APEC 324
Resource Economics
Prof. John Mackenzie
johnmack@udel.edu 302-373-3723
www.udel.edu/johnmack/apec324
215 Townsend Hall, Wed. 1-3PM
Humans evolved as endurance
runners and super-predators.
Stereo vision for depth perception.
Nuchal ligament stabilizes head &
vision while running
Color vision & eye scanning
Semi-circular ear canal for balance
& agility
Bi-pedal posture decouples
breathing from stride
Enlarged gluteals vs. quads
Efficient thermoregulation
sweating vs. panting;
hairless skin, hair shades head
Humans evolved fear as a survival reflex (the Amygdala)
long before we evolved rational thought (Frontal Cortex)
Pessimistic vs. optimistic visions of the future
Nauru is a remote 8-square-mile island nation
in the South Pacific with about 9,000 people
Limestone wasteland left after phosphate mining
85% of the island is deforested; runoff has ruined local fishing;
the government is bankrupt.
A deterministic feedback loop model of two interacting species
A little randomness makes it quasi-chaotic and unpredictable
A second trial of the same model…
Meadows & Forrester’s Limits to Growth (1972) model
--lots of feedback loops!
Limits to Growth (1972) standard model forecasts
Failures of natural systems, or failures of human institutions?
Long-term effects of rent control in South Bronx
Jared Diamond -- Guns, Germs & Steel
Why is it that Europeans conquered the Americas,
most of Africa, Australia, etc?
Why didn’t the Incas of Peru, or the Aztecs of
Mexico, or the Ashanti of Ghana conquer Europe
instead?
Pizarro seizes the Incan emperor Atahualpa
Eurasia’s east-west orientation gave it the largest continuous temperate zone
with more domesticatable species allowing earlier transition to agriculture
Climate Zones
Centers of origin and spread of agriculture
Pizarro’s main “proximate” advantage was epidemiologic:
Europeans brought smallpox, measles, typhus, diphtheria,
malaria, mumps, pertussis, bubonic plague, tuberculosis,
yellow fever, etc.
…all evolved in Eurasian confined animals
Epidemic after epidemic had built Europeans’ resistance to
these diseases over >10,000 years of farming.
Indigenous Americans had no resistance, so native American
populations were decimated by a rapid series of epidemics
over the 16th Century.
Contemporary hunter-gatherers (Hadza tribesmen) returning from a hunt
Nomadic populations: Lapps with reindeer (Finland)
Domesticated animals in Egypt (milking cows)
plowing
threshing
Agricultural calendar (medieval Europe)
Rice terraces in the Philippines
Examples of Early Major Crop Types around the Ancient World
Area
Crop Type
Cereals, Other Grasses
Pulses, Tubers
Fertile Crescent
emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley pea, lentil, chickpea
China
Mesoamerica
foxtail millet, broom-corn millet,
rice
corn
soybean, adzuki bean, mung
bean
common bean, tepary bean,
scarlet runner bean
Andes, Amazonia
quinoa, [corn]
lima bean, common bean,
peanut, potato, sweet potato
cowpea, groundnut
West Africa and Sahel sorghum, pearl millet, African rice
India
Ethiopia
Eastern United States
New Guinea
[wheat, barley, rice, sorghum,
millets]
teff, finger millet, [wheat, barley]
hyacinth bean, black gram, green
gram
[pea, lentil]
maygrass, little barley, knotweed,
goosefoot
sugar cane
—
Vegetation
Mean Temperatures
Annual Rainfall
Geography is destiny?
Why didn’t China conquer the world?
Zheng He’s treasure fleets (1421) -- Gavin Menzies?
Pre-Columbian contacts: Norse in Newfoundland,
Basque fishing fleet reported in Jacques Cartier’s journals
More mind-improving books:
Charles C. Mann: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus (2005)
Mann: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (2011)
Tony Horwitz: A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New
World (2008)
Mark Kurlansky: Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the
World (1997)
Kurlansky: The Basque History of the World (1999)
The Columbian exchange starts the Homogenocene--global
distributions of foods, animals, insects, plants and diseases
The triangle trade: slaves—sugar—rum
Tobacco
Potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize & population growth
Gold and Spain’s long-term economic development
Silver and the Chinese empire
Rubber transforms African and Asian ecosystems
Maroon societies
Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
(2005)
Diamond lists various factors that have contributed to the collapses
of various societies:
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•
•
•
•
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Deforestation (and destruction of game habitat)
Soil degradation (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses)
Drought (and failures of water management systems)
Overhunting & overfishing
Introduced species disrupt native species & ecosystems
Overpopulation & increasing per-capita ecosystem impacts
He then describes why and how various societies collapsed:
• The Greenland Norse—refusal to adapt to climate change, local
food supply (fish, not cattle!), neighbors (Inuit skraelings)
• Easter Island—deforestation, civil war
• The Polynesians of Pitcairn Island—environmental damage,
loss of trading partners
• The Anasazi of southwestern North America—drought, conflict
• The Maya of Central America—drought, war
Viking explorations; Greenland settlements: 980 - 1430
The Skálholt map of the North Atlantic -- Sigurd Stefansson (1570)
Viking ruins at Eastern Settlement, Greenland
Recreation of Viking long house at L’Anse au Meadows, Newfoundland
Pitcairn Islands – Polynesian cultures failed due to breakdown of trade
Port-au-Prince