DID EARLY HUMANS SURVIVE CLIMATE CHANGE? (The Archaeology of Innovation)

How did prehistoric people endure climate change? Are we the first civilization to try and innovate our way out of climate change? How have past societies engineered sustainable solutions to a shifting world? Archaeologist Sander van der Leeuw says one way ancient humans survived periods of climate instability was to stay below the environment's carrying capacity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLESubwCgS4
http://fora.tv/2009/11/18/Sander_van_der_Leeuw_The_Archaeology_of_Innovation



Sander van der Leeuw, Director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University and External Faculty Member of the Santa Fe Institute, has spent his career studying these questions. During his seminar, Sander van der Leeuw explores this research into the past, as well as its application to our current global predicament. An archaeologist and historian by training, after teaching appointments at Leyden, Amsterdam, Cambridge (England, United Kingdom) and Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne) he presently holds the Chair of Anthropology at Arizona State University in the USA.

http://www.ihdp.unu.edu/article/322
http://www.santafe.edu/profiles/?pid=245