Lost Worlds, Extinct Landscapes

Catalog description

This seminar aims to introduce graduate students and advanced undergraduates to the most important habitats of human evolution that no longer exist because of climate change. Some of these places have been totally submerged under the waters of the Holocene, others have shifted character to the point where we no longer recognize them. Students will progress chronologically from environments such as Pliocene East Africa to Pleistocene "Savannahstan" to "Green Arabia", Doggerland, and the Ice Free Corridor, while learning to read critically from primary sources about scientific techniques of landscape and climate reconstruction. An ethnographic and ecological context will form a framework for discussions.