Registration ends 07.4.2026 at 23:59 h

Ecological history is about how the land and biosphere change in response to human culture and human organization. Some of this is popularized as it has been by Jared Diamond who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse. More recently, and important book is The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wuthnow. Other works of relevance include William McNeill Plagues and Peoples, Alfred Crosby Ecological Imperialism, and William Cronon Changes in the Land.

This course will ask students to evaluate the methods used to develop such “deep history” ideas. Among the methods that can be discussed are etno-botany, linguistics (glotto-chronology), human genetics, plant and animal genetics, disease organism genetics, dendro-chronology, archaeology of many flavors, geography of varous flavors, C-14 dating, folklore, written sources (ancient and modern), radar technology, and others.

Further information on teaching evaluation: https://www.leuphana.de/en/teaching/quality-management/evaluation/course-evaluation.html