Lecture 7

Question 1

What is Easter Island?

Answer 1

Very remote island in isolated part of the Pacific Ocean

Question 2

What were the ocean-worthy watercrafts available to Easter Islanders?

Answer 2

Only small frail canoes

Question 3

What evidence suggests that the care of statues on Easter Island had ceased?

Answer 3

Unfinished statues left on site

Question 4

What was the state of trees on Easter Island at the time of European contact?

Answer 4

No trees

Question 5

What oral history references are associated with Easter Island?

Answer 5

Cannibalism and famine

Question 6

What is the primary method used to reconstruct global climate?

Answer 6

Chemical composition of shells

Question 7

What are the two isotopes of oxygen mentioned in the reconstruction of global climate?

Answer 7

Oxygen-16 and Oxygen-18

Question 8

What processes affect the proportion of light/heavy water in oceans?

Answer 8

Evaporation and condensation

Question 9

What happens to light water during evaporation?

Answer 9

Light water evaporates more readily

Question 10

What happens to heavy water during condensation?

Answer 10

Heavy water condenses more readily

Question 11

What is the filtering mechanism that evaporation and condensation create?

Answer 11

Light water is removed from the ocean and locked in the form of ice at the north and south poles

Question 12

The colder the global climate, the more…

Answer 12

severe the filtering mechanism is

Question 13

Chemical composition is used to…

Answer 13

track global temperature fluctuations

Question 14

What type of remains can be used to reconstruct local environments?

Answer 14

Plant remains

Question 15

What are macrobotanical remains?

Answer 15

Large plant remains, visible to naked eye

Question 16

What are some examples of macro botanical remains?

Answer 16

Seeds, fruits, wood, charcoal

Question 17

What is fossil pack rat nests?

Answer 17

Another example of macrobotanical remains, time capsules of plant remains, dated via radiocarbon

Question 18

What type of analysis is used for microbotanical remains?

Answer 18

Pollen analysis

Question 19

What is pollen analysis?

Answer 19

Unique pollen from plant species recovered from sediments, tracks plant fluctuations over time

Question 20

How many species of trees were present on Easter Island when humans first arrived?

Answer 20

At least 35 species of trees

Question 21

What does the last bit of tree charcoal recovered from Easter Island date to?

Answer 21

About AD 1400, 500 years after humans arrived

Question 22

What was the initial diet focus of Easter Islanders?

Answer 22

Tuna and Dolphin

Question 23

What is the example of using animal bones on Easter island?

Answer 23

Seabirds bred on the island (evidence of change in human diet)

Question 24

What significant environmental change occurred on Easter Island by AD 1400?

Answer 24

Island is deforested due to overexploitation by humans

Question 25

What replaced wood fuel on Easter Island as trees were depleted?

Answer 25

Grass and herbs

Question 26

What worsened the impact of overexploitation by humans?

Answer 26

Rats

Question 27

What led to the stop of statue-building on Easter Island?

Answer 27

No lever or ropes available

Question 28

What happened to seabird and inland bird populations on Easter Island due to human actions?

Answer 28

Driven to extinctions

Question 29

Why did the exploitation of tuna and dolphin stop?

Answer 29

No canoes

Question 30

What caused the halt in farming?

Answer 30

Soil erosion, fields were abandoned

Question 31

What did the reliance on shellfish lead to?

Answer 31

Over -exploitation and extinction

Question 32

What is an example of a human-driven environmental crisis?

Answer 32

Easter Island

Question 33

Fill in the blank: The chemical composition of foraminiferan shells reflects the ______ in the water around them.

Answer 33

oxygen ratio

Question 34

True or False: Fishing from the coast was easy for Easter Islanders.

Answer 34

False

Question 35

What are the three ways to use foraminiferan to infer past global climate?

Answer 35

Absence/presence of species that prefer cold or warm water, development of shell, chemical composition of shells

Question 36

The direction of coil changes with

Answer 36

temperature surface

Question 37

What is the variation across the three techniques to use forminiferan?

Answer 37

Fluctuate in global temperature over time