[MassHistPres] ArcNews: Winter 2011/2012

[Marcia Starkey]

This issue of Esri's ArcNews headlines "Through the Macroscope: Geography's
View of the World" and lists the author's1996 article in the "Journal of
Biogeography" 23:609-617 "A Paleographic Link Between Australia and Eastern
North America: A New England Connection?"   

 

In the current article, Jerome E. Dobson, President of the American
Geographical Society and Professor at U. of Kansas, cites his field's
failure to recognize the significance of its discoveries. He acknowledges an
interest in the origins of human culture and asks "has anyone ever told you
that for 104,000 years, the world ocean remained at least 25 meters lower
than it is today? That for 59,000 years it was at least 68 meters lower, and
for 35,000 years it was at least 85 meters lower?  That geographic
information has to be the single most important clue to how and where humans
developed into the sentient beings of  today.  Yet scientists routinely call
the old coast a 'land bridge' as if it were only good for getting from one
place exposed today to another place exposed today.  .Make no mistake. That
was a vast coastal plain and people surely lived there."   He continues "We
can trace the old coasts ..over the last 120,000 years and predict likely
settlement sites and trade routes."  And "The greatest scientific
revolution, however, may lie in better understanding of human evolution
itself, since several glaciation cycles coincide with the time period,
120,000 years, in which modern humans are known to have existed." 

 

Most GIS departments receive ArcNews and this article seems to be worth
reading.  

 

Marcia Starkey, Greenfield

 

   

 

 

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