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Prehistoric Human Response to Climate Change

Hello Michael, We are loving your journals and are learning a lot, but would love some more information on what you are going to do with the data your team is collecting. We would also love to know where the team gets their funding for this type of project. Thank you New Start Middle School: Ricky, Andreya, Bob, Quinton, Jeremy, Greg, Davis,Alex, Kris and Jillian

Wed, 05/20/2009 - 07:03

Michael Wing

Dear Jillian and New Start Middle School Students:That's a really important question!  What do we do after tromping through the Finnish woods all day, or after finding a few flakes of quartz stone from 5000 years ago?  What's the point?
In the short term, I have an easy answer for you.  Everything we do and everything we find (and don't find!) gets put on maps and written about in reports that are send to the Finnish National Board of Antiquities.  They keep these maps and reports so that anyone can read them in the future.
Next, the graduate students and professors I am here with write articles about the sites and publish them in scientific journals that are read mostly by other archaeologists.  This lets other archaeologists know what we're doing, and also helps the graduate students earn their Ph.D.  degrees and the professors keep their jobs and obtain more grant money in the future.
Fortunately there's more to it than that... those articles get discussed by other archaeologists, historians, and scientists.  They get compared to what we already know about Finnish prehistory from other years and also to what we know about other similar places in the world: Canada, Russia, etc.
Gradually a consensus emerges about how these 5000 - year old people experienced life in the North, and how their experience changed as Sea Level and Climate changed.
It is instructive at this point to remember that we modern people live in a time when sea level and climate are changing more rapidly than ever before.
It appears that 5000 years ago the people we are studying (I'll call them the Kierikki People for lack of a better name) were living in sturdy and well-build row houses.  Their communities were quite large, stable and prosperous for hunter-gatherers.  After that time (~4000 years ago) there were still people here but living in smalller, more scattered settlements in smaller, less organized houses.  Something in their environment had changed.
It's a sobering thought for people like me who were brought up on the idea of continuous human progress:  Sometimes societies revert to simpler ways in response to environmental changes like sea level or climate.
Who's paying the bill?  You are, mostly.  This project is funded by the National Science Foundation of the United States, the European Science Foundation, and the Finnish National Academy of Sciences.  Ultimately, it's taxpayer dollars and euros from two continents.  Your elected representatives (U.S. Congress, in your case) has decided that we might have something to learn from the experience of 5000 year old hunter-gatherers.
yours always, Michael Wing