Rising sea levels: Survival tips from 5000 BC

[Shirleypal]

26 May 2009 by Catherine Brahic

WITH rising seas lapping at coastal cities and threatening to engulf entire islands in the not-too-distant future, it's easy to assume our only option will be to abandon them and head for the hills. There may be another way, however. Archaeological sites in the Caribbean, dating back to 5000 BC, show that some ancient civilisations had it just as bad as anything we are expecting. Yet not only did they survive a changing coastline and more storm surges and hurricanes: they stayed put and successfully adapted to the changing world. Now archaeologists are working out how they managed it and finding ways that we might learn from their example.

The sea-level rise that our ancestors dealt with had nothing to do with human-induced climate change, of course: it was a hangover from the last ice age. As the massive ice sheet that lay on North America melted, the continent was buoyed upwards. As a result, the northern Caribbean, on the other end of the same tectonic plate, sank, making seas in the region rise up to 5 metres over 5000 years.

Although the cause of this rise was very different to what we face today, the effects were probably the same. Rising waters not only nibble away at coastlines, they also mean that hurricanes and storm surges reach further inland. Higher seas also mean that groundwater becomes contaminated with salt, and as the water table rises the waterlogged land becomes more likely to flood.

Despite these changes, excavations of ancient houses in what is now the province of Ciego de Avila in northern Cuba suggest that the region was inhabited between 5000 BC and just 300 years ago. One of the best-preserved ancient sites is the village of Los Buchillones (see image), now 150 metres out to sea, which was inhabited from AD 1260 until the mid-1600s by people known as the Taino. For Jago Cooper, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester, UK, who studies the site and others across the Caribbean, the village provides a rare chance to study the pinnacle of Taino knowledge (see image). "The people at Los Buchillones represent a way of living that capitalises on hundreds or even thousands of years of experience of living in the area," he says.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ?full=true

[Linnea]

This is an interesting article. The adjustments that were made in the coastal areas involved simple life styles. Would not probably help much in highly urbanized areas.