Eight centuries ago, the Four Corners region of the US Southwest was bustling. Regular rainfall coaxed crops from healthy soil, and the abundance of cottontails, jackrabbits, and mule deer made for choice meals. Tens of thousands of Ancestral Puebloans lived in adobe houses and cliff dwellings spread across an area the size of Napa County. Then, in the final decades of the 1200s, most everyone left. Drought, crop failure, and conflict all contributed to the society’s collapse. But we don’t exactly how the migration
With just a glimpse, early Earth could almost be mistaken for a contemporary — but lifeless — landscape. A vast ocean swept shores in cycles, wind and rain chipped at cliffs, while vents and volcanoes leaked fresh compounds. Yet Earth’s features and rhythms both above and below its surface did differ, often operating much more chaotically than those they’ve settled into over the eons.
Even on getaway walks in the woods, we wrap ourselves in revolutionary materials and pack along a breakthrough or two in communications. Technology is so deeply embedded in our culture that, like the air we breathe, we often take its presence for granted and notice only its lack.
