.8 kya. This study emphasizes the importance of ancient viral sequences for our understanding of virus evolution and phylogenetics.
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This discussion of the isotopic analyses of human samples from Greenland begins with a review of the colonization of the island and a description of the sites and the samples that were collected for ...analysis. In addition, a brief consideration of the geology and bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr is provided. The analysis of the human data from Greenland follows an introduction to the variation present and observable differences between the Eastern and Western Settlements. Specific sites on Greenland are discussed in some detail in terms of the isotopic data that is available. A summary of dietary and mobility estimates is provided. Non-local individuals are identified and in some cases suggestions of place of origin are made. It is important to remember that Greenland was settled later than Iceland and all the Norse graves are from the Christian period, meaning burial in churchyards with few if any grave goods.
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