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posted by martyb on Thursday February 02 2017, @12:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the moved-south-for-the-winter dept.

What caused the rapid disappearance of a vibrant Native American agrarian culture that lived in urban settlements from the Ohio River Valley to the Mississippi River Valley in the two centuries preceding the European settlement of North America? In a new study, researchers from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis reconstructed and analyzed 2,100 years of temperature and precipitation data—and point the finger at climate change.

Employing proxies of prehistoric temperature and precipitation preserved in finely layered lake sediments, somewhat analogous to tree-ring records used to reconstruct drought and temperature, the IUPUI scientists have reported on the dramatic environmental changes that occurred as the Native Americans—known as Mississippians—flourished and then vanished from the Midwestern United States. The researchers theorize that the catastrophic climate change they observed, which doomed food production, was a primary cause of the disappearance.

"Abrupt climate change can impose conditions like drought. If these conditions are severe and sustained, as we have determined that they became for the Mississippians, it is virtually impossible for societies, especially those based on agriculture, to survive," said paleoclimatologist Broxton Bird, corresponding author of the new study. "From the lake records, we saw that the abundant rainfall and consistent good weather—which supported Mississippian society as it grew—changed, making agriculture unsustainable." Bird is an assistant professor of earth sciences in the School of Science at IUPUI.

This failure of their principal food source likely destabilized the sociopolitical system that supported Mississippian society, according to archeologist Jeremy Wilson, a study co-author. He is an associate professor of anthropology in the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.

Other theories have suggested they exceeded their environment's carrying capacity, or that disease wiped out large numbers of people.


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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday February 02 2017, @03:16PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday February 02 2017, @03:16PM (#461989) Homepage Journal

    I agree about "the cloud"; that word was coined out of technological ignorance. But I see no difference between "climate change" and "changes in climate".

    "synergize" is from synergy, "the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects", or a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The word is ancient, so synergize would be to cause synergy, making it a proper word.

    "Paradigm shift" is likewise a viable concept that's been around a very long time. Look those words up in a dictionary, they are all useful when used correctly. Except "the cloud" which is simply storing your data on someone else's system.

    There are some newly coined words I abhor. One is "blog"; it sounds like someone vomiting. The worst is BOGO. That's a brain-dead stupid word. If I buy one I GET EXACTLY ONE. Buy one, get one free" would be BOGOF. But of course, that one was coined by advertisers. To get into the ad industry you have to take an IQ test. If you score over 70, you're disqualified to work in the field. Advertisers need to bog off!

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  • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday February 02 2017, @04:06PM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Thursday February 02 2017, @04:06PM (#462001) Journal

    I dislike 'synergize' due to only hearing and seeing it in marketing speak - at all other times I see "mutual advantage", "cooperative benefits" or "economy of scale" - so its modern use in marketing I consider a buzzword.

    "Paradigm shift" is also a phrase I only see to generate buzz, in other context I tend to see "coup d'etat", or just "major change" instead. (Also - excepting in historical reviews I've never seen the phrase "paradigm shift" used properly, but I've seen it a lot to describe very minor incremental changes and almost never in regards to science)

    "The cloud" I actually find hilarious, due to in my job a cloud on a drawing simply means "unknown/irrelevant" - so I tend to do a mental 's/the cloud/I have no idea where/g', but non-the-less a buzxword.

    Ahh, "blog" - which I tend to take perverse issue in pointing out it is "an online diary" (as it was called in the pre web2.0 [another abhorrence] days).

    The entire notion of "let's do initalisms" is a thing I agree on being horrible in non-casual settings.
    Regarding the "buy one marked up item and get both that you shelled out for" I rather consider being a blatantly fun instance of perceived value abuse.

    (I actually am in the habit of looking up words, including "buzzword" (word du jour) - no need for a word to be new to be a buzzword)

    • (Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Friday February 03 2017, @12:02AM

      by Hawkwind (3531) on Friday February 03 2017, @12:02AM (#462186)

      Paradigm shift, Frank and Ernest had a great take on this when the phrase was starting to get hot in academia: http://aphelis.net/frank-ernest-paradigm-shift/ [aphelis.net].

       

      Personally, I rarely hear it used in a "serious" way now.

    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday February 03 2017, @03:53AM

      by Reziac (2489) on Friday February 03 2017, @03:53AM (#462227) Homepage

      My personal unfave is "leverage". As soon as I hear a marketer say "leverage", I know I'm about to hear bullshit.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday February 03 2017, @12:29PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday February 03 2017, @12:29PM (#462336) Homepage
    OT now.

    I didn't know where you were seeing with BOGO, I've never seen it in the context you seem to be using. I initially presumed you meant bogo- the prefix meaning "imbued with the property of bogosity" (as in bogosort). I agree, it seems a dumb contraction (but no dumber than the regular misuse of "I could care less" to mean "I could not care less"). The equivalent we have here is clever because it's language neutral (useful, as we're a bilingual city that gets lots of tourists that speak a 3rd language, and of course English is a bloody useful fallback 4th language for dealing with everyone else) - our local bars will just have signs saying "2=3", with a price. That's what you pay, the normal price for 2, but what you get for that price is 3. Buy two, get one free, condensed down to 3 characters. 2=3, so stupid it's brilliant.
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