Syllabus

Aims of the Course

Our study concerns the history of humankind's interaction with a dynamic natural environment.  This history begins at a point of geoligic time where human life was ruled by nature, and where nature shaped the evolution of human form and the abundance of human populations across the planet. At the end of the ice age, humans began to be a dynamic factor in the natural environment, and human activity began to supplant the rule of nature in determining the course of the planet's environmental evolution. In the present world, human influence on the natural environment poses numerous uncertainties and potential dangers to both the quantity and quality of human life. By examining the co-evolution of human history and environmental history we seek insight into the array of problems and potential solutions that face humankind in the present world.

The course is conceived as a partnership between three organizational units of the university: the Department of Geophysical Sciences, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the Environmental Studies program. The original intent of the course was to provide an opportunity for students of humanities and social sciences to learn about the physical processes of Earth's climate and environment within the context of archaeology. While the main educational goal of the course is to explore the knowledge of physical science (e.g., meteorology, geochemistry, geomorphology), the distinctive feature of the course which sets it apart from others that emphasize the science of Earth's environment is the emphasis on human history. The course was first taught in 2003 (winter and spring quarters). The sequence offered in 2004 will entail several restructurings, including a greater emphasis on the time-line of human history as an organizational thread.

Topics of study cover the climatology, paleoclimatology, meteorology, land-surface geomorphology, physical chemistry, metallurgy, astronomy, population ecology, statistical and computational methodology, and physical/biological interactions necessary to understand Earth's environment during the period in which humankind emerged as a species and as a social, technological, political and cultural entity on the planet.

The first quarter (Physci 132), emphasizes the emergence of humans as a species, and the development of early strategies for the management of nature (e.g., development of agriculture).  The time frame will lead up to the development of early urban settlements of the Near East approximately 4000 B.C.E.This regional focus provides an ideal laboratory for the study of human-environmental interactions because it offers an enormous array of data drawn from archaeological and textual studies. Laboratory exercises and readings will emphasize the evolutionary biology of hominids, the spread of humans across the globe, sea level and ice-age climate change, and geochemical records of late-Peistocene climate.

The second quarter (Physci 133), emphasizes the interplay between cultural and environmental mechanisms which shape the early development of civilization. Particular attention will be given to covering Earth systems (e.g., rivers, subtropical climate and transgressive sea level changes) that influence the early urban settlements of the Near East. Topics of study will culminate with an examination of the environmental challenges and problems in today's world and their underpinnings in the concepts of physical science.  Return to top.

Student Responsibilities

Students are required to attend all lectures, complete reading assignments, hand in reading-comprehension quizzes (late assignments will be given a 50% cut in grade, late assignments handed in after the answer key is posted will receive zero credit), attend one lab section per week, complete the self-guided field trips and complete the final exam. Students who cannot fulfill these responsibilities should consider taking another course as a means to complete their physical science core requirement. Return to top.

Important note: You must register for this course by registering for a lab section. You must then attend the section you register for without switching. We are limited in the lab space, and this mandates a strict adherence to section enrollment provided by the registration system.

Midwinter break: No lecture will be given on Monday, 9 February, the date designated as the college midwinter break.

 

Lab Activities

Weekly lab activities (including the preparation of a lab report following the format specified by the lab report templates that are provided) are a vital part of the course and are essential to understanding the ways in which information is processed in the physical sciences. Labs will be held in the Crerar USITE Computer Classroom (this is the small, glassed-in room in the back corner of the USITE area). There are 9 seats available for students in each section, and all students must conform to this constraint. Once a section is full, additional participants will be denied registration for that section. Students who cannot find a lab section that suits their schedule, and into which their entry is allowed (e.g., the section is not full), must drop the course.

Students may access lab materials and software outside of the regular lab sections by using the computers at Carrier and Harper USITE, and accessing software and data available on the course web site (chalk).

Lab Assignments and Due Dates

Labs will begin during week 2 of the quarter (do not bother to come during week 1). There will be 6 lab activities including:

1. Structure of the Global Ocean, Due: lab section during week 4 (except Monday section: week 5).

2. Deep Waters of the Global Ocean, Due: lab section during week 4 (except Monday section: week 5).

3. History of millennial-scale climate variability, Due: as instructed by TA.

4. More Crash Boom Boom, Due: as instructed by TA.

5. The Journey of Humankind, Due: as instructed by TA.

6. Mass extinction and population biology, Due: as instructed by TA.
   

Lab Sections

• 10:30-11:50 am, Monday (sec. 5)

• 1:30-2:50 PM, Tuesday (sec. 1)

• 3:00-4:20 PM, Tuesday (sec. 2)

• 10:30-11:50 am, Wednesday (sec. 6)

• 3:00-4:20 PM, Wednesday (sec. 7)

• 1:30-2:50 PM, Thursday (sec. 3)

• 3:00-4:20 PM, Thursday (sec. 4)

• 10:30-11:50 AM, Friday (sec. 8)
  

Labs will begin 5 minutes after the start time (this gives students an extra 5 minutes to walk from their previous class). Once the lab activities begin, i.e., the lab instructor has begun to present the material, late students will be forced to fend for themselves. Disruption by students entering the lab area late is discourteous. Return to top.

Self-Guided Field Trips

Students are expected to complete two self-guided field trips during the Winter Quarter. The first trip will be to the Field Museum and will involve the ice-age exhibit and elements of other exhibits that involve evolution. The second trip will be to the Oriental Institute and will involve elements of the Iraq, Persian and Egyptian exhibits. Field trip report templates will be provided on the course web site.

Field Museum Self-Guided Field Trip: to be taken prior to week of February 9. (Note: No classes on February 9, so this provides an opportunity to visit the Museum.)

Oriental Institute Self-Guided Field Trip: to be taken during 8th and 9th weeks.

Reading

Emphasis shall be placed on assigned reading as a means to bridge the gap between physical science and the elements of human history that exemplify humankind's relationship with nature.  The reading list is drawn from popular books that represent a genre of enjoyable, stimulating journalism.  Please anticipate reading one book per week over the next 20 weeks of the two-quarter sequence. Assigned reading will be available for purchase from the university bookstore (also check Amazon.com). Each book is to be read cover-to-cover unless otherwise indicated.

Reading comprehension quizzes will accompany each assignment.

Tentative reading list (please refer to announcements made in lecture and on the course web page for official reading assignments):

Background Textbook (reading assigned throughout the quarter): Roberts, The Holocene

Week 2: Alley, The Two-Mile Time Machine
Week 3: Klein and Edgar, The Evolution of Human Culture
Week 4: Calvin, A Brain for all Seasons
Week 5: Wells, The Journey of Man
Week 6 & 7: Pitman and Ryan, Noah's Flood
Week 8: Pollan, The Botany of Desire
Week 9: Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague

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Exams and Quizzes

A reading comprehension quiz (see above) will be associated with each book. All books are available in the bookstore (you can also check Amazon.com) for purchase as either new or used. A final exam will be given at the end of the quarter. It is likely that the final will be a take-home test and will involve software and analysis skills derived from lab activities. There is no midterm exam.

 

Grading

Grading shall be conducted in a manner that rewards students for conscientious attention to class assignments, neatness in presentation (e.g., using a word processor to prepare assignments), attendance in lecture and lab sections, performance on exams and quizzes, and performance on assigned laboratory and self-guided field trip reports. All grading of labs and field-trip reports will be done on a "Pass/Fail" basis. The TA who runs the lab section to which you are registered is responsible for assigning your grade. He or she is instructed to deduct for late work (i.e., "Fail" for a late lab). All Lab and Field Trip reports shall be written in the format of a lab journal (each report will constitute a separate chapter). Students are required to maintain both digital and hard copy versions of the complete lab journal. The lab journal will be used for future reference during the second quarter of the class.

Grading scheme:

• Labs: 40%

• Quizzes: 25%

• Final Exam: 25%

• Field-trip reports: 10%
  

Collaboration Policy

Students may discuss all elements of the course among themselves, but must hand in their own, unique written assignments. Students who wish to perform lab exercises with a partner are strongly discouraged from doing so, and will be given permission to do so only by the professor.Return to top.

Lecture Topics

1. Organization and Overview. The concept of co-evolution, antiquity and its capacity to inform the modern world, local and distributed interactions.

2. Landform analysis. Primitive, geomorphological methods of discovering past climate change.

3. Ice core records, I.  Ice core record of past climate change, Dansgard-Oeschger events, the Younger Dryas event, introduction to geochronology.

4. Carbon-14 dating. and introduction to first lab.

5. Deep-sea records, I. Introduction to the concept of a global ice-volume index.

6. Milankovitch Hypothesis, Astronomical Cycles. Deep-sea sediment cores; benthic forams and the Milankovitch theory of the ice ages.

7. Ice-Records of Natural CO₂ Variation. The Vostok ice core shows us that CO₂ variation in the past was largely responsible for ice-age climate cycles.

8. Evolution of the Human Species, I. The fossil record of Hominid species.

9. Evolution of the Human Species, II. Principles of natural selection, climate/evolutionary linkage mechanisms, mysteries of sister species extinction, stone-age technology.
   

10. Evolution of the Human Species, III. Human anatomy and evolutionary differentiation from the apes.

11. Evolution of the Human Species, IV. Human anatomy continued.

12. A Brain for all Seasons. The impact of climate change on hominid evolution.

13. The Journey of Man, I. Presentation of Spencer Wells' work on y-chromosome paleogeography.

14. The Journey of Man, II. Continued presentation of Spencer Wells' work on y-chromosome paleogeography.

15. The Journey of Man, III. Continued presentation of Spencer Wells' work on y-chromosome paleogeography.

16. The Journey of Man, IV. Continued presentation of Spencer Wells' work on y-chromosome paleogeography.

17. Mass Extinction, I. Population ecology and population dynamics, macroeconomic models of human foraging behavior.

18. Mass Extinction, II. Mass extinction of megafauna as first step in humankind's reshaping of the global habitat.

19. Mass Extinction, III. Atmospheric composition, pressure and density, atmospheric stability, radiative balance, the stratosphere, extraterrestrial atmospheres.

20. Archaeology, I. Hollywood's stereotyping of archaeologists.

21. Plant ecology and evolution. Genetic aspects of plant development necessary for the emergence of domesticated species.

22. Archaeology, II. The story of the birth of agriculture seen through the science of archaeology.

23. Onset of Agriculturalism and the Younger Dryas. Continued analysis of the birth of agriculture seen through the eyes of paleoclimatology.

24. Sea-level rise and flood mythology. Reanalysis of the Black Sea disaster presented by Pitman and Ryan.

25. Climate, Weather and Human Disease, I. Examples of domesticates, archaeological evidence for the domestication of plants and animals, unconscious pressures of climate, the Younger Dryas event and the environment of the fertile crescent.

26. Climate, Weather and Human Disease, II. Introduction to solar physics and chemistry.

27. The Future of Sea Level, I. Will humankind be forced to cope with rising sea levels again in the future? This question is addressed in the context of a NOVA documentary, The Ice Melts.

28. The Future of Sea Level, II. Research in Antarctica shows the plausibility of sea level changes in store for the future, but cannot conclusively pin down a forecast. Close of course.

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