3 10 34 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/bb0c7469df2650d90a32598e76921f82.JPG ee096f975bcdaf7221277308634efa72 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1: Lithic Tools Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collections https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/82bb5e80b5d9a4baff82531b61d72a1d.JPG dd654f3de94759e9b54a8926dd3911cd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2: Lithic Tools Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collections Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Lithic Tools Subject The topic of the resource Stone tools are among the most important evidence of early changes humans made to the earth system. Early humans (8000 BC – 1000 BC) used stone tools, like this mortar and scraper, to process food, hides, and other materials. These tools embody the “Neolithic Revolution,” which was the global shift in human culture from hunting and gathering to farming. Farming required humans to become more sedentary. This led to longer and more sustained interactions with the environment. The environmental (and social) impacts of this were profound. Early humans used tools like these to process and use natural resources in new ways. Their perception of the environment transitioned to one of consumption and extraction. This is due to larger settlements and more intensive interactions with the environment. Instead of living with the environment, they lived on it. Description An account of the resource Agriculture is a fundamental aspect of modern society. 90 million acres are dedicated to corn alone, the most productive mono crop (calories/acre), which accounts for one of the largest uses of land in the United States. (Capehart, 2017) No matter if you are the farmer in the tractor plowing the fields, or the consumer buying produce in the grocery store, agriculture pervades your life. Modern agriculture provides the caloric needs in order for humans to undergo their lives unburdened by these basic primal needs. Thousands of years ago, agriculture did not exist and providing suitable food resource for these basic needs was a fight for survival. Stone tools aided humans in obtaining these crucial resources. Stone tools are a technology that has changed human’s relationship with the environment. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/79" title="Lithic1">Figure 1</a>) They allow humans to manipulate and process resources that would otherwise be less useful. The Durham Museum’s lithic tools are a window into transition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the more sedentary lifestyle of a farmer. The use of these tools aided in the reshaping of human lives and their environments. Relating these tools to the anthropocene provides some contextual evidence as to how these tools, and more importantly, the role that agriculture played in the transition to a new epoch. Sustained interactions of the earth through agriculture have fundamentally impacted human relationships with the environment, which poses anthropogenic impacts through developing technology, changes in societal and cultural structure and subsequent ties to Omaha. The context of these particular stone tools has been lost in time. This is unfortunately the case with many similar artifacts in museums around the world. Once removed from the ground, archaeological evidence loses its context, and by consequence much of its history. The possibilities are practically endless for the history of these stone tools. The only provenance known regarding these tools is The Durham Museum acquired them from the Joslyn Museum in 1965. Even without this context what we can understand is the purpose and story surrounding these stone tools, which in turn, links us, and links Omaha, to profound change in the earth system. The availability of ground stone and the ease of manipulation of these rocks into tools make ground stone tool some of the most ubiquitous artifacts in human history. Almost every civilization or group of humans used ground stone tools at one point in time. Although sources of ground stone were static, early humans were nomadic and would often disperse these tools across the landscape. For example, the Western Comanche tribe traded extensively with the French in the 1700’s. Native American trade centers were the norm during these times and were critical in the exchange of technology. (Hämäläinen, 1998) These more modern trading systems are indicative of the trade systems of the past. In context of chipped stone tools, rigorous analysis of particular stone a tool is made of, one can predict the site in which it came from. One can then track the dispersion of stone tools across landscapes from the Folsom, Davis, Cody, and Clovis sites. (Irwin and Wromington, 1970) Paleo-Indians created these tools anywhere where ground stone is/was abundant. If these tools were discovered in the Midwest, the approximate source of stone used to construct these tool would have been the Rocky Mountains. Similar tools have been unearthed by archaeologists and their classification offer insights into their use and environmental implications. The tool which resembles a bowl is called a mortar, which would have been used to process and store plants and other food materials by crushing them with another rock called a pestle. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/80" title="Lithic2">Figure 2</a>) People also used these tools to process and store paints and dyes. The other tool could have been used as a scraper in which the edge would have been used to soften hides or to clean meat off of animal hides while seemingly primitive, these basic tools remain in widespread use today. The modern mortar and pestle, for instance, is often used in the kitchen to process certain food items. The first lesson these tools offer is that the history of technology (which cannot be divorced from narratives of the Anthropocene) is as much the history of modification as it is radical innovation. Stone tools transcend the divide between ancient humans nomadic subsistence strategies and later agricultural sedentism. Paleo-Indians brought stone tools with them when they settled North America. “To colonize the Americas, modern humans had to learn to subsist in the extreme environments of the Siberian Arctic.” (Goebel, Waters, and O'Rourke, 2008) These modern humans were the first to colonize the Americas by crossing the ice bridge of Beringia approximately 15,000 years ago. According to Barton et al, these Paleo-Indians were characterized as mobile hunter-gatherers that used high-quality stones, like chert and obsidian, which were highly curated and had multiple functions. (Barton, 2004) The main purpose of these tools was to aid in the hunting and processing of animals, such as the woolly mammoth, giant ground sloth, or the mastodon, in order to obtain better utility of these resources. Paleo-Indian cultures, for instance, are even named after the locations where these stone tools were first discovered, the most famous being Clovis and Folsom. Although the popular Clovis and Folsom assemblages are not notable in the Nebraskan soil layers, two nearby dig sites have led to evidence of Paleo-Indian activities. According to Holen and May, the La Sena and Shaffert mammoth sites, both located in Frontier County, Nebraska, have fossil evidence of mammoth bones that were processed by humans by breaking them open in order to obtain the bone marrow of the mammoth. (Holen and May, 2002) The descendants of the early Paleo-Indians, Native Americans, continued to use this stone tool technology to obtain and process food for thousands of years to come. In fact, the keystone species of the Great Plains, the bison, is attributed as a key to survival of the Paleo-Indians of the plains as early as 11,000 years ago, and often associated to the mainstay of the more modern Native Americans in Nebraska and the Great Plains. (Hofman and Graham, 1998) “The Lakota and Cheyenne, for instance, are described as relying heavily on bison meat for food and living a nomadic lifestyle in tune with the movements of the Bison. More sedentary farming societies, such as the Mandan, Hidatsa, Pawnee, Oto, and Kansa, incorporated seasonal long-distance bison hunts into their annual subsistence." (Ritterbusch, 2002) Stone tools were crucial in aiding early Native Americans in utilizing large mammals, such as the bison, as a vital resource. They used the stone technology, like the scrapper, to make the resources already available to them, more fruitful. Respectively, lithic tools are an important piece of technology used by the Paleo-Indians and later used by more local Native American tribes in the Great Plains that was key to the survival of these peoples. Hunter-gatherer cultures used lithic technology to hunt more efficiently and process the animals they were using as a food source. However, not all lithic technology was used in the hunting and processing of animals, and in fact, lithic technology is often associated with sedentism and the rise of agriculture. Early humans were nomadic due to the nature of their food source. They would follow their food in the form of herds of mastodons, woolly mammoths, and even bison across the land. The stone tools they used were often cumbersome and difficult to travel with. In order to move more effectively with their food, they would leave the stone tools at their campsite with the assumption they would create new tools wherever they would live next, or come back to them when the herd moves back to the original campsites. This is why there are large deposits of stone tools left in the earth and not an even distribution of them. (Price and Bar-Yosef, 2011) It was not until domestication of crops, the Neolithic Revolution 10,000 BC, which more sedentary lifestyles became common. Agriculture, incentivized communities to settle in order to tend their fields, this allowed people to keep their stone tools and use them for a longer time and create larger stone tools once too cumbersome and hard to transport. These stone tools aided in the cultivation of crops and processing of the subsequent products, such as the mortar. According to Weisdorf, “The rise of Neolithic agriculture is unquestionably one of the most important events in human cultural history." (Weisdrof, 2005) It is often assumed that farming was much easier and the preferred method of obtaining food for the early humans. In reality, it was labor-intensive and backbreaking work for the same amount of calories compared to hunting. Historical ecologist Jack R. Harlan poses the question the best: “Why farm?”8 There are many proposed answers for this question. Economic historians North and Thomas believe it is as simple as a comparative static model that explicitly considers the influence of property rights and population growth upon a man’s behavior. Smith argues it was a decision born of necessity due to the large-scale extinction of certain mega fauna species approximately 10,000 years ago (itself possible the result of excessive hunting). (Smith, 1975) Many more theories try to illustrate the exact causation of the transition to agriculture. (Weisdrof, 2003; Trigger, 1989; North and Thomas, 1977) Whatever the motivations for its development, agriculture has become a defining component of our society today through the feature of innate sedentism and excess of calories that it provides. Farming has been the most direct and uninterrupted interaction between human beings and their environment. The innate goal of farming is to divert and alter natural resources in order to fulfill human goals of creating a sustainable food source. “Farming is a way of obtaining food that involves the cultivation of plants and the controlled herding of animals." (Harlan, 1992) The new systems of obtaining food were much more than cultivation, herding, or the ensuing domestication of various species. The differences in lifestyles, hunter-gatherer vs. farming, necessitated changes to societal structures. The fundamental difference between the hunter-gatherer and the farmer is the way in which calories are obtained. The hunter-gatherer must be nomadic, whereas the farmer remains sedentary. Cultural and societal structures reflect the differences in these lifestyles. Agriculturalists intensively modified the land around them in order to create a milieu that suits their needs. The basic goal of a farmer is to alter the plant community in order to favor the preference of a few plant species that produce food. This produced, in the best of circumstances, fantastic amounts of energy in the form of food, but it likewise necessitated new relationships with their surroundings, transforming the environment. In the face of these developments and resulting population increases of sedentary societies, nomadic lifestyles slowly waned and a rise of sedentary lifestyle ushered in a new culture. Hunting and gathering has been the way to make a living for hundreds of thousands of years. It was not until recently, geologically speaking, agriculture has taken its roots, and an exponential amount of changes have accompanied it. The sheer amount of changes the past thousands of years necessitates the idea there is a fundamental difference in these two points in time, and this idea is prevalent in early Anthropocene hypothesis thinkers. Early anthropogenic traits have been observed with the presence of cultivated plant remains in archaeological collection sites, in which researchers first noted these changes in radiocarbon-dated soil deposits. Interglacial core samples provide evidence of the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels as anomalous in comparison to previous trends. During the Industrial Revolution, 150 years ago, a large spike in these levels is observable. Recent collection of interglacial core samples provide insight that the start of the rising spike in greenhouse gases spanning from 7000-2000 years ago. Rise in carbon dioxide and methane levels display trends that had risen one standard deviation point above previously recorded levels in interglacial core samples. This upward trend strongly suggest that the rising greenhouse gas levels were not naturally, but in fact were the result of developed agricultural fields and livestock accumulation which poses anthropogenic traits. (Ruddiman, 2013) Certini and Scalenghe argue the start of the Anthropocene is, “...the period when human activity acts as a major driving factor in modifying the landscape and the environment." (Certini and Scalenghe, 2011) It is undeniable the Industrial Revolution is a possible golden spike for this new geological epoch, however, there was a large change in the earth system preceding this revolution and therefore the golden spike should be placed prior. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/81" title="Dates">Figure 3</a>) The development and advancement of agriculture promoted the manipulation of the environment and a shift in human diets. That transition is reflected in our stone tools, whether represented by the stone scraper and its connections to the exploitation of mega fauna, or our mortar and pestle, crushing cultivated grains. As human lives became more complex, the impact on the Earth grew even further. The study of environmental history furthers uncovers the impact of agriculture in relation to the anthropocene. “Environmental history examines the evolving relationship between people and nature - it is rooted in place. From this perspective humans exist within nature, not apart from it, and like all animal species, our survival depends upon the health of the habitat in which we live. We both shape and are shaped by the world around us." (Dant, 2016) This has rapidly changed as societies formed and evolved. Similar tools are transformative as their complexity was shaped to suit human needs. The complexity of technology and the shifting of lifestyles exhibit anthropogenic traits as the composition of the earth as the evolving human cultures become more complex and the manipulation of the earth intensifies. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Luton Will Norskov Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Capehart, Thomas. “Background”. United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx (accessed December 12, 2017) Hämäläinen, Pekka. "The western Comanche trade center: Rethinking the plains Indian trade system." Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1998): 485-513. Irwin, Henry T., and H. Marie Wormington. "Paleo-Indian tool types in the Great Plains." American Antiquity 35, no. 1 (1970): 24-34. Goebel, Ted, Michael R. Waters, and Dennis H. O'rourke. "The late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans in the Americas." science 319, no. 5869 (2008): 1497-1502. Barton, C. Michael, ed. The settlement of the American continents: a multidisciplinary approach to human biogeography. University of Arizona Press, 2004. Holen, Steven R., and David W. May. "The La Sena and Shaffert Mammoth Sites." In Medicine Creek: Seventy years of archaeological investigations, pp. 20-36. University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, 2002. Hofman, Jack L., and Russell W. Graham. "The Paleo-indian cultures of the Great Plains." Archaeology on the Great Plains(1998): 87-139. Ritterbush, Lauren W. "Drawn by the Bison: Late Prehistoric Native Migration into the Central Plains." Price, T. Douglas, and Ofer Bar-Yosef. "The origins of agriculture: new data, new ideas: an introduction to supplement 4." Current Anthropology 52, no. S4 (2011): S163-S174. Weisdorf, Jacob L. "From foraging to farming: explaining the Neolithic Revolution." Journal of Economic surveys 19, no. 4 (2005): 561-586. Smith, Vernon L. "The primitive hunter culture, Pleistocene extinction, and the rise of agriculture."Journal of Political Economy 83, no. 4 (1975): 727-755. Weisdorf, Jacob L. Stone age economics: The origins of agriculture and the emergence of non-food specialists. No. 03-34. 2003. Trigger, Bruce G. A history of archaeological thought. Cambridge University Press, 1989. North, Douglass C., and Robert Paul Thomas. "The first economic revolution." The Economic History Review 30, no. 2 (1977): 229-241. Harlan, Jack Rodney. Crops and man. No. Ed. 2. American Society of Agronomy, 1992. Ruddiman, William F. “The Anthropocene.” The Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science 45, (2013): 45-68. Certini, Giacomo, and Riccardo Scalenghe. "Anthropogenic soils are the golden spikes for the Anthropocene." The Holocene 21, no. 8 (2011): 1269-1274. Dant, Sara. Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Agriculture Greenhouse Gasses Hunter-Gatherer Lithic Tools Neolithic Revolution https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/75eeb048dfbfdf4e378015dcda67469d.JPG ce35f033e92a2f2412c42553a6b401d2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1: 1797 Carolus III, Spanish silver Reales Description An account of the resource The foundation upon which capitalism and the Anthropocene grew. In the 17th century alone, more than two million per year were produced and shipped from European sources to the East. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Image courtesy of Durham Museum https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/f16b4dcef754dffb6a2e735b98ac65b0.JPG 563f021b3105238145bd944e7a9ae34c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2: 1792 Carolus III, Spanish silver Reales Description An account of the resource The foundation upon which capitalism and the Anthropocene grew. In the 17th century alone, more than two million per year were produced and shipped from European sources to the East. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Image courtesy of Durham Museum https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/9087ebfda6b3cbc69f2e5a854677359e.jpg be398599d87175db14e735019dad80d2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 4: 1866 Omaha, Nebraska Land Survey Map Description An account of the resource Note the several large properties around city limits in Byron Reed’s possession (circled in orange). At this time the Civil War had just concluded, and work on the Union Pacific railroad was accelerating, resulting in much of Reed’s land quickly becoming urbanized. Reed also owns a number of plots within the city in 1866, however, ownership of these lots is not pictured in the graphic. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived From the collections of Omaha Public Library https://cdm16747.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16747coll4/id/1408/rec/17 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Davis, Oscar F. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Omaha Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1866 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Consumer Revolutions Subject The topic of the resource Global Capitalism <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4758/39538672694_da9d00eca7_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Butter-Nut Coffee Advertisement, Durham Photo Archive Description An account of the resource Globalization has brought the world to our doorstep. Expanding networks of trade bring goods from every corner of the world to our homes in Omaha. Although many of us associate globalization with the very recent past, those connections have a long history. This section of the exhibit takes us from the early history of globalization to the present and shows how our consumer decisions transformed economic and environmental relationships around the world. The first era of globalization dawned in the late sixteenth century when the Spanish Empire created the first global currency. The Spanish used gold and silver mined by indigenous peoples in Bolivia to trade for goods in China. Silver coins greased the wheels of early globalization and connected American mines, to tea fields in China, to the markets of Europe. Expanding wealth and power eventually opened up foreign landscapes to American use as well. By the nineteenth century, consumer networks allowed families in Omaha to consume tropical goods like coffee. Today, multinational corporations like ConAgra dominate food production. They use resources from every type of environment and ship their products globally. Consumer revolutions accelerated after the Second World War. Home appliances like televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines promised convenience and an increased quality of life, but new technologies sometimes produced unexpected environmental consequences. These objects remind us that modern consumerism was part of a long history of globalization that transformed global environments. Many of us still use objects like these on a daily basis. As you look through this section, ask yourself how many goods you have used or consumed today are connected in some way to foreign landscapes. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Spanish Silver Reales Subject The topic of the resource Birthed from Spanish mined “New World “silver, the Spanish Reales coins became the first global currency. The coins united 16th century economies across the world by providing a universal system of value. Soon, businessmen oceans apart could trade with confidence, opening ports from Shanghai to Peru. Yet, the Reales’ effects were not confined to trade alone. Global currency allowed exponential business growth, shifting the human-nature relationship. Instead of seeing value in nature itself, nature became worth what it could produce for the economy. Natural areas were only valuable because they could be either mined, farmed, or logged. And so, few ecosystems have remained unaffected by humans. But, human society has begun to realize the danger of this mindset and is turning to a more sustainable coexistence with nature. Description An account of the resource Upon first glance at Bryon Reed’s Spanish Reales, it may be tempting to assign little significance to these silver coins. They are relatively small, light, and devoid of ostentatious ornamentation. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/75" title="Figure 1">Figure 1</a> and <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Figure 2</a>) They are perhaps one of a billion other coins that share their name. It would certainly seem that, attributing events as monumental as the rise of globalization and the beginning of the Anthropocene, an age of dramatic human influence on the earth systems, to such inconsequential objects would be absurd. Likewise, connecting these coins of the Spanish empire to the history of Omaha, Nebraska, a gateway city to the American west seems unreasonable at best. We argue, however, that these coins have a very consequential story to tell, one that connects continents and spans hundreds of years. It was no coincidence that these Spanish coins found their way to Omaha, a city thousands of miles from where they were mined and processed. The story of these coins is one of two parallel historical developments. First, the story of globalization and the silver trade. Founded in the 16th century, the silver trade birthed the globalization of expansive production frontiers, where the exploitation of cheap nature fueled capital accumulation. A second, parallel story tells the history of the United States frontier in the nineteenth century. That historical moment brought these coins to Omaha, itself a product of a new, American commodity frontier, this time in land. The real estate mogul Byron Reed connects these narratives. The story of these silver coins begins in 1492 with the Spanish kingdom’s expansion into the New World. Prior to this date, global communities displayed a pattern of relatively even development, characterized by similar forms of production, urbanization, large scale movements, social structures and economic development (J. Blaut, 1992). Often feudal in nature, the economic organization of these communities seem a far cry from those of the modern world system (J. Blaut, 1976). On the other side of 1492, the opposite quickly became true. While subsistence and survival characterized mankind’s exploitative relationship with nature prior to the Spanish’s conquest, an insatiable thirst for capital has fueled subsequent and increasingly expansive interactions with our environment (J. Moore, 2010). Commodity frontiers, areas where cheap land and labor lent themselves to capital accumulation, quickly became coveted resources. The silver frontier of Bolivia, appropriated shortly after the Spanish discovery of the New World, holds a unique spot in history as one of the first and most influential commodity frontiers the world has ever seen (J. Moore, 2007). Prior to the Spanish 1545 conquest of Potosi, the indigenous inhabitants primarily practiced an agricultural way of life, similar in character to their European counterparts (J. Moore, 2010 and R. Barragán, 2017). More significant to the Spanish was the indigenous mining activities at Cerro Rico, “the rich mountain of silver.” A geological anomaly, the mountain, whose slopes rose above the small community of Potosi, quickly became the greatest single source of silver in global history (O. S. Arce-Burgoa and R. Goldfarb, 2009). Native Bolivians extracted silver prior to the Spanish conquest, however, with the Incan kings representing the primary source of demand, the ore’s market remained relatively small, effectively regulating its environmental impact (R. Barragán, 2017). The Spanish invasion of the city profoundly altered Potosi’s relationship with its environment and thrust it into the center of a developing world system. Feeding an insatiable imperialistic drive while also propping up the failing home economy, the Spanish saw Cerro Rico as their key to continued colonial expansion (J. Moore, 2010 and E. Galeano, 1973). Upon Spanish invasion, Potosi became a swirling hub of activity, not unlike the later boomtowns on the American western frontier. However, instead of agricultural expansion and real estate, an unquenchable Spanish thirst for silver drove Potosi’s expansion. At first profit margins were ample. Massive amounts of silver was mined, refined and converted to silver currency, like the Spanish Reales, before being packed on Spanish Galleons to be shipped across the world. By 1560 the quality of ore began to decline (J. Moore, 2010), yet Spanish pressure to produce ever increasing amounts of silver still persisted. The consequences were catastrophic for native people and the landscape. Forests became merely fuel, natives only a useful source of labor, and the soils served only as a means to supply the energy necessary to sustain the labor (J. Moore, 2010 and R. Barragán, 2017). Collectively they became cogs in a machine, simply a means to an end. The lifeblood of Potosi, its people and its land were commodified and exploited in the name of silver production. With over 60% of the world’s sixteenth century silver output attributed to Potosi (D. O. Flynn and A. Giraldez, 1995), it is hard to argue that this system was not fantastically successful for the Spanish. However, the ecological and human tolls were as devastating as they were obvious. As one early 17th century Spanish observer of Cerro Rico noted, “because the work done on the mountain, there is no sign that it had ever had a forest, when it was discovered it was fully covered with trees… On this mountain, there was also a great amount of hunting…There were also deer, and today not even weeds grow on the mountain, not even in the most fertile soils where trees could have grown (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/77" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Figure 3</a>) (J. Moore, 2010).” Shattered in succession, the forests, fields and ecosystems in all of modern day Bolivia suffered with Cerro Rico, as the height of the Spanish silver frontier necessitated expansive, unsustainable agriculture and a 200 mile ring of deforestation centered on Potosi. Eventually, the rich veins of Cerro Rico dried to a trickle and the Spanish moved on to the new silver frontiers of colonial Mexico. The silver of Potosi, however, paved the way for a new global epoch, the Anthropocene (A. Jorgenson and E. Kick, 2003). Understanding the subsequent rise of the Anthropocene, in the face of mass silver production requires a shift of focus from Bolivia, to China. China was the largest, wealthiest civilization of the early modern period. Yet, to the Spanish, it was also frustratingly difficult to trade with (D. O. Flynn and A. Giraldez, 2002). Focused on self-sufficiency, the Chinese viewed western products as wholly unnecessary to their continued success. However, silver’s rapid emergence onto the global stage in the 16th and 17th century quickly dismantled these constraints to globalization. In China, an unstable 16th century economy, plagued by extreme hyperinflation of paper money, led to a drastic “silveration” movement of the state (D. O. Flynn and A. Giraldez, 2002 and W. Schell, 2001). At precisely the moment that Potosi opened its veins to Spanish mining, silver became the most highly sought commodity in China, effectively terminating the Chinese boycott of European trade (D. O. Flynn and A. Giraldez, 2002). While silver was opening the ports of China to European trade, it was simultaneously expanding Europe’s once limited commodity frontiers. Before silver’s rise, the lack of a physically backed, universally acknowledged system of value had hindered long distance, expansive resource extraction. However, silver’s arrival onto the scene solved these problems (J. Moore, 2010). Providing investors and borrowers alike the financial security necessary to facilitate extended resource commodification, silver ushered in a new era of vast ecological resource use (J. Moore, 2010). Suddenly, colonial powers began to view their available land and labor as forms of cheap nature to be exploited for the accumulation of wealth. Modeled after the Potosi silver frontier, Europeans took a hold of this new mindset, and in applying it to their iron, timber, agriculture industries, began to fundamentally alter their surrounding environments (J. Moore, 2017). Consequently, an explosive extension of environmental commodification ensued, engulfing nature on a global scale, and devouring 19th century Omaha and the United States western front in its wake. Exploring the spread of production oriented industry to Omaha is essential to understanding the linkage between the “gateway city to the west,” Byron Reed, and the 16th century silver trade from which the early pioneer’s silver Reales originated. Born in East Darien, New York, in 1829, and later forced to move west with his parents in 1842 (Western Heritage Museum: Byron Reed Exhibit Pamphlet, 1985), Byron Reed was emblematic of the mid-19th century American western frontier pioneer. Filled with a passion for adventure and excitement, he made his way through his early twenties working in the telegraph industry and later as a Civil War reporter, a job which nearly cost him his life (Omaha Sunday World-Herald, June 7, 1891). Consequently, and perhaps wisely, he left the reporting business, and moved to Omaha, Nebraska in March of 1856. Omaha in 1856 was a small town, with a population just over 200 people. However, with the growing river trade industry of the time, the community’s location on the Missouri river, lent to the town an immense potential for growth. Sensing an opportunity, Reed, chose to settle down and began to acquire land, which he then sold through his business, The Bryon Reed Real Estate Company, the first of its kind in town (Bryon Reed Company Inc: The Story of Omaha, 1956). Subsequently, officials recruited him to survey much of the city, and soon he became known as Omaha’s authority on land transfers. A few short years later the city would boom upon, not the increasing growth of river trade, but instead the back of Lincoln’s 1862 Pacific Railway Act. The proclamation placed Omaha as the central hub of this new ribbon of steel, and with the rail line’s construction in 1863 (J. Brown, 2012), it solidified the city as, “the gateway city to the west.” Soon after, Omaha became the heart from which these wealth conveying railroads flowed. With the completion of these early railroad lines, including the Union Pacific, Burlington and Quincy, and the Chicago-Rock Island and Pacific, subsequent immigration quickly amplified, spurred by news of early pioneers’ successes and cheap government subsidized land (X. Duran, 2013). Consequently, urbanization trailed closely in its wake, abetting the rampant commodification of the western frontier and the rise of real estate industry. Fighting for a premium position upon the 19th century world stage, the United States engaged in increasingly expansive trade policies and practices in order to compete with strengthening global competition (A. Menard, 2011). The Pacific Railway Act of 1862, a component of this political platform, was seen as an essential element to the United States success, with its railroads serving as the cornerstone linkages in expanding American trade (W. Webb, 1931 and X. Duran, 2013) . However, the rail lines quickly became more than a means to traverse the vast expanses of the Midwest. Previously unexploited, the tall grass prairies of the American western front, overflowing with rich natural resources, epitomized cheap nature worthy of great exploitation. Access though, had long been problematic, limiting the tremendous potential for capital accumulation (R. Billington, 1974). The expansion of these nineteenth century railroads, however, essentially resolved the access problems, simultaneously pulling the American economy and millions of settlers westward into a new frontier. Consequently, the resources necessary to extract the riches of prairie ecosystems were suddenly at the very fingertips of the early migrating farmers, igniting an agricultural boom. The once virgin Midwestern soils were busted, fertilized, cultivated, and commodified, with exceptional wealth materializing at the expense of nature. Skyrocketing land values in the late 19th century Midwest exemplify this sudden explosion of capital potential, with railroad centered lands of the Nebraska and Kansas territories exhibiting average price increases of $3.10 per acre upon railroad completion, representing a 24% rise in value (C. S. Decker and D. T. Flynn, 2007). As a result of these changes, Omaha’s industry and population exploded, and Reed, who had amassed a good deal of land around and outside the city prior to the railroads’ arrival (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/86" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Figure 4</a>), quickly became a wealthy man. Whether selling urban property, or rural agriculture, the once virgin and untouched land which Reed dealt became fundamentally altered and commodified in the wake of the new frontiers arrival. Simultaneously, Reed became an actor and benefactor of the capitally driven western commodity frontier. Not unlike the many other 1850’s and 1860’s American western migrants who saw their fortunes soar with the development of the western frontier (J. Stewart, 2006), Reed was soon worth over an estimated two million dollars. Buoyed by his sudden wealth, he continued to collect land throughout his life, affirmed by the large number of city plots, the additions, and more than 350 acres of farmland he possessed at the time of his death (M. Brown, 1989 and Omaha Sunday World-Herald, June 7, 1891). However, his collection interests expanded beyond land alone. Fascinated by coins, Reed accumulated one of the finest coin collections in the world, in the middle of which sat the Spanish silver Reales, the very piece of history responsible for producing the capitalistic, commodifying, anthropogenic age that made Reed’s collection possible. While time has muddied the waters between Byron Reed’s Spanish silver and the new human epoch, the Anthropocene, exploring the era’s roots in capitalism and the commodity system crystallizes the distorted relationships. An exemplary western front migrant, Reed built both his reputation and his fortune off this new 19th century commodity frontier. However, while railroads and agriculture, rather than imperialistic lust and mining, characterized the front, its ties to Potosi silver, remain indisputable. Appropriated in the 16th century, Spanish mining of Cerro Rico, the silver mountain, simultaneously became the model, and the agent of change in ushering in a new economic era. Upon this mountain’s rich and mighty slopes, a mindset of production orientation was born, spreading the Spanish silver Reales and paving the way for globalization and intensive nature commodification. Thus, despite their superficial differences, the American western frontier, which delivered Bryon Reed his fortune and his Spanish Reales, fundamentally mirrored its silver 16th century counterpart, both being driven by an insatiable appetite for capital accumulation at the expense of commodified nature. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ian Reuter Dakota Wagner Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Blaut, James M. On the Significance of 1492. Political Geography, 11, no. 4 (1992): 355-385. doi: 10.1016/0962-6298(92)90003-C. Blaut, James M. Where was Capitalism Born? Antipode, 8 no. 2 (1976): 1-11. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.1976.tb00633.x Moore, Jason W. "‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part I: The Alchemy of Capital, Empire and Nature in the Diaspora of Silver, 1545–1648." Journal Of Agrarian Change 10, no. 1 (2010): 33-68. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2017). Moore, Jason. “Silver, Ecology, and the Origins of the Modern World, 1450-1640.” In Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global Environmental Change, edited by Hornborg, Alf, J. R. McNeill, and Juan Martínez-Alier 123-142. Plymouth: AltaMira Press: 2007. Moore, Jason W. “’This lofty mountain of silver could conquer the whole world.’ Potosi and the political ecology of underdevelopment, 1545-1800.” Journal of Philosophical Economics, 4 no. 1 (2010): 58-103. https://jpe.ro/?id=b1&cuprins=ascuns. a. “In the first two decades after Spain’s enclosure of Potosí, the ores were rich indeed. Soon, however, ore quality declined sharply. By the late 1560’s, the yield on Potosí ore fell 98 percent from two decades earlier.” b. “Declining yield implied rising fuel inputs, the major production cost for smelter.” Ore refinement consequently became a major sink of fuel and labor, exacerbated by the “transition to mercury amalgamation… because it reduced per unit fuel costs…it enabled such a large increase in output over so short a time, the consequence was more, not less deforestation” c. “Construction and fuel needs devoured the forests around Potosí, driving successive expansions of the timber hinterland. By 1714, Potosí, was drawing timber from Paraguay” Barragán, Rossana. "Working Silver for the World: Mining Labor and Popular Economy in Colonial Potosí." Hispanic American Historical Review 97, no. 2 (2017): 193-222. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 5, 2017). a. “Until Spanish 1575 reforms in labor, indigenous population carried out the extraction at their own cost and largely for their own benefit… in contrast the forced labor system ‘mita’ established afterwards, lacked the principle of protections found in slavery systems, instead the Potosí system had no safeguards against overexploitation” Galeano, Eduardo. Open veins of Latin America: five centuries of the pillage of a continent. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Publications, 1973. Moore, Jason W. “The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of our Ecological Crisis.” The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44 no. 4, 2017: 594-630. http://www.tandfonline.com/. a. Moore identifies four forms of “cheap nature” implicit in the rise of expansive capitalistic commodification which he defines as “labor-power, food, energy, and raw materials.” O. Flynn, Dennis, and Arturo Giraldez. Born with a “Silver Spoon”: The Origin of World Trade in 1571. Journal of World History, 6 no. 2 (1995): 201-222. http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals.aspx. Jorgenson, Andrew K., and Edward L. Kick L. “Introduction: Globalization and the Environment.” Journal of World-Systems Research, 9 no. 2 (2003): 195-203. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2003.243. O. Flynn, Dennis, and Arturo Giraldez. "Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through the Mid-Eighteenth Century*." Journal Of World History 13, no. 2 (2002): 391. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 5, 2017). a. “In the early 16th century the gold/silver ratio in China stood at 1:6, while in contrast the gold/silver ratio hovered around 1:12 in Europe.” b. “Within two years of Spain’s 1865 establishment of a port in the Philippines, which linked Chinese demand for silver directly to its major producer, China ended its prohibition on overseas trade.” Schell Jr., William. "Silver Symbiosis: ReOrienting Mexican Economic History." Hispanic American Historical Review 81, no. 1 (2001): 89. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 5, 2017). Moore, Jason W. "‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part II: The Global North Atlantic in the Ecological Revolution of the Long Seventeenth Century." Journal Of Agrarian Change 10, no. 2 (2010): 188-227. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2017). Menard, Andrew. "Striking a Line through the Great American Desert." Journal Of American Studies 45, no. 2 (2011): 267-280. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2017). Webb, Walter P. The Great Plain. London: Penguin Publishing Group, 1931. Duran, Xavier. "The First U.S. Transcontinental Railroad: Expected Profits and Government Intervention." Journal Of Economic History 73, no. 1 (2013): 177-200. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2017). Billington, Ray A. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier., 4th edition: New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1974. Decker, Christopher S., and David T. Flynn. "The Railroad's Impact on Land Values in the Upper Great Plains at the Closing of the Frontier." Historical Methods 40, no. 1 (2007): 28-38. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2017). Brown, Jeff. "Uniting the States: The First Transcontinental Railroad." Civil Engineering (08857024) 82, no. 7/8 (2012): 40-42. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2017). a. Signed into law by Abraham Lincoln on July 1, 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act launched the construction of a 1,776 mile long railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Work began on the eastern side of the railroad in Omaha, Nebraska in December 1863. Six years later, on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah, the final spike was driven into the railroad marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Western Heritage Museum. Byron Reed Exhibit Pamphlet. Omaha: 1985. “Byron Reed Passes Away.” Omaha Sunday World-Herald (Omaha), June 7, 1891, 5. a. Identified as an informant for a Union newspaper while behind Confederate lines in Kansas, Reed was lucky to evade capture, which could have come with dire consequences. Bryon Reed Company, Inc. The Story of Omaha. Omaha: 1956. Stewart, James I. "Migration to the Agricultural Frontier and Wealth Accumulation, 1860–1870." Explorations In Economic History 43, no. 4 (2006): 547-577. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2017). a. “Frontier migrants accumulated wealth at rates that were high and in excess of those in non-frontier areas…. increasing their wealth eightfold over the decade or twice as much as those who did not migrate.” Brown, Marion M. “Byron Reed the Man Behind the Treasure.” Sunday World-Herald Magazine of the Midlands. (Omaha), April 2, 1989. Arce-Burgoa, Osvaldo R. and Richard J. Goldfarb. “Metallogeny of Bolivia.” Society of Economic Geologists Newsletter, No. 79 (2009).http://www.dim.uchile.cl/~lsaavedr/archivos/joseline/pdf/Metallogeny%20of%20Bolivia.pdf a. “The Cerro Rico de Potosi polymetallic vein deposit, mined since the mid-1500s, is the world’s largest silver deposit. It has yielded 60,000 tons of silver making Bolivia the largest silver producer in the world for more than two centuries.” Shahriari, Sara. “Bolivia: Struggling to save the mountain that eats men.” Aljazeera America. May 8th, 2014. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/8/struggling-to-savethemountainthateatsmen.html. “Spain Spanish Colonial Reales.” Coin Quest. Accessed November 6th, 2017. http://coinquest.com/cgi-bin/cq/coins?main_coin=2334. “Maps.” Omaha Landmarks Heritage Preservation Commission. Accessed November 6th, 2017. https://landmark.cityofomaha.org/maps. Relation A related resource Further Reading: 1) Jason Moore: <a href="https://jpe.ro/pdf.php?id=2892" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“This lofty mountain of silver could conquer the whole world.: Potosi and the political ecology of underdevelopment, 1545-1800. </a> 2) <a href="http://durhammuseum.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15426coll8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Durham; Byron Reed Items</a> 3) <a href="http://dataomaha.com/bigstory/living/durham-museums-byron-reed-collection-a-rare-peek-at-omahas-treasure" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bryon Reed Collection </a> Agriculture Byron Reed Commodity Frontier Currency Deforestation Globalization Mining Production Real Estate Silver Spanish Colonialism https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/b2a60ae98af11960e5ddb5e4eb5a3a5a.JPG 571e79a5860c782d16980ae853e6863b https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/5209f4b2e0866671cfd3166531f676e8.JPG 2e662b3ac695dd56ab3aa20292b3fbb4 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/9f7cdc385f33b4557cec1ab086057669.jpg da2a739cbeff74cc719b21755fba1b2e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1: Map of the state of Nebraska showing the lands of the Burlington & Missouri Riv. R.R. Co. in Nebraska, 1876 Description An account of the resource The shading on this 1876 map of Omaha details the land owned by the Burlington Railroad company at this time. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Photo Courtesy of the Library of Congress Subject The topic of the resource A map indicating in shading the land owned by the Burlington by 1876. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1876 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/11f71a754a2826ba5bf76873abcd3205.jpg 8822b1d4ce3e6a5c6389c2d09a37ab1c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2: Burlington Railroad Advertisements Description An account of the resource A set of advertisements released by the Burlington Railroad encouraging land acquisition around the railroads in Nebraska. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Courtesy of Olmanson, E. D. (n.d.). Promotion and Transformation of Landscapes along the CB&Q Railroad. Retrieved October, 2017, from http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/railroad/settlement-promotion-burlington-railroad https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/2c411bb552774d376e1a31e3b1b5d496.jpg 4187ca525b6a7f3a10978f1e4e6c6d0e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Graph 1: U.S Census Bureau Record of Nebraska Population Values, 1800 to 2000 Description An account of the resource The data displayed above helps illustrate the growth in Nebraska's citizen population from the 1800 to 2000. Notice the dramatic increase in population from 1860 to 1900s' which parallels the arrival and growth of the Burlington. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Photo Courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/dad605073741991d04ec917651789c65.jpg 8ae28fddcbb5b7cf7ac12fa5ea788446 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 5. Description An account of the resource The Burlington Railroad introduced Vista Domes to customers as new way to consume nature and the beauty of the West. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Olmanson, E. D. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Retrieved October, 2017, from http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/railroad/settlement-promotion-burlington-railroad https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/c9b07a5666a83584d00895bb0ae86b48.jpg f9a5cb82971419d90b60d3501916c7cd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 6. Description An account of the resource This man can be seen casually leaning against a rail with a Burlington Route Timetable in his breast pocket. This photograph was taken in 1909 by Louis Bostwick. At this point in time the Burlington was a household name, and many owned the timetables, as it was the most efficient means to traveling long distances at the time. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Photo Archive https://durhammuseum.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15426coll1/id/26607/rec/10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Commercial use or distribution of the image is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Please contact The Durham Museum for permission to use the digital image. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Conquering Time and Space Subject The topic of the resource <div>Industrial Revolutions <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4704/39667361775_2e3264c4bf_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> <a href="https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~24266~880086:-Birdseye-view-Great-Plains-#" title="Bird Eye View - Rumsey" target="_blank">Detail(Birdseye view Great Plains)Knight, Leonard & Co.,Engravers and Printers, Chicago. (1890) David Rumsey.com </a></div> Description An account of the resource Industrial revolutions fundamentally transformed the world’s social and economic order. Beginning in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, European empires expanded industrialization into a global phenomenon that created spectacular wealth and unprecedent power for western countries, but also led to new social conflict and increased the gap between rich and poor. Industrialization also led to profound changes in the global environment. Advances in transportation and telecommunications expanded the reach of industrial powers. The railroad and the telegraph allowed people to tap distant natural resources more quickly and efficiently than ever before. Contemporaries praised this “annihilation of time and space” and Omaha was central to this story. The first transcontinental telegraph began in Omaha and was completed in 1861. In 1863, the Union Pacific chose Omaha as the eastern terminus for the transcontinental railroad. By 1867, the United States had built the world’s largest railroad network, business leaders communicated from coast to coast, and Omaha stood at the center. As railroads and the telegraph shrank time and space, cities expanded. Streetcars promoted urban growth and the rise of the first suburbs. The objects in this section show rail and the telegraph reshaped environments during this era of industrialization. As you move through this section of the exhibit, consider how transportation and telecommunication connects Omaha to the wider world and to global environments today. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Burlington Railroad Timetable Subject The topic of the resource Railroads shrunk space and time during the nineteenth century. Before the growth of railroad networks, a trip from Chicago to Omaha took 5 days. By the twentieth century, railroads companies like the Burlington cut that time down to 8 hours. This was an important transition because railroads opened up new markets, new resources, and new environments to places like Omaha. As networks of railroads expanded, they created unified timetables which regulated time. This timetable, printed during the twilight of this railroad age, is symbol of this global transition. By the mid-twentieth century, railroads like the Burlington connected Omaha to the rest of America by encouraging economic growth and ecotourism. Description An account of the resource The railroad timetable annihilated time and space. It was America’s first-time keeper, and changed how people around the world considered travel. As intricate networks of railroads stretched across countries around the world, they introduced an era where distances were easily conquerable. People and goods were transported to the far reaches of countries. More importantly, the railroads brought with them timetables. The condensed pamphlets of arrivals and departures established a means of organizing time across the expanses the railroads covered. As railroads expanded the timetables were a means to unify how the country experienced time. Time is precious, and prior to the timetable there was no unified way of managing it. Towns prior to the railroad were limited in the amount of resources they had and had their own “temporal identities”. For example, London ran 4 minutes ahead of Reading, and 7 minutes and 30 seconds ahead of Cirencester, and a whole 15 minutes ahead of Bridgewater. (Schivelbusch, 1941) This system of localized time fared well prior to railroad due to the lack of travel and the long travel time between them. The main methods of transport in the 1800s were by boat through rivers and canals, or by carriage. These methods were not the most trust worthy and limited growth of cities to what they in their radius for the most part. The most striking issues was how slow and unreliable these methods of transport were. A fifteen-minute difference in time was not important if the time to travel to the area was measured in days. When railroads were introduced, traffic between cities increased and transit time shrunk. Railroad became an important mode of transport of goods and people. Resources once inaccessible to some towns were now easily shipped. Likewise, smaller towns grew into large cities by exporting their abundant good to other locations and gaining capital. A time difference between cities was longer plausible as it would mean confusion and inefficiency for the railroad and those who invested in it. Thus, the railroads implemented their own times and created timetables with them. Initially the time chosen was up to company, for example in 1871 the Central Pacific Railroad specified their timetable operated on Sacramento time, where its headquarters resided. (White, 2011) This allowed passengers to manage their time around a specific line, however it became inefficient when more than one train had to be taken. Having more than one time in a town also became inconvenient. In 1883, the United States officially standardized railroad time amongst all operating railroad companies, and people and businesses began to informally use it as a standard. (White, 2011) Timetables were a game changer for businesses and individuals alike. Omaha’s history can be traced back to railroads. Though the Union Pacific Headquarters currently resides in Omaha, the Burlington was more involved with the cities growth. The Union Pacific Railroad cut through Nebraska, pursuing a transcontinental railroad which passed through the country more so than branching to connect cities with one another. Though initially hesitant to expand to Nebraska, by 1868 The Burlington company saw it as a business opportunity after Charles Elliott Perkin, who would later become President of the Burlington Railroad, gave it a glowing review. (Kinbacher and Thomas, 2008) The Burlington Railroad acted on the 1864 Pacific Railroad Act which authorized the construction of a trunk line passing though territory south of the Platte River to intersect with the Union Pacific transcontinental route at or near the 100th meridian. (Kinbacher and Thomas, 2008) By 1872, a whopping 2,400,000 acres of land in Nebraska was granted to the Burlington Railroad by the U.S government to begin building railroad (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/67" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). (Overton, 1976) Thus, the Burlington Railroad threw open the doors to the West and ushered in a new wave of settlers. Initially upon receiving its land grants the Burlington launched an effort to sell it to prospective settlers. By successfully selling land around the area they use to build railroads up the Burlington increases the value of the railroad land they acquired. The Burlington was also granted more land due to its success in advertising the Midwest. (Overton, 1976) The Burlington created programs based on credit to sell the land around the railroads, and the area was advertised in the East though various exhibits, pamphlets, and maps. (O'Neil, 1956) A colonizing campaign was created and lured in potential settlers with special such as reduced prices for settlement (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/99" title="figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>). In addition, the Burlington shipped in resources required to build the city, and to jump start farming, while advertising Nebraska’s potential at agricultural fairs in both the US and England. (Fisher, 1931) Despite being in competition with Union Pacific, overall the Burlington sold more land to potential settlers and investors. (Kawashima, 2010) These early promotional efforts were extremely effective and in time Nebraska became a well settled agricultural area. In 1872 alone, farmers shipped a quarter million bushels of wheat through across Burlington rail, and they were of such quality that the price easily paid for the cost of transportation. (Jones, 1957) The growth of the Burlington route, in a very real sense, both mirrored and prompted the growth of Nebraska, and Omaha. The growth of the city can be seen in census data. Though correlation does not mean causation, it is clear the growth of population in Nebraska coincided with the arrival of the Burlington Railroad (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/66" title="Graph 1" target="_self">Graph 1</a> and <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/101" title="Figure 3">Figure 3</a>). By the 1900s, the Burlington its veered away from cargo and shifting its focus to passenger transportation. (Dorin, 1976) This was a response to the booming Second Industrial Revolution which came with a new-found interest in leaving the cities to experience nature. The Burlington made began to advertise the new concept of ecotourism to cater to the new American desire to explore the West. Improvements in the 1930s to its passenger service increased revenue and provided an economic boost to the Omaha after the depression. (Overton, 1941) The Burlington advertised Omaha as a gateway to West and promoted their line as a comfortable, exciting mode of travel for tourists. The Burlington released new trains such as the Exposition Flyer in 1939 which traveled for decades due to their popularity as a scenic draw (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/68" title="Figure 4" target="_self">Figure 4</a>). This inspired the Burlington to create more trains to cater to a new generation of ecotourists. (Retzinger, 1998) The emphasis on passenger rail services increased into the 1940s.Their Zephyr line, which ran from 1935 to 1960 featured air conditioning, vista domes, and in cabin luxuries (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/73" title="Figure 5" target="_self">Figure 5</a>). The Burlington Railroad aimed to make travel West easy and compelling. The growth of Omaha and Lincoln was undeniable, and correlated strongly with the establishment of the railroad. Atack et al. (2010), found a strong correlation between the expansion of railroads and the growth of cities. The Burlington Railroad created a network that connected almost everywhere in North America. Railroads even connected to seaports, which allowed for overseas transportation of commodities. (Milner, 1994) Atack et al. (2010) concluded that while the expansion of railroads did not have a significant enough correlation with population increase in the Midwest to be considered a cause of population growth, it was the most important factor behind urbanization in the Midwest. They cite three reasons as to why this is the case. First, railroads reduced the costs of transportation of goods, which led to increased trade. Second, they caused Midwestern wealth to increase which led to greater demand for industrial products. Lastly, they created “feeder lines”, which are connections between cities and towns, which encouraged people to settle into areas before railroads were constructed in those areas . In his book Nature’s Metropolis, William Cronon (1991) discusses how trains helped to urbanize Chicago. He states that distance was not as important a factor as time and cost in transportation. Because trains can travel much faster than many other modes of transportation, they greatly increased transportation of goods between Chicago and the surrounding rural areas. He states that many people were eager to use this new form of transportation because of its great speed. Interestingly, he states that many inhabitants of Chicago at the time believed that railroads had become “assimilated” to the natural landscape of the area . Railways also helped build many other Western cities (Milner, II et al. 1994). Railroads also advanced agriculture through their transportation speed. For a while, Texas Longhorn cattle were plagued by a tick-borne disease known as Texas fever. The ticks thrived in Texas, but could not survive the colder winters of the North. Because of this, the cattle were sometimes held in shipped north to be fattened up until they had become of Texas fever. A man named Joseph McCoy was noted for taking advantage of this situation using the railroad systems. He, along with many others, established cattle towns, such as Abilene, Kansas, where he could supply Texas Cattle to the Kansas Pacific railroad. Shipping of beef became an important industry for trains, especially when refrigerated train cars made shipment much more efficient, as it kept the beef fresher for longer. Gustavus Swift pioneered the use of refrigerated railroad cars and began to sell beef from Chicago in New York. Other agricultural products were shipped via trains, and railroad companies often encouraged farming near the railroad lines by providing economic incentives and some forms of compensation during periods of economic stress. Many of them encouraged dry-farming, which, as its name suggests, is farming pioneered by Hardy Webster Campbell that is productive in the dry environments of the northern Great Plains, in order to ensure that more farmers settled in. There were some people who accused railroad companies of exploiting the farmers. According to Milner, II et al. 1994, “along the rail system, farms sprang up like winter wheat in a Kansas spring.” As a result of the mass transportation of agricultural products brought about by trains, new opportunities opened up in industrial, urbanized areas, such as food processing plants and similar areas. (Milner, 1994) In addition to facilitating urbanization, trains later also made it easier for city-dwellers to commodify nature in another way. By moving people to different parts of the country faster, they allowed people to consume distant environments through tourism (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/74" title="Figure 6" target="_self">Figure 6</a>). During the twentieth century, the western United States became a popular tourist destination, mainly because it contained much truer wilderness than the East due to less human disturbance. National parks were often advertised by railroads to promote tourism. Often the trains would take hundreds of tourists to one spot, and the tourists would then reach the parks on horseback. Tourism became more popular in the 1920s thanks to Hollywood, although cars began to gain more popularity in this era, so it is unclear whether the 1920s was a prosperous era for the railroad industry or not. Union Pacific opened a ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho in the 1936, which gained more popularity after World War II. Railroads also made exploitation of game animals much more efficient. Bison, for example, suffered from the westward expansion of railroads, by allowing hunters to transport their bison kills to the markets much more easily than before . This was furthered by the invention of refrigerated cars. Railroad companies even hired bison hunters to provide meat to their workers as well as fill their freight cars with numerous possible commodities. “Buffalo Bill” actually claimed to have killed 4,280 bison for Union Pacific. Railroads transported not only hunters’ quarries more efficiently, but also transported the hunters themselves to their quarries more efficiently and quickly than before. Bison were even shot for sport from the windows of trains. (Dolin, 2003). It is said that the railroads, along with the telegraph, were the most important contributors to the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/72" title="Figure 7" target="_self">Figure 7</a>). (Burke, 2017) After World War II, other modes of transportation, such as cars and airplanes slowly became more popular, leading to the gradual decline of railroad tourism. (Milner, 1994) Omaha and its relationship with the Burlington railroad serves as a powerful example of the urbanizing power of railways and their impacts. The surrounding environment is both drained filled in with the human footprint, and thus its ecological changes become apparent. Trains drastically changed how people and businesses viewed transportation across vast distances. The Burlington timetable is a testament to how humans eliminated time as a constraining factor in the consumption and exploitation of new, distant, environments. Areas which were otherwise inaccessible without significant travel and hardship became easily accessible. Railroads facilitated the exploitation of nature by both bringing people to nature and bringing nature to people. They moved people seeking to urbanize to their cities, urban tourists to their scenic wilderness, and hunters to their quarry. In addition, they moved all kinds of natural resources from rural and wild areas into cities. This became the key to more urbanization and spreading of cities. More and more products of the area were shipped out and in demand, and more resources to fulfill that demand were shipped in. Resources included people who were ready to work, in addition to materials. The possibility for capital growth and success was increased significantly when railways were introduced to bring regions together to exchange resources. The ease of export also meant increased capital gains for those invested in the area and a drive utilize the earth for short term gain over long term upkeep. This sort of development lead to the ideas of Eugene Odum who observed cities as parasitic. This parasitic nature is only made possible by railways which act like extensive capillaries carrying capital, resources, and people one area to the next. This idea is further exemplified by the fact that many rural westerners felt that they were essentially a colony of the eastern urban elite, who drained the resources of the rural western United States for their own benefit. They often referred to the western United States as a “plundered province”. There were also many economic policies which favored easterners over westerners, such as tariffs. This led to some resentment of the East, whom the West often scapegoated for its problems, although, as noted before, sometimes rightfully so. (Milner, 1994) This situation prevails today, not just here in Omaha, but all over the world. The railroad, despite having given away to cars as the most popular means of transport, is still important for import of resources over long distance. The Burlington railroad left its footprint in Omaha, its headquarters taken over by KMTV still exist today. The crisscrossing of railroads correlated to the influx of people and capital which resulted in Omaha’s growth as a city. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource John Brennan Devika Prasanth Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Atack, Jeremy, Fred Bateman, Michael Haines, and Robert A. Margo. “Did Railroads Induce or Follow Economic Growth: Urbanization and Population Growth in the American Midwest, 1850-1860.” Social Science History 34.2 (2010): 171-197. JSTOR. Web. 17 Oct. 2017. Bostwick- Forhardt Collection, 1850-1964, compiled by The The Durham Museum (Omaha, Durham Museum Photo Archive, 2017 ). Burk, Theodore. Conservation Biology Lecture. 2017. Personal Communication. Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and Great West. New York: W·W·NORTON & COMPANY, 1991. ebook. Dolin, Eric Jay. Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges. Old Saybrook: Konecky & Konecky, 2003. Print. Fisher, Chas. E. "The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company." The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, No 24 (1931): 4-43. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/43516939>. Jones, C. Clyde. "The Burlington Railroad and Agricultural Policy in the 1920's." Agricultural History, Vol. 31, No. 4 (1957): 67-74. Kawashima, Yasuhide. “Farmers, Ranchers, and the Railroad: The Evolution of Fence Law in the Great Plains, 1865-1900.” Great Plains Quarterly 30.1 .2010.: 21-35. JSTOR. Web. 7 Oct. 2017. Kinbacher, Kurt E. and William G. Thomas III. "Shaping Nebraska An Analysis Of Railroad And Land Sales, 1870-1880." Great Plains Quarterly 2008. <http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2374&context=greatplainsquarterl>. Loomis, Bill. Photograph. “Slaughtered to extinction: Passenger pigeons in Michigan.” The Detroit News. MediaNews, 31 Aug. 2014. Web. 13 Dec. 2017. Milner, II, Clyde A., Carol A. O’Connor, Martha A. Sandweiss, eds.. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford University P., 1994. Print. Olmanson, E. D. (n.d.). Promotion and Transformation of Landscapes along the CB&Q Railroad. Retrieved October, 2017, from http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/railroad/settlement-promotion-burlington-railroad Overton, Richard C. Burlington West: A Colonization History of the Burlington Railroad. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941. Retzinger, Jean P.. “Framing the Tourist Gaze: Railway Journeys Across Nebraska, 1866-1906.” Great Plains Quarterly 18.3 1998: 213-226. JSTOR. Web. 6 Oct. 2017. Schivelbusch, W., Railroad Space and Railroad Time. In The Railway Journey : The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. 1941. (pp. 33-44). Berkeley: University of California Press. The California Zephyr. (n.d.). Retrieved December, 2017, from http://calzephyr.railfan.net/expoflyer.html White, R. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. 2011. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Burlington Extinction Railroad Second Industrial Revolution Tourism Transportation Westward Expansion https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/d622e95e2b1007c4c9be61d5cda06fcf.JPG 166fd91f80494ebd11804a519ee76631 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2: Fallout Shelter Sign Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collections https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/c4d64cfc7c010abfbd3cbfc33b463775.jpg 91394355eaddbc4f69ebf88835617c48 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1: Little Boy Bomb Subject The topic of the resource This is an image of the Little Boy bomb that was used on Hiroshima being loaded onto a B-29 Enola Gay Bomber. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Originals from National Archives "Little Boy and Fat Man." Atomic Heritage Foundation. July 23, 2014. Accessed November 06, 2017. https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/little-boy-and-fat-man Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Living in a World of Our Own Making Subject The topic of the resource <a href="http://www.igbp.net/images/18.950c2fa1495db7081ebd1/1421396650502/GreatAcceleration2015igbpsrclowres.jpg" title="IGBP - The Great Acceleration Dashboard" target="_blank">The Great Acceleration</a> <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4721/40562555551_972c132773_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource The Anthropocene means “The Age of Humans,” but what does it mean to live in a world of our own making? Humanity has flourished in past two centuries. Two thirds of every person ever born lived between 1945 and today. Scientists call this era of expanding population, economic development, and environmental impact the “Great Acceleration.” People are now more numerous and powerful than ever before. Mining moves more rocks and soils than all of the worlds rivers combined. Artificial fertilizers have doubled the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils. Plastics can now be found on mountain tops and the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Paradoxically, many of the most profound changes to global environments pass virtually unnoticed. Nuclear fallout, for instance, is invisible to the naked eye, but radioactive evidence of cold war weapons tests remains in soils around the world. Until recently, lead was one of the most common materials in industrial use. It was used to seal our foods, paint our homes, and power our cars. Lead is toxic, especially for children. Although invisible, lead is now in our soils, in our cities, and even in our blood. By contrast, concrete is virtually everywhere, yet we rarely think about it. We drive on it, work in it, and the foundations of this very museum are built using it. More than half of the concrete ever produced was manufactured between 1995-2015. Concrete requires enormous energy to mine, transport, and produce. These consequences are as invisible to us as the material is abundant. As you finish your journey through the exhibit, consider how many other “invisible” materials influence our lives and connect us to the global environment. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Nuclear Fallout Sign Subject The topic of the resource The nuclear age began in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945 with a mushroom cloud of radioactive gases. The U.S. performed hundreds of nuclear bomb tests in the American Desert and Southern Pacific during the 1950s and 1960s. The radioactive fallout from these nuclear tests and the threat of nuclear war produced fear in America. FS2 fallout shelter signs remain as material evidence of this fear. Nuclear fears influenced environmentalism world-wide. In 1989, on the anniversary of the first atomic bomb, a large Omaha crowd protested at SAC. Today, we can still identify traces of this nuclear past in the earth’s crust. Few changes of the earth can be so directly observed and as a result, many scientists point to nuclear tests as the best starting point for the Anthropocene. Description An account of the resource The American bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan on August 1945 inaugurated the nuclear age. Few historical transitions have such a clear beginning, and the consequences of that moment reverberate today (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/61" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). Fear of nuclear devastation and resulting radioactive fallout produced a culture of apocalyptic fear during the Cold War, and although nuclear annihilation no longer holds saw over our collective consciousness, nuclear power continues to be a factor in our globalized 21st century. Scientists continued to test nuclear weapons after 1945, to observe the consequences of nuclear detonations as well as the longer lasting effects of nuclear fallout. As a result of these tests, fear shifted from the apocalypse to more insidious threats. New invisible pollutants that were capable of not only impacting their health, but of irreversibly damaging the biosphere assumed center stage. This fear was a significant influence on the development of modern American environmentalism and the rising public influence of ecological sciences. Growing scientific awareness of global environmental change, the Anthropocene itself, were direct consequences of these historical changes. This FS2 fallout shelter sign is an object that reveals much about the Anthropocene. It is a ten by fourteen-inch sign composed of galvanized steel (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/59" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>). During 1962, the Department of Defense produced one million of these FS2 signs. (Civil Defense Museum) They can be found inside public fallout shelter facilities. The distribution of these signs was an important component of the National Fallout Shelter Program. The U.S. Department of Defense developed the National Fallout Shelter Program in an attempt to improve the dilemma of national security in the event of a nuclear attack. Later nuclear testing would demonstrate the inadequate ability to withstand an atomic bomb detonation or to effectively prevent radiation exposure. Interior signs had to be posted in a position of good visibility to the public and placed in such a way as to avoid vandalism. (Dept of Defense, 1977) FS1 signs were also developed to be posted on the exterior of fallout shelter facilities, these signs were slightly larger at fourteen by twenty inches and were made of the same galvanized steel. FS2 signs were emblazoned with the Civil Defense fallout shelter trefoil and adhesive tape displayed the capacity of the shelter and indicated their starting point. The civil defense fallout shelter symbol was designed to be readily identifiable from a long distance and visibly different than the radiation hazard symbol. Civil defense fallout shelter symbols represented safety while the older radiation symbol represented hazard (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/60" title="Figure 3" target="_self">Figure 3</a>). (ORAU) Public fear of nuclear attack stemmed not only from the thought of an initial blast that could vaporize an entire city but also from the notion of the invisible particles of radioactive fallout. FS2 signs were public representations of that fear. A blinding flash of light followed by a towering mushroom cloud of radioactive gases signaled the first atomic bomb detonation in the desert of New Mexico on July 16, 1945. (Worster, 1977) The beginning of the nuclear age began with this detonation, while unconscious of the detrimental effects, nuclear states would persist with nuclear testing for decades. Previous technological developments such as railroads had already generated controversy regarding the effects on the environment, but the scale of a nuclear bomb’s impact produced a new, more resounding challenge. Could humanity be trusted with such power? The fear of rendering the earth a radioactive wasteland invoked fear in the public as well as in many of the primary developers of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer, a leading Los Alamos scientist, was shaken to his core and questioned his humanity. (Fiege, 2012) Oppenheimer later reflected on this experience by reiterating a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, “now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” (Atomic Archive) As the United States continued testing in American deserts, scientists confirmed the catastrophic destruction of explosions, as well as radionuclide drift. For the vast majority of Americans, including “downwinders” living in the path of airborne radioactive particulates, recognition of this second threat emerged very slowly. Among the first public intellectual to sound the alarm about the effects of radiation was Barry Commoner. Government scientists conducted studies, but were typically reticent to publicize them for reasons of “national security” A significant shift occurred in 1963 when Eugene P. Odum presented several claims about the ecological effects of nuclear war in the closing of the Ecological Society of America’s Symposium. Odum claimed that the removal of biomass from the soil as a result of coniferous and deciduous tree species’ sensitivity to ionizing radiation would likely result in an increase in nutrient loss from several ecosystems. Grover and Harwell used atmospheric tests to provide evidence of the limited plausibility for plant recovery following a nuclear war (Grover and Harwell, 1985). Reestablishment of several larger plant species would be dependent on seed banks, as well as the acute and chronic stresses acting on the particular environment (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/63" title="Figure 4" target="_self">Figure 4</a>). Lakes, estuaries, and tropical forests are among the environments that experience change in temperature, sunlight reduction, precipitation reduction, less significantly fallout radiation, and increased UV-B from ozone depletion as a result of nuclear bomb detonation. Grover and Harwell conclude that a nuclear war imposes the same environmental effects that alternative forms of man’s exploitation of nature can impose, but the scale is drastically larger. Reestablishment of several larger plant species would be dependent on seed banks, as well as the acute and chronic stresses acting on the particular environment. Lakes, estuaries, and tropical forests are among the environments that experience change in temperature, sunlight reduction, precipitation reduction, fallout radiation (small effect), and increased UV-B from ozone depletion as a result of nuclear bomb detonation. Grover and Harwell conclude that a nuclear war imposes the same environmental effects that alternative forms of man’s exploitation of nature can impose, but the scale is drastically larger. The ecological consequences of nuclear war must be of higher concern than our global security. (Grover and Harwell, 1985) Scientific evidence of fallout pollution inspired a public fear; ecological studies of the consequences of nuclear warfare made the public realize that ecological mindfulness of “invisible pollutants” was necessary to avoid environmental devastation. It was perhaps no coincidence that fear of invisible pollutants and the rise of ecological thinking arose in the 1960s. Nuclear fallout wasn’t the first invisible pollutant that had persistently found its way into food chains and impacted human health. In 1962, Rachel Carson published her blockbuster expose about the effects of pesticide use, called Silent Spring. In this book, she demonstrated how dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) moved through food webs, polluting the environment and threatening public health. Exposure to fallout played into similar fears. In the years following the Hiroshima detonation, many survivors developed leukemia. (Carson, 2015) The development of cancer can arise from diverse exposure to mutagens, but indelible evidence of Leukemia development just two years after the Japan nuclear attack demonstrates the extent of radiation-induced health detriments that arise from nuclear bomb detonations. (K1 Project) As scientists, particularly ecologists, uncovered more of the human and environmental consequences of fallout, public sentiment shifted. Collaboration between scientists and major publications was necessary to overcome public apathy. Scientists began drawing information on the ecological impact of nuclear explosions from test sites in the American desert and the South Pacific. Reader’s Digest began to publish doomsday articles in the late 1940s, these publications had titles like “What the Atom Bomb Would Do to Us” and “What the Atomic Bomb Really Did.” (Egan, 2009) These articles presented scientific findings in the context of the atomic bomb used in Hiroshima, even though other more lethal bombs had subsequently been developed and tested. In 1947, Reader’s Digest collaborated with credible scientists to describe a realistic hypothetical nuclear bomb attack in the heart of major American cities with the publication of “Mist of Death Over New York.” They began by describing the violent deaths of those in the explosive zone. What resonated more with the public was the description of those who managed to escape the blast but were struck with radiation sickness and eventually died from the exposure to the gamma rays. The public began to understand the health repercussions that would result from fallout exposure, which included sterility, birth rate decline, and limited access to essential resources. From that understanding arose a great public fear about said repercussions. Politically active scientists had become an instrument of peace with the increase in the scale of hazards. (Egan, 2009) Politicized fear had become a potent agent for change, one that could push the public to demand environmental sustainability. Fallout shelters represent this transition. Fallout shelters were not built to withstand the impact of a nuclear explosion; they were made to prevent exposure to radioactive fallout. The Department of Defense issued twenty-five million booklets on the construction parameters for fallout shelters. (Berrien, Schulman and Amarel, 1963) Private fallout shelters were not common; among people that had the financial means to build a fallout shelter, only a small percentage built them. Failure to build private fallout shelters wasn’t due to their lack of protection, but due to the attitude that the “government should place a greater emphasis on efforts to secure the peace through diplomacy.” (Berrien, Schulman and Amarel, 1963) In an attempt to encourage the public to build private fallout shelters, The Science News-Letter described the construction of fallout shelters as dual purpose rooms in the lower level of a home. Several scientists studied the effectiveness of fallout shelters to provide a safe environment in the event of a nuclear attack while performing nuclear bomb testing at the Nevada site. The Federal Department of Defense Administration conducted Operation Plumbbob; after testing several fallout shelters in the event of a nuclear bomb, the examiners concluded that fallout shelters were not always effective at preventing the respiratory hazard caused by dust leakage. (White, Wetherbe and Goldzien, 1957) Initially, the government promoted fallout shelters as a temporary solution to the impending war. Nevertheless, as the public became more aware of the ineffectiveness and lack of the feasibility of fallout shelters, they demanded social change. Omaha, and Nebraska in general, have had an interesting history with regards to the threat of nuclear fallout, and thus are major players in the fight against nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, Omaha and its surrounding areas were strategic targets for nuclear attack due to military installations such as the Offutt military base, which houses the Strategic Air Command (SAC) for the United States. Additionally, SAC began construction of Atlas Missile Complexes in the areas surrounding Omaha and Lincoln in 1959. (Neb Educational Telecommunications) These developments prompted organizations such as the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) to organize protests at SAC to denounce the use of nuclear weapons and encourage resistance against the sites’ construction (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/62" title="Figure 5" target="_self">Figure 5</a>). Through acts of civil disobedience, protesters would attempt to stall the construction however they could, by blocking trucks, for instance. (Neb Educational Telecommunications) There was also a major campaign to encourage civilians to resist the construction: suggesting that the people can refuse to work on the construction, scientists can refuse to create such weapons, unions can strike against military projects, and church members can use their faith as a means to limit their involvement in these military projects. (Neb Educational Telecommunications) Nebraskans feared that cities like Omaha and Lincoln would become targets if nuclear war was to break out, and the resulting fallout would devastate human health and the environment for generations. In a letter to President Eisenhower in 1959, A.J. Muste of the CNVA argued: "Man did not create the land. It was given to him as a heritage to use for the production of food and clothing and shelter, and that he might enjoy its beauty. Men are now preparing destruction, which can hardly be called war in the old sense at all, which may actually wipe out vegetation and poison the soil." (Nebraska Historical Society) In this small way, Omaha took part in a much larger social movement intended to call attention to this new, catastrophic threat. Human nuclear activity has changed the world in ways unlike any other time in recorded history. The mass proliferation of particles in the atmosphere from nuclear weapons has changed the world in ways that are only possible through human action, which is why the nuclear age is the epitome of the Anthropocene. With the onset of the nuclear age we started a new epoch, the Anthropocene, where the evidence of our profound impact is indelible. The proliferation of radioactive particles from nuclear bomb detonations serves as the best candidate for the golden spike of the Anthropocene. We have observed cycles of elevated carbon dioxide, elevated animal extinctions, and changing levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil during several time periods. (Carrington, 2016) Yet, in no other time have we observed the presence of ionizing radioactive particles in the atmosphere and the associated environmental and health consequences. We live in an age where our actions have lasting consequences. The Anthropocene is only possible with the rise of the environmentalist movement; it is only after reflecting on the interconnectivity between man and the environment that we can begin to define the Anthropocene. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jesus Perez Wade Peyou Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Berrien, F. K., Carol Schulman, and Marianne Amarel. "The Fallout-Shelter Owners: A Study of Attitude Formation." The Public Opinion Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1963): 206-16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2746915. Boyer, Paul . By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Carrington, Damian. "The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age." The Guardian. August 29, 2016. Accessed December 10, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. London: Penguin Books, in association with Hamish Hamilton, 2015. "Civil Defense Fallout Shelter Sign." Civil Defense Fallout Shelter Sign (ca. 1960s). May 24, 2011. Accessed November 08, 2017. https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/civildefense/sheltersign.htm. Egan, Michael. Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. "Fallout Shelters' "Lived-in" Look." The Science News-Letter 80, no. 16 (1961): 258-59. doi:10.2307/3943848. Fiege, Mark. The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2012. Frame , P. "Radiation Warning Symbol (Trefoil)." Origin of the Radiation Warning Sign (Trefoil). Accessed November 07, 2017. http://www.orau.org/ptp/articlesstories/radwarnsymbstory.htm. Glass, Bentley. "The Biology of Nuclear War." The American Biology Teacher 24, no. 6 (1962): 407-25. doi:10.2307/4440018. Grover, Herbert D., and Mark A. Harwell. "Biological Effects of Nuclear War II: Impact on the Biosphere." BioScience 35, no. 9 (1985): 576-83. doi:10.2307/1309966. Interactive Media Group - Nebraska Educational Telecommunications. NebraskaStudies.Org. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0900/frameset_reset.html?http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nebr skastudies.org%2F0900%2Fstories%2F0901_0126.html. "J. Robert Oppenheimer "Now I am become death..."." J. Robert Oppenheimer | Media Gallery. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.atomicarchive.com/Movies/Movie8.shtml. "Little Boy and Fat Man." Atomic Heritage Foundation. July 23, 2014. Accessed November 06, 2017. https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/little-boy-and-fat-man. Muste, Abraham. Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 1920-1967. Nebraska Historical Society. Accessed November 4, 2017. http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0900/media/0904_0704letter.pdf. Nebraska Educational Telecommunications. “Missiles on Land and Sea: Protests against Nuclear War.” Nebraska Studies 1950-1974. 2001. Accessed November 4, 2017. http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0900/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0900/stories/0901_0126.html. Prăvălie, Remus. "Nuclear Weapons Tests and Environmental Consequences: A Global Perspective." Ambio. October 2014. Accessed October 10, 2017. "Standard Fallout Shelter Signs ." Fallout Shelter Sign Page. Accessed October 08, 2017. http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/signs/. United Press International. “208 Detained in Nuclear Protest At Air Force Base Near Omaha. “ The New York Times. August 8, 1983. Accessed November 4, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/08/us/208-detained-in-nuclear-protest-at-air-force-base-near-omaha.html. United States of America. Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. Department of Defense . October 1977. Accessed November 3, 2017. http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/signs/CPG1-19A.pdf. United States of America. “EPA Facts About Strontium-90.” Environmental Protection Agency. Accessed November 4, 2017. https://semspub.epa.gov/work/HQ/175430.pdf. United States of America. The Internal Environment of Underground Structures Subjected to Nuclear Blast: Operation Plumbbob, Project 33.5. By C. S. White, M. B. Wetherbe, and V. C. Goldizen. Albuquerque, NM, NM: Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 1957. Woodwell, G. M. Ecological Effects of Nuclear War . Vol. 917. (1963): Brookhaven National Laboratory. Worster, Donald. Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas . Cambridge University Press, 1977. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Fallout Shelter Invisible Pollutants Mead NE Nuclear Bombs Nuclear Testing Protest Radiation https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/93c1469fdd84dd253f9ecdd5d642f912.jpg f264ba94a03e9c3f1130b423e0bdbd2c https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/b4cb9117eb7015b460d9697f0810b841.jpg 24265a1902b37caeb3460427bc647c6c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 3 Description An account of the resource Picture of the Omaha's Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Company from 1911. This building was used for to produce plows and other farm equipment until 1964. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Photo Courtesy of the Durham Museum Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Commercial use or distribution of the image is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Please contact The Durham Museum for permission to use the digital image. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived https://durhammuseum.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15426coll1/id/22206/rec/36 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Subject The topic of the resource Humans spent thousands of years hunting and gathering before the development of agriculture. Scientists call this change the “Neolithic Revolution.” Many argue this was the start of the Anthropocene. Plows and hoes have been a part of this story for over 4000 years. The “single wheel hoe” on display was handmade and likely built during the twentieth century. It overturns soil, buries weeds, and mixes nutrients. Nebraska’s agriculture grew as it industrialized in the nineteenth century. Farmers looked to companies in Omaha to supply necessary tools. Agriculture became the state’s basic source of wealth, and Omaha grew alongside it. As industrial agriculture grew globally in the 20th century, environmental consequences came with it, such as during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s or the USSR in the 1940s. The single wheel hoe predates this global shift towards agriculture. This hoe reminds us that agriculture takes many forms. Description An account of the resource Reliable food sources have been a major aspect of human life since the dawn of our existence. Humans spent thousands of years hunting and gathering until a new way of life emerged; the settled lifestyle of the agriculturalist. As agriculture became a widespread practice and the populations grew, human societies needed to find new ways to cultivate the land faster and more efficiently. Plows became increasingly popular as one of the main tools used to aid in the expansion of farming. Many farmers used plows to overturn the soil leaving the fertile earth on top, bury weeds, and mix soil. Small, hand held plows developed into to horse and oxen-drawn plows, which, by the nineteenth century progressed to larger industrial plows. Plowing has left an indelible impression on global landscapes and the Nebraskan environment. In the nineteenth century, “sod-busting” became synonymous with the idealized, American frontier ethic. It represented the pioneering spirit, the “progress” of westward expansion, and improvement and mastery of nature. More recent historians have viewed sod-busting with a more critical gaze. Geoff Cunfer has gone so far as to call plowing “ecocide” due to the disastrous effects humans and the implements we use have had on the ecosystem. (Cunfer, 2005) Our object reminds us that agriculture need not be synonymous with environmental “destruction.” The plow did not inevitably “break the plains.” However, many farmers throughout the nineteenth century and still today use a variety of agricultural implements, many of which confute these characterizations. Smaller, handheld plows, for instance, used in “backyard” farms promote healthier agricultural practices. These rudimentary plows are some of the least environmentally invasive yet beneficial instruments used in farming history. The plow is an important artifact in Omaha’s environmental history due to its contribution to the agricultural foundation on which Omaha and the greater Nebraska area was built. It links Omaha’s environmental history to the global history of the Anthropocene through the worldwide shift towards farming which has changed many aspects of the world we live in. The story of the plow begins after the Neolithic revolution. Early plow prototypes first appeared nearly 4,000 years ago in Sumar and Egypt in a dry environment that required moisture in the soil. (Pryor, 1985) These plows had rudimentary structures that would be barely recognizable if compared to the plows of present day. Many advancements took place over the years including the addition of wheels and improved handles to make maneuvering the plow through the fields easier. By the nineteenth century, farmers relied on local blacksmiths to produce the necessary farm tools. (Bonney, 1981) The plows produced during this time were made with metal bolts and bars, which attached the wood handles to the cultivators and wheels. In order to make a better furrow, blacksmiths incorporated cast iron parts into the plow design during the late 19th century to decrease the amount of soil that stuck to the plow. Prior to this development, plowing with an animal such as oxen required three farmers. The first to drive the plow, another to steer, and the last to clean the dirt off the blade. John Deere provided an even greater advancement of the plow through his creation of a steel plow. With Deere’s new steel design, the soil did not stick to the hoe and it pulled with less resistance. This decreased the amount of time, labor, and number of farmers needed to plow. Even with sharper pieces on the plows to cut through the soil easier, “a farmer walking behind a plow could only plow two acres a day.” (Bonney, 1981) By the end of the 19th century, machines pulled by horses were used instead of the human driven implements and farmers could plow up to seven acres a day. In 1903 there were different types of single wheel hoes and attachments available. These advertisements were used to display the prices varying from $3.75 to $11.00. With low prices like these, hoes were not limited to mass-production farmers, they could be used in the backyard. By 1911, the single wheeled hoe with one plows, multiple wheels, two hoes, three cultivator teeth, and rakes attached was selling for as little as $5.35 (Iron Age Farm and Garden Tools of 1903) (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/57" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). The single wheeled hoe is a type of plow, but one with a fundamentally different purpose. Rather than producing food to be sold in quantity, it would have been used for gardening. Plains farmers, even those with significant acreage planted in single crops, often cultivated large kitchen gardens. Farmers growing vegetables typically use wheel cultivators to aid in their gardening (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/56" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>). These smaller plows are used to “loosen the soil, allow moisture to reach the roots of crops and to keep down the weeds." (Moulton, 1997) A single wheeled hoe is useful because farmers are able to plant seeds in more narrow rows compared to the rows created by using a double wheeled plow or a plow pulled by a horse. This allows more crops to be produced in a smaller space thereby increasing productivity. The tire used in this plow resembles that of a bicycle tire contributing to our argument that this was a homemade implement. The wooden arms of the plow appear to be screwed to the cultivator teeth. This single-wheeled hoe is made of a bike tire, two wooden handles, and steel cultivator teeth. The object is useful for both amateur and professional gardeners. Recreational gardeners use it to save time and decrease effort. Professional gardeners use this object because it is more precise. It is also sturdier and can be effective though “many sessions… The hoes are used for weeding, mulching, and shallow cultivation… The cultivator teeth or ‘duckfeet’ are for general cultivation. They have a narrow neck with a wide head for turning over the weeds. The plow is rugged enough to do real plowing or furrowing.” (History of the Wheel Hoe) This object is in The Durham Museum's collection because of the many agricultural supplies produced in Omaha as well as the numerous farms in the surrounding area. One place of this production in Omaha was the Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Co. This building of this wholesale company was located at 707 S 11th Street in Omaha and was built in 1906 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/55" title="Figure 3" target="_self">Figure 3</a>). The railroad and nearby river were used to distribute the agricultural tools from this building. In 1903 the main interests in South Omaha included livestock and packing. At that time, Omaha “[had] some good agricultural lands outlying." (Wills, 1995) While it is believed that this object was handmade, it may have been inspired by products made in this building. In the territorial period, farming was limited in Nebraska. Farms were only about fifty acres, and the “tools and implements” were crude and simple. Markets for agricultural products were few, and capital for investment was in short supply. But after Nebraska was linked by rail to the East by 1869, farming was transformed into the state’s basic producer of wealth - the foundation of its economy.” (Traveler's Railway Guide, 1903) Plows became more common by the 1870s. “Nebraska farmers could buy a variety of new and improved plows… [and] cultivators." (Luebke, 2005) The plows used during this time allowed farmers to produce large quantities of crops that stimulated economic growth and the personal wealth of these farmers. Due to this economic impact, the cities of Nebraska were able to develop homes and businesses that lead to the establishment of cities like Omaha”. This single wheeled hoe was used in both amateur and professional gardener: recreationally or occupationally. The Anthropocene highlights a history of human impact on the environment that is commonly seen in a negative light. Plows can easily be added to the list of man-made implements that produce disastrous environmental changes and threaten the future of the earth. Major events such as the Dust Bowl have been attributed to the overuse of plows and show the disastrous effects the plow can have on the environment. (Plow that Broke the Plains, 1936) Areas of land that are continuously plowed can quickly become useless for farming due to soil erosion and nutrient depletion from the earth that continues long after the land is abandoned. (Ciampalini et al, 2012) As the soil erodes it is carried away by water runoff or wind and becomes pollution in the air and water. Some soil and nutrients end up in nearby ponds or lakes making them dirty and reducing photosynthesis. (Lal, Reicosky, and Hanson, 2007) The pH of the soil is also affected by long-term plowing as well as the hydration of the soil which affects the soil’s ability to sustain crops over time. (Hester and Marrison, 2012; Percy, 1992) In addition to these more tangible effects, other consequences of plowing affect the earth’s atmosphere (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/58" title="Figure 4" target="_self">Figure 4</a>). Carbon dioxide and nitrogen emissions play a major role in the environmental change. As these harmful substances are released from the soil, they go into the atmosphere where they contribute to holes in the ozone and global warming. As shown in the following chart, plowing and other farming practices have had a major impact on environmental change. (Gilbert, 2011) However, single wheeled plows such as this one must be viewed from a different perspective. These smaller plows are used to participate in small scale, oftentimes organic farming that produces far fewer emissions and soil disruption than the large-scale plows. (Wu and Xie, 2011) They oftentimes do not use pesticides which helps decrease the runoff of toxins into the surrounding water and air. Smaller farms also commonly practice crop rotation which fosters healthier soil that does not require nearly as many fertilizers to grow healthy crops. The use of smaller plows such as this single wheeled hoe helps increase carbon storage and decreases nutrient depletion. (Bengtsson, Ahnstrohm, and Weibull, 2005) While the scale of these positive environmental impacts of farming with a single wheeled hoe are varied based on location and climate of the region, it is clear that this local farming avoids many of the harmful impacts of commercial farming. Additionally, urban farming does not require the removal of natural environments such as forests that oftentimes accompanies larger rural farming. This object is connected to the Anthropocene by the themes of agriculture, industrialization, and the growth of industry. The plow is deeply rooted in the history of agriculture, as it has remained a major contributor to the success of farming. The plow has been used in many cultures across the world for thousands of years. Preceded by the use of a digging stick, plows have changed the scale on which humans interact with the land. The plow’s association with agriculture assisted in creating an environmental impact that included the selection of species, indirect influences, ecosystem change, population pressure, climate change, and farming pressure. The environmental impact of the plow accelerated during the nineteenth century as a result of industrialization and the expansion of resource frontiers . via railroads, linking increasingly distant farmlands to growing cities. The farming implements themselves were also transported on these rail networks after the Industrial Revolution. As time went on, according to historian Michael Kopsidis, “demand from cities generated incentives for an intensification of agriculture. In this view, the urban dwellers that specialized in commerce, crafts, proto-industry, trade, and later on industry, were important and concentrated sources of demand for the output of farms.” (Kopsidis and Wolf, 2012) Companies were created for the sole purpose of selling this groundbreaking equipment to farmers. One of the most famous farm equipment companies, the John Deere Corporation, was founded due to their creation of a self-scouring steel plow. In addition to their popularity in the retail market, the plow’s capacity to strip soil of its nutrients has resulted in the need to quickly replace the lost nutrients of the soil. (Gregg, 2015) The plow has played a significant role in the history of agriculture as well as the emergence of the Anthropocene. Through its utility the plow has become one of the most influential instruments used in the farming community today. From the time people first began using plows, their usage had progressively increased. Farmers now rely heavily on plows to efficiently increase their crop production by burying weeds and previously planted crops and increased soil fertility. While historically most plows looked similar to this one, the farming equipment industry has exploded and today most plows are massive machines pulled by tractors used to cultivate hundreds of acres of farmland. The advancement of plows, although more efficient, have unfavorable impacts on the environment. However, plows similar to this single wheeled hoe have had a more positive effect on the environment through their promotion of organic farming methods that reduce the amount of toxins released into their environments. Our single wheeled hoe, thus, reflects a more hopeful view of the Anthropocene. Lately the focus has shifted to finding ways to use the plow responsibly to reduce its negative impacts. Recognizing the capacity of the land and shifting to the use of smaller plows such as this one could help reduce the emissions produced by large-scale farming. Farmers could also plant trees and shrubs surrounding their farms to reduce the wind erosion that is supported by the plowing 18 . These steps must be taken to reduce the impacts of the plow on the earth that can be seen through the Anthropocene. The plow has played a major role in the environmental history of Omaha through its contribution to the agriculture both within Omaha and the surrounding area. The effects of the plow must be considered with looking at the global history of the Anthropocene as it directly relates to the widespread shift towards farming which has greatly influenced our world. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Abigail Klick Michaela Peck Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bengtsson, Janne, Johan Ahnström, and Ann-Christin Weibull. "The effects of organic agriculture on biodiversity and abundance: a meta-analysis." Journal of Applied Ecology 42, no. 2 (2005): 261-69. Bonney, Margaret Atherton ed., “Plowing in the Past: A Look at Early Farm Machinery,” The Goldfinch 2, no. 3 (February 1981): 8-11.Cunfer, Geoff. On The Great Plains. TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Ciampalini, Rossano, Paolo Billi, Giovanni Ferrari, Lorenzo Borsellini, and Stephane Follain. "Soil erosion induced by land use changes as determined by plough marks and field evidence in the Aksum area (Ethiopia)." Agriculture, Ecosystems, & Environment 146 (1) (2012): 197-208. Gilbert, Natasha. "Summit Urged to Clean Up Farming." Nature 479, no. 7373 (2011): 279. Gregg, Sara M. "From Breadbasket to Dust Bowl: Rural Credit, the World War I Plow-Up, and the Transformation of American Agriculture." Great Plains Quarterly 35, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 129-66. Hester, R. E., and Roy M. Harrison. Environmental impacts of modern agriculture. Cambridge: RSC Publishing, 2012. "History of the Wheel Hoe." Hoss Tools. https://hosstools.com/history-of-the-wheel-hoe/. "Iron Age Farm and Garden Tools of 1903." Farm and Garden Tools of 1903, 1903, 108. Kopsidis, Michael, and Nikolaus Wolf. “Agricultural Productivity Across Prussia During the Industrial Revolution: A Thünen Perspective.” The Journal of Economic History 72, no. 3 (2012): 634–70. Lal, R., D. C. Reicosky, and J. D. Hanson. "Evolution of the plow over 10,000 years and the rationale for no-till farming." Soil and Tillage Research 93, no. 1 (March 2007): 1-12. Luebke, Frederick C. Nebraska: an illustrated history. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Moulton, Candy Vyvey. Roadside history of Nebraska. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Pub. Co., 1997. Percy, David O. "Ax or Plow?: Significant Colonial Landscape Alteration Rates in the Maryland and Virginia Tidewater." Agricultural History 66, no. 2 (1992): 66-74. Prelinger Archives: The Plow That Broke the Plains (Part I) (1936). 1936. Accessed October 10, 2017. Pryor, Frederic L. "The Invention of the Plow." Comparative Studies in Society and History 27, no. 4 (1985): 727-43. "The Garden Magazine." Grow Your Own Vegetables : 72. Travelers' Railway Guide, Western Section (formerly the Rand-McNally Railway Guide). American Railway Guide Company, 1903. Wills, Charles A. Historical Album of Nebraska. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1995. "Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Co. Building." Omaha LHPC. Accessed October 03, 2017. Wu, Xingkuan, and Hao Xie. 2011. Green Building Technologies and Materials : Selected, Peer Reviewed Papers From the 2011 International Conference on Green Building Technologies and Materials (GBTM 2011), May 30, 2011, Brussels, Belgium. Durtne-Zurich, Switzerland: Trans Tech Publications, 2011. (accessed October 10, 2017). Title A name given to the resource Single-Wheel Hoe Agriculture Commodity Frontier Dust Bowl Erosion Greenhouse Gasses Industrialization Westward Expansion https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/296a0278f26102801617d860eb334553.jpg ccf7a5edefa676e1834d0a0787a0eb37 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2: American Smelting And Refining Company Taken from Aksarben Bridge Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bostwick, Louis Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bostwick-Frohardt, Durham Museum, Omaha, NE. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/d732722c3eaeca84e785e9576c1503c8.jpg bba2c362bdfc21578cdc3805b10c6c88 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 3: Omaha Lead Pollution Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Omaha Lead Registry http://www.omahalead.org/ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Living in a World of Our Own Making Subject The topic of the resource <a href="http://www.igbp.net/images/18.950c2fa1495db7081ebd1/1421396650502/GreatAcceleration2015igbpsrclowres.jpg" title="IGBP - The Great Acceleration Dashboard" target="_blank">The Great Acceleration</a> <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4721/40562555551_972c132773_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource The Anthropocene means “The Age of Humans,” but what does it mean to live in a world of our own making? Humanity has flourished in past two centuries. Two thirds of every person ever born lived between 1945 and today. Scientists call this era of expanding population, economic development, and environmental impact the “Great Acceleration.” People are now more numerous and powerful than ever before. Mining moves more rocks and soils than all of the worlds rivers combined. Artificial fertilizers have doubled the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils. Plastics can now be found on mountain tops and the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Paradoxically, many of the most profound changes to global environments pass virtually unnoticed. Nuclear fallout, for instance, is invisible to the naked eye, but radioactive evidence of cold war weapons tests remains in soils around the world. Until recently, lead was one of the most common materials in industrial use. It was used to seal our foods, paint our homes, and power our cars. Lead is toxic, especially for children. Although invisible, lead is now in our soils, in our cities, and even in our blood. By contrast, concrete is virtually everywhere, yet we rarely think about it. We drive on it, work in it, and the foundations of this very museum are built using it. More than half of the concrete ever produced was manufactured between 1995-2015. Concrete requires enormous energy to mine, transport, and produce. These consequences are as invisible to us as the material is abundant. As you finish your journey through the exhibit, consider how many other “invisible” materials influence our lives and connect us to the global environment. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource ASARCO Lead Refinery Subject The topic of the resource Louis Bostwick took this photograph in the 1930s, presenting a stark contrast to Omaha’s beautiful riverfront we see today. Lewis and Clark Landing was once home to a lead refinery controlled by the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO), which operated for over 100 years. People later learned about lead’s threat to human health and the environment. In 1997, escalated public pressure closed ASARCO, but it had already left a lasting mark on the local community. In 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the area a Superfund site. A Superfund uses federal funds to aid the cleanup of hazardous areas. Since then, the EPA and local government have worked to restore the contaminated soil. Despite such efforts, exposure to lead continues to threaten local and global health. Omaha’s rejuvenated riverfront is an example of how communities can combat the lasting impacts of harmful practices and heal a toxic past. Description An account of the resource In a world where half of the population is urbanized, connecting to nature is essential for good mental health. (Bratman et al, 2015) The Midwest is a great place for people to find balance in their fast paced lifestyles by staying connected to the environment while living in a city. When the weather is suitable, downtown Omaha, Nebraska has several outdoor activities to enjoy. Many tourists and locals choose to spend time at the riverfront of the vibrant and historic Old Market. Every summer, thousands of baseball fans gather for the College World Series. On any given day it is quite common to see people enjoying a relaxing stroll through the Lewis and Clark Landing or walking across the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge. It is shocking to think about what the area looked like just 30 years ago (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/53" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). The park and greenspace on the riverfront disguises an unexpected and toxic history. Bostwick, Louis. American Smelting And Refining Company Taken from Aksarben Bridge”. 1930’s. Bostwick-Frohardt, The Durham Museum, Omaha, NE. Omaha is one of the many communities that experienced incredible expansion during the late 1800s. The establishment of this plant and the history that came to follow its opening, particularly at this time and location, was not coincidental. At this time, the “Second Industrial Revolution” was flourishing in Europe and the United States. Between 1870 and 1890, Omaha’s population jumped from 16,000 to 140,000. (Omaha, Nebraska Pop History) Omaha’s growth was driven by lead manufacturing, and other growing companies like the Union Pacific Railroad. (Larsen, 2007) This industrial agglomeration can be attributed to the waterfront advantage that the Missouri River provided these companies, as well as the development of the railroad enabling companies to connect resources across the country. This photograph captures the former location of one of the American Smelting and Refinery Company’s (ASARCO) lead refineries, which was taken by Omaha World-Herald photographer Louis Bostwick in the 1930s (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/50" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>). (O'Connor, 2015) The plant was originally opened on the banks of the Missouri River in 1870 under the ownership of the Omaha Smelting Company. In 1882, the Omaha Smelting Company merged with the Grant Smelting Company to form the Omaha and Grant Smelting and Mining Company. This new ownership lasted for over 10 years, until another merger, including 16 companies in total, led to the formation of ASARCO. (Curry, 1949) The Omaha plant was part of a larger corporation, ASARCO, which was formed in 1899. (ASARCO) This corporation still operates today, but it does so as a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico. (ASARCO/Grupo Mexico) It is heavily involved in the mining of copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold. It is considered to be a global mining giant. Not only is it far reaching in its operations, which extends across several countries worldwide, but also regarding its total contributions to the respective metal markets. (ASARCO/Grupo Mexico) By 1925, ASARCO was the largest lead refinery in the world. It produced lead, but also radiation shields, bismuth and antimony oxide. (Rasmussen, 1992) The Omaha-World Herald reported that during 1924, the plant produced 165,000 tons of lead, 198,000 ounces of gold, 10,945 tons of antimonial lead and 148,711 pounds of refined bismuth. (OWH, 1925) While this plant was operational for a considerable amount of time in Omaha’s history, its existence was eventually met with strong resistance as the political battle for community and environmental health secretly raged in the heartland. In this discussion, we emphasize the effects of lead production and its significance in relation to the Anthropocene narrative. Lead mining and smelting is not a newly realized process. Human manipulation of lead has been traced back as far as 6000 years ago and its threat to human health was recognized dating back to 2000 BC. It’s negative impacts can be found scattered throughout history. For example, during the time of the Roman Empire, it could be found in many common household items of the wealthy such as dishes, utensils and food storage containers. In 17th century Germany, it was blamed for causing colic when litharge, a different form of lead, was used as a sweetener in wine. (Needleman, 1999) In more recent history, lead’s most common uses were in leaded gasoline, batteries, paints and plumbing pipes. Despite a plethora of historical knowledge available regarding the threat lead poses to human health, ASARCO continued its operations along the riverfront throughout a greater part of the 20th century. Starting in the early 1970s, human and environmental health risks came to light and the battle between Omaha and ASARCO began. Important environmental concerns at that time included air and potential water pollution. There was a great deal of attention drawn to the airborne threat due to the extensive exposure employees received, therefore significantly affecting their health. In one particular legal battle the company faced, three officials representing the Secretary of Labor visited the plant to investigate claims of hazardous levels of airborne lead. (LOC, 1974) The delegation found that airborne concentrations of lead in five of the seven areas tested were above the minimum threshold to be considered hazardous which was 0.2 mg/cm3. (LOC, 1974) As a result of this investigation, ASARCO received a citation with a sixty day reparation period and had to pay a fine of $600. (LOC, 1974) Another instance of this airborne threat was discovered in the elevated blood levels of workers in the plant. In 1985, the Omaha World-Herald reported that there were workers found to have blood lead levels above 50 μg/100 g blood.(OMH, 1985) These workers were sent home until the levels in their blood dropped to 40 μg/100 g blood. Additionally, these blood lead levels have significant consequences on the central nervous system. Employees reported to experience body tremors and tiredness. (LOC, 1974) Water pollution was another concern requiring investigation, specifically from the time the plant was operational to the demand for remediation. In the past, intense ambiguity revolved around the levels of toxicity and the overall impacts of the discharge into the river when the plant was in operation. In 1994, a toxicologist from the Nebraska Department of Health suggested that there had not been enough studies completed in order to completely understand how discharge from the plant affected both human and aquatic life. (Thomas, 1994) Although researchers lacked any concrete evidence that ASARCO polluted the water, there was a lawsuit in the works at the time to fine ASARCO $25,000 per day should they continue discharging waste into the Missouri River without installing a specialized filter. (Thomas, 1974) In 2001, the US Geological Survey published a technical report regarding toxic metals in the Missouri River adjacent to the plant site. (Chapman, 2001) Though there were elevated levels of lead in sediment at one of the areas studied, the sediments, pore water and river water did not reach exceed maximum acceptable levels set by the EPA. Considering the negative environmental and health consequences discussed above, it is easy to demonize the ASARCO, but its employees continued to stand with this destructive company. The ASARCO plant was recognized as a positive economic force in the Omaha area. In 1995, officials estimated that the plant annually contributed $15 million to the Omaha metro economy. (Powell, 1995) The ASARCO’s economic contributions played a significant role in the battle against site closure. It was estimated that closure would result in a loss of $22 million in taxes and wages. (Anderson, 1996) There were many people who wanted to keep the plant to prevent job loss and preserve economic profits that ASARCO contributed to Omaha. Despite the knowledge of the significant health risks imposed on employees, the reliable income ASARCO provided was enough for the union to fight to keep the company alive. (Anderson, 1996) Before the final closing of the plant, there was considerable deliberation regarding which actions should take place in order to ensure effective cleanup of the contaminant. In early 1996, the Omaha World-Herald reported that there were ten possible plans in deliberation. At that time, ASARCO wished to use a six foot cap on the soil to prevent further contamination, and would cost the company $15 million. (Anderson, Manager, 1996) On September 4, 1997, the city of Omaha approved ASARCO’s proposal to tear down the plant and cap the soil. After decades of tension, the ASARCO lead refinery was finally closed in 1997. (OPL) Throughout its long history in the Omaha area, the ASARCO was subjected to a great deal of public debate, legal battles, fines and reparations with specific scrutiny on its lead smelting activities. To this day, the Omaha metro area experiences environmental and human health effects from the ASARCO emissions of the past. The establishment of this specific region of Omaha as a Superfund site was finalized on December 15, 2004. (EPA Omaha Lead Site) The particular focus of the Superfund program is remediation of lead proliferation, which was heavily attributed to this particular ASARCO plant. A map of this area today shows that there are various sites that have experienced said remediation, but some areas have not been tested at all, and some are known to be contaminated and yet to be cleaned up (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/51">Figure 3</a>). (Omaha Lead Registry) Omaha’s cleanup efforts impact the economy from the decreasing property values in the area. (Decker, 2005) The contaminated areas experiencing a decline in the housing market is due to “Right-to-Know” laws, which require the homeowner to know the environmental hazards they are exposing themselves to. (Decker, 2005) Although ASARCO boasts a large presence on the mining industry stage, they are not alone in the collective effort to gain access to natural resources through various extraction methods. There are many other resources that are have been long mined and remain so to this day. These include: copper, silver, iron, etc. When viewing the mining industry from a broader perspective, it is important to understand the impacts that these activities have on the environment to better understand how the threat to public health is driven. Today, lead exposure continues to be a significant environmental threat to human health. Lead smelting itself has been linked to increases in ADHD in children living close to smelting operations. (Kim, 2013) Across the board, children have been seen as the primary concern in regards to elevated lead levels and the health impacts it may cause. Some reasons for this heightened threat include: children take in a higher ratio of lead versus their body weight because they are smaller, they are likely to ingest lead more than adults do simply based on the amount of times they put their hands in their mouth, and also the fact that they are still going through physical development and it makes them more susceptible to the effects of lead. (Shilu and Prapamontol, 2000) A more comprehensive description of effects of lead poisoning include harm to cognitive, behavioral and nervous system health. (Sullivan, 2015) While it is important to address the human related health issues related to mining practices, it is also important to understand the human driven force behind these operations in the first place. The Industrial Revolution and the years following it are recognized as a significant contributor to the human impacts on the environment. The increased mechanization allowed for more efficient and large scale methods to extract the planet’s natural resources. The Industrial Revolution increased human’s desire to gain capital through the continued and expanded extraction operations, particularly in the mining industry. The consequences of these extractive activities are often only recognized in response to crisis, but only when such activities and their impacts cannot be successfully swept under the rug. Examples may include but are not limited to large scale mining disasters, pipeline leaks, and public water contaminations. In such instances the companies involved often try to minimize the fallout from disasters in order to continue operations regardless of the continued impact on both environmental and community health. We have drawn attention to the Omaha area and its increased lead levels due to the presence of ASARCO and its operations. However, the critical piece of this argument is that the negative consequences caused by this specific company were not isolated. They combine with other instances worldwide to compose a much larger global issue that has gone unnoticed for hundreds of years. It is imperative to highlight the long term health effects caused by both Industrial Revolutions on a global scale. The World Health Organization published research specifically unveiling substantial long-term effects of lead on global health. Before the Industrial Revolution, estimated concentrations of blood lead levels in people were 0.016 μg/dl. (Shilu and Prapamontol, 2000) The world post-Industrial Revolution has increased the blood lead levels in even the most remote parts of the world to 0.78 μg/dl. This article also noted that the “body lead burden of today’s populations is 500-1000 times greater than that of their pre-industrial counterparts.” (Shilu and Prapamontol, 2000) As exhibited throughout this narrative, it was a long, drawn out process to decide the fate of the ASARCO site, which included many discussions and debates between the company, the city, and the public. Ultimately, the City of Omaha and ASARCO decided that the space would be transformed into a public park, which we know today as Lewis and Clark Landing. The proposed park plan was finally agreed upon by all parties on April 13, 1992 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/52" title="Figure 4" target="_self">Figure 4</a>). (Rasmussen, 1992) Examination of the history of the ASARCO site on the Omaha Riverfront has allowed us to shed light on human’s relationship with the environment. However, there is always room to improve our relationship with the environment and clearly there is more work yet to be done. Specifically, in Omaha, there are many residential sites within the Superfund site waiting to be decontaminated. (Kemp, 2016) The decisions we make when we interact with the environment can have dramatic and tangible long-term consequences on the health of both the environment and the public. While public health is an important facet of this particular case, it should not be the only driver of environmental awareness and change. We have learned that our short term motivations to keep something we profit from can be lethal in the long run. This calls for a cultural change that needs to start with the understanding that the public and the environment are deeply intertwined, especially when it comes to profit driven decisions. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Annie Klein Jenna Mucci Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Anderson, Julie. “Manager: Asarco wants to speed up cleanup plan.” Omaha World-Herald, February 1996. “American Smelting And Refining Company Taken from Aksarben Bridge.” Bostwick-Frohardt Collection, Durham Museum Archives. http://durhammuseum.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15426coll1/id/3845/rec/11 “ASARCO Incorporated History.” Funding Universe. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/asarco-incorporated-history/. Bratman, Gregory N., Hamilton, Paul J., Hahn, Kevin S., Daily, Gretchen C., and James J. Gross. “Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112.28 (2015). 8567-8572. Chapman, Duane C., et al. “Toxicity and Bioavailability of Metals in the Missouri River Adjacent to a Lead Refinery.” USGS, January 2001. http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA408607 City of Omaha, Nebraska “Omaha Lead registry”. https://www.dogis.org/Html5Viewer/?viewer=omahaleadregistry/ Curry, Emmett, “Biggest Lead Refinery.” Omaha World-Herald, April, 3, 1949. Decker, et. al. “Residential Property Values and Community Right-to-Know Laws: Has the toxics Release Inventory had an impact?” February 1, 2005. Growth and Change, vol.36 iss.1, winter 2005, pp.113-133. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2257.2005.00269.x Dukes Lee, Jennifer. “Asarco’s Cleanup Plan Wins Approval From State.” Omaha World-Herald, September 1997. Kim, Stephani et. al.“Lead, mercury, and cadmium exposure and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.” Environmental Research no. 126 (2013):105-110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2013.08.008 Lawrence H. Larsen, “Upstream Metropolis: An Urban Biography of Omaha and Council Bluffs”. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 185. Markel, Howard. “Remember Flint.” Milbank Quarterly, 19 no. 2 (2016): 229-236, doi:10.1111/1468- 0009.12188. O’Connor, Michael. “Who was Louis Bostwick?” Omaha World-Herald, April 2015. http://dataomaha.com/bigstory/go/revisiting-early-omaha Omaha Public Library. “American Smelting and Refining Co., Omaha, Ne.” Nebraska Memories. http://www.memories.ne.gov/rights/opl.html Powell, Joy. “ASARCO Manager Defends Plant as Economic Mainstay.” Omaha World-Herald, June 30, 1995. Rabinowitz, Michael B. "Lead isotopes in soils near five historic American lead smelters and refineries." Science of The Total Environment346, no. 1-3 (2005): 138-48. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2004.11.021. Rasmussen, Jim. “Refinery Wary of Gateway Concept.” Omaha World-Herald, March 1992. Rasmussen, Jim. ”Riverfront Plans Retain Refinery: Concerns on Cost Compel Redesign.” Omaha World-Herald, April 1992. “Safety Order Includes Omaha Lead Refinery.” Omaha World-Herald. July, 1985. Shilu, Tong, von Schirnding,Yasmin E., and Tippawan Prapamontol. “Environmental Lead Exposure: A public health problem of global dimensions.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78.9. (Jan. 2000). 1068-1077. Sullivan, Marianne. “Reducing Lead in Air and Preventing Childhood Exposure Near Lead Smelters: Learning from the U.S. Experience.” New Solutions, 25 no.1 (2015): 78-101, doi:10.1177/1048291115569027 Thomas, Fred. “Effect of Omaha Firm’s Emissions Unclear”. Omaha World-Herald. July 1994. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7. Interim Record of Decision, Omaha Lead Site. https://archive.epa.gov/region07/cleanup/superfund/pdf/web/pdf/ols_rod.pdf “ASARCO/Groupo Mexico Chronology”. Their Mines, Our Stories. http://www.theirminesourstories.org/?p=1225 “World’s Largest Lead Refinery is in Omaha.” Omaha World-Herald. April, 1925 Kemp, Steve. “Going Home to manage the final steps of Omaha’s historic lead cleanup.” EPA. May 25, 2016. https://blog.epa.gov/blog/2016/05/going-home-to-manage-the-final-steps-of-omahas-historic-lead-cleanup/. 501 F.2d 504 “AMERICAN SMELTING & R. CO. v. OCCUPATIONAL S. & H. R. COM'N.” Library of Congress, 1974. https://www.leagle.com/decision/19741005501f2d5041927 EPA Health Risks Invisible Pollutants Lead Mining Production https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/3a0e562bfcfca59480b6611d19bddaed.JPG ff7bc2b61af49b28daaff6cbe7a396c1 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/42ba956c1f1e6bbef1078212a52cbc0e.JPG 5a897826ea217d8283d8b28ae5f5372b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 3 Description An account of the resource Products offered by ConAgra includes things such as Peter Pan Peanut Butter, Marie Callender’s meals, and Healthy Choice meals. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Photo Courtesy of Emma Sundberg https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/2a4db9f0ac7f907c844a1ef21bcc231a.jpg 167f0f35aa06d31bb9f75a24356530e0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource General Views since 1921 Description An account of the resource Looking northwest from about 8th and Leavenworth Street at the construction of the Conagra campus in the old Jobbers Canyon area. The Woodmen Tower is in the far background. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bostwick, Louis (1868-1943) and Frohardt, Homer (1885-1972) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Durham Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990-01-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource From the Bostwick-Frohardt Collection, Owned by KM3TV and on permanent loan to The Durham Museum. Commercial use or distribution of the image is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Please contact The Durham Museum for permission to use the digital image. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Living in a World of Our Own Making Subject The topic of the resource <a href="http://www.igbp.net/images/18.950c2fa1495db7081ebd1/1421396650502/GreatAcceleration2015igbpsrclowres.jpg" title="IGBP - The Great Acceleration Dashboard" target="_blank">The Great Acceleration</a> <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4721/40562555551_972c132773_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource The Anthropocene means “The Age of Humans,” but what does it mean to live in a world of our own making? Humanity has flourished in past two centuries. Two thirds of every person ever born lived between 1945 and today. Scientists call this era of expanding population, economic development, and environmental impact the “Great Acceleration.” People are now more numerous and powerful than ever before. Mining moves more rocks and soils than all of the worlds rivers combined. Artificial fertilizers have doubled the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils. Plastics can now be found on mountain tops and the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Paradoxically, many of the most profound changes to global environments pass virtually unnoticed. Nuclear fallout, for instance, is invisible to the naked eye, but radioactive evidence of cold war weapons tests remains in soils around the world. Until recently, lead was one of the most common materials in industrial use. It was used to seal our foods, paint our homes, and power our cars. Lead is toxic, especially for children. Although invisible, lead is now in our soils, in our cities, and even in our blood. By contrast, concrete is virtually everywhere, yet we rarely think about it. We drive on it, work in it, and the foundations of this very museum are built using it. More than half of the concrete ever produced was manufactured between 1995-2015. Concrete requires enormous energy to mine, transport, and produce. These consequences are as invisible to us as the material is abundant. As you finish your journey through the exhibit, consider how many other “invisible” materials influence our lives and connect us to the global environment. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource ConAgra Foods Subject The topic of the resource The foods here are part of the ConAgra product line. They all contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the form of corn products, like corn starch. For centuries, people have changed plants to improve farming through artificial selection. Working the land and farming plants as food is one way that people interact with the environment. In the past, people did this by choosing the seeds from the best plants to grow the next year. Now, people use a different method called genetic modification. In the past, companies like ConAgra have used this method to make their food tastier and easier to make. ConAgra has recently decided to remove GMOs from their food due to public opinion. This shift away from GMOs signals the start of another new chapter in food production. Because ConAgra is a part of that change, it represents the way food production has shaped the environment. Description An account of the resource The Anthropogenic "object" that will be the focus of this essay is the currently Omaha-based corporation ConAgra. This corporation was founded in 1919 in Nebraska after the consolidation of four smaller grain mills, with the headquarters moving to Omaha itself in 1922. Since then it has steadily built up into the larger conglomerate that it is today, growing into a strong local and global presence, with offices in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Italy. ConAgra has had a major impact on the legislation that Omaha has passed in relation to businesses, with the company receiving tax breaks for investing in its own city, rather than moving away. (Larson, 2007) Its political clout and extensive lobbying, along with the large number of citizens of Omaha that it employs, have made it a major player in Omaha's involvement with the Anthropocene. Moreover, the purpose of this Anthropogenic artifact lies mainly in consumption as a food product and occupation as a major employer. ConAgra Foods is part of The Durham’s collection because of its long history as an influential corporation in Omaha. Starting just outside of the city in Grand Island, Nebraska, ConAgra moved its headquarters to Omaha during their early years, where it has remained since, employing thousands, shaping the landscape of the city and its legislature. One of the best examples of the direct impact ConAgra Foods has had on the landscape of Omaha is the renovation of Jobber’s Canyon on the riverfront. These changes, which removed long-standing warehouse buildings that constituted a proposed historic district at the time, were part of the larger “Return to the River” movement that began in the 1980s and lasted through the early 2000s that saw a rise in renovations of the riverfront to include parks, corporate office campuses, and other recreational areas. (Bednarek, 2009) ConAgra was able to make this happen through the city’s desire to have the corporation remain located in Omaha due to the large number of people the company employs locally. In this sense, ConAgra Foods is unique to Omaha, though it has since expanded to be a major national and global presence as part of a growing commercialization of food distribution companies on a global scale. This Omaha-native company has interacted with the people of Omaha since its founding, providing food services and consumer products like Peter Pan Peanut Butter, Marie Callender’s meals, and Healthy Choice meals while providing jobs for many of the citizens of Omaha. In the end, ConAgra foods has shaped the history of Omaha in both a recreational and occupational sense, playing a major role in employing some of the local workforce and an even larger role in the distribution of food. Their economic and political position place them as a major force within the Anthropocene in Omaha. ConAgra is a major player in the Anthropocene as it relates to Omaha, especially through its legislative authority. As the Anthropocene can be examined through the lens of agricultural capitalism and industrialization, ConAgra is easily identifiable as an anthropogenic force of change. One such example is how ConAgra is shaping the views of the public on the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). These changes are more varied and perhaps subtler than they initially appear to be. They are currently stating that they are cutting back on the use of GMOs. One explanation for this could be the use of the Public Trust Doctrine to drive legislative changes to protect non-GMO environments, a product of the need to increase profits and keep up with the ever-changing needs of a capitalistic society. (Knudsen, 2011) Other changes seem to appear earlier regarding public opinion about GMOs. Public exposure to biotechnology in general has risen in recent years, starting as early as the late 1990s and rising substantially since. (Runge et al, 2017) At first glance, these two changes appear to be indicative of the ways in which public opinion has modified the GMO policies of ConAgra, but ConAgra Foods, and companies like it, have been just as influential in getting to this point. The rising attention to biotechnology and GMOs in particular has, in the past, driven changes largely focused on the labeling of foods in grocery stores and supermarkets. Essentially, the demand is to know if the food on the shelf is GMO free. This is the obvious, and easy, option for indication of GMOs in stores, especially given the difficulty of passing legislature that would require labeling genetically modified foods – a result of the political and economic clout of companies like ConAgra. (Sunstein, 2017) Simply put, companies like ConAgra want to be able to use cheap and easy materials to make their products, but the market must allow this. If people decide they don’t want to eat GMOs, then ConAgra would want to find a way to sneak them into foods or spend more money producing non-GMO crops. The easiest way to do this is to manipulate the regulations placed on them for labeling their products. Given that non-GMO foods are far less common, and that labeling GMOs would be potentially detrimental to profits, it makes sense for companies like ConAgra to lobby against legislature requiring the labeling of GMOs and to promote the labeling of non-GMO foods as GMO free instead. ConAgra has proven to be a reactionary force, driving the way the market truly responds to the growing attentiveness of the public regarding the use of GMOs. It can be argued that the Anthropocene begins when humans begin to manipulate the environment for their own benefit, such as with the widespread use of agriculture, and the presence of grain mills. In this case, while the human alteration of food has already taken place, the Anthropogenic impacts are being lessened, or changed in ways that we are not yet aware of, with the reduction of GMO usage by ConAgra, thus discouraging further human exploitation of their environment. (Yang and Chen, 2016) ConAgra’s stance on their reduction of GMO use is unfortunately not presented to the public this way. Instead it is represented as the company listening to the needs and wants of its customers and removing something the public is not sold on. Another main theme regarding the Anthropocene is the idea of invasion and exploitation of the environment for human gain. ConAgra is arguably one of the largest driving forces for changes in the environment in Omaha, with the destruction of Jobber's Canyon and creation of multiple grain mills for agriculture. (Steffan and Crutzen, 2010) This, along with their commodification of food, contribute to the idea that the Anthropocene is driven by capitalistic forces, as these changes are intrinsically capitalist. (Castree and Rhoads, 2016) The presence of ConAgra in Omaha thus assists in making the Anthropocene a local issue, rather than a far removed one. ConAgra is still a thriving company to this day, while also expanding their domain internationally and furthering their role in the global commodification of food.(Weis, 2007) Along with this has come the idea that they can get away with breaking the law on multiple different occasions, exploiting the products they are given by other companies to make their foods. (Schlosser, 2001) This readiness to blatantly defy the regulations and exploit the environment for personal and economic gain seems to be typical for a company as large as ConAgra, helping to shape the way that people look at, and interact with, the environment. Instead of using their political prowess and national attention to encourage a healthy relationship with the food they produce and distribute, they have further exemplified the human desire for environmental domination through massive agriculture and underpaying those who provide them with livestock. (Schlosser, 2001) For example, some farmers have accused ConAgra for undercutting the actual weight of the products they purchase in order to ensure a cheap buy. ConAgra itself is already an international power that contributes to global production and distribution of food. (Bonanno, 1994) They are able to expand the reach of their influence beyond just Omaha and the United States when it comes to how people will view their environment. Due to this, they are furthering the growing tendency to refer to food in terms of nutrition and not as food in and of itself. (Pollan, 2008) Due to the naturally exploitative nature of agriculture and food production it comes as no surprise that ConAgra's global impact on the Anthropocene is reinforcing human's desire and ability to exploit their environment via capitalist agricultural practices. To ensure they thrive as a business they have met the needs and wants of people in different areas and through different times, instead of focusing on the less popular option of monitoring and preserving the environment. It seems, then, that instead of supply reflecting demand, in this case ConAgra has reshaped demand so as to fit a profitable, albeit potentially harmful, supply rather than ceding the point and turning to less exploitative agricultural methods. In order for ConAgra to become a more positive driving force in the Anthropocene they would need to participate in the restructuring of capitalistic thought surrounding food. (Tickell, 2011) Instead of simply commodifying their products to fit the exact market demand, they would have to shift their focus to be more environmentally centered and conscious. In a very direct sense, the use of GMOs in the past by ConAgra and companies like it indicates a turning point in the way people affect the ecological status of the Earth. Humans have been altering the genes of plants and animals for thousands of years, mostly through selective breeding. The advent of modern technology, however, has changed the way humans affect the genomes of plants and animals, making the effect humans have on the environment in terms of genetic modification more direct than ever. (Aagaard, 2011; Cooley, 2004; Hourdequin, 2013) While in the past genetic modification relied on organisms inheriting traits from their predecessors, humans can now directly transplant traits into nearly any organism they desire. For example, the majority of soybean growth in the United States relies on soybeans that have been genetically programmed to express their own pesticides. The same is true of corn. The changes forced on these organisms are not alone in scope or purpose; other examples abound. Other crops have been modified to fortify the diets of those who grow and consume them, like golden rice, a common staple food for much of Asia. Golden rice has been genetically modified to produce more vitamin A. (Hourdequin, 2013) While many of these changes are, themselves, benign, they pose potential ecological problems. Most of the genetic modifications given to organisms create a biological advantage for that organism. This advantage, in turn, confers a heightened capacity for reproductive potential, meaning genetically modified organisms often make incredibly efficient invasive species. This is especially true of plants who can spread over wide areas quickly and reproduce on their own. (Pipernoa, 2017) This problem is worsened by the fact that there is almost no way to control for pollen distribution. So, it seems the anthropogenic effects of GMOs exceed the simplistic explanation that tampering directly with the genetic makeup of an organism is indicative of human impacts on the environment, including also the idea that those changes have the capacity to multiply environmental impacts in the form of thewidespread and uncontrolled dispersal of those organisms. Companies like ConAgra, through their normal responses to market shifts, can affect changes in the environment further proving their status as a product of the Anthropocene. Capitalism is a main driving force behind human-caused environmental changes, as the environment is a rich source of capital for industries. ConAgra acts as a prime example of the capitalist machine through their exploitation of the environment and organisms with genetic modification. They use GMOs to increase food output, increase capital, and use that capital to rework the system in its favor. The redirecting of laws and product identification can affect environmental changes. There is, however, a counterpoint to these arguments, and that is the capacity of such companies to limit the impacts they have on the environment, pursuant to the demand of the market. In other words, while companies like ConAgra have, in the past, been a nexus of environmental change, mostly in a negative way, they can also provide the means by which environmental impacts are mitigated. (Schimelpfenig, 2017; Tickell, 2011) While ConAgra is not completely in favor of the use of human modification on the environment and food, it has been a major driving force in bringing the Anthropocene to Omaha. Businesses themselves play a very large role in shaping the mindset of how people are to treat the environment, and what kind of environment will be left behind for future generations. ConAgra is leaving a dichotomous legacy of exploitation of the raw environment through massive agriculture conglomerates and of limiting human impact on the food we eat through scaling back on their overall use of GMOs. (Schmidheiny, 1998) This raises the question of how much exploitation is too much regarding humans and their environment, and in relation to the actions of ConAgra, genetically modifying the food we will be directly intaking is where the line is drawn. While it has been questioned whether or not the world before humans is what we should strive to preserve and return to, the concern for over-exploitation has still become more apparent in recent years, especially in the case of large corporations, even with their continued use of massive agriculture. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Patrick Eiden Brittany Keath Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Aagaard, Todd S. 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Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Collections Agriculture ConAgra Consumption Corn Corporatations Domestication Genetically Modified Organisms https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/569bca3839f0f9b412dd3ee208dee76f.jpg d3425b8231515e3e1331747ed06abc82 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/d1d07b585c8572f268c6bac35367a62d.jpg 5016715c390bb07b455d21b22350920e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wentworth, William. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Photo Archive Description An account of the resource Westinghouse 1417 No. 22nd St. Omaha, 18 June 1938. Woman standing near refrigerator. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Commercial use or distribution of the image is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Please contact The Durham Museum for permission to use the digital image. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Consumer Revolutions Subject The topic of the resource Global Capitalism <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4758/39538672694_da9d00eca7_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Butter-Nut Coffee Advertisement, Durham Photo Archive Description An account of the resource Globalization has brought the world to our doorstep. Expanding networks of trade bring goods from every corner of the world to our homes in Omaha. Although many of us associate globalization with the very recent past, those connections have a long history. This section of the exhibit takes us from the early history of globalization to the present and shows how our consumer decisions transformed economic and environmental relationships around the world. The first era of globalization dawned in the late sixteenth century when the Spanish Empire created the first global currency. The Spanish used gold and silver mined by indigenous peoples in Bolivia to trade for goods in China. Silver coins greased the wheels of early globalization and connected American mines, to tea fields in China, to the markets of Europe. Expanding wealth and power eventually opened up foreign landscapes to American use as well. By the nineteenth century, consumer networks allowed families in Omaha to consume tropical goods like coffee. Today, multinational corporations like ConAgra dominate food production. They use resources from every type of environment and ship their products globally. Consumer revolutions accelerated after the Second World War. Home appliances like televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines promised convenience and an increased quality of life, but new technologies sometimes produced unexpected environmental consequences. These objects remind us that modern consumerism was part of a long history of globalization that transformed global environments. Many of us still use objects like these on a daily basis. As you look through this section, ask yourself how many goods you have used or consumed today are connected in some way to foreign landscapes. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Servel Electrolux Gas Refrigerator Subject The topic of the resource In 1979, Jimmy Carter said that "human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.” Consumer appliances like the refrigerator changed American domestic life in the twentieth century. The consequences of this consumer revolution had profound and unexpected environmental impacts. The Servel corporation was one of the few companies making gas powered refrigerators in the 1930s. By the 1950s, most companies were using refrigerating chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs were cheap, effective, and non-toxic. In 1974, two scientists discovered that CFCs deplete the earth’s ozone layer. The ozone layer in the atmosphere blocks harmful UV rays from reaching the earth. Too much UV radiation results in consequences for humans, plants and marine life. Once scientists discovered the harmful effects of CFCs, the Montreal Protocol imposed a ban on their use in 1986. This refrigerator is a reminder of paths not taken and the unexpected consequences of miracle technologies. Description An account of the resource Everyday objects are often overlooked when discussing environmental change. However, these objects hold profound impacts on our environment and when looking at our environment should be extensively researched. The new wave of consumerism and the development of new appliances contributed significantly to anthropogenic change worldwide and specifically in Omaha. The object of our project is a 1933 Servel Inc. gas powered refrigerator. It may seem like a benign, everyday object, but this consumer appliance represents a profound shift in global environmental history. One of the consequences of that revolution, and the use of artificial coolants more specifically, was their impact on the ozone layer. Our refrigerator represented a change in consumer culture, a new desire to store food, the convenience made possible by refrigerating technology. These changes occurred in Omaha and much of the developed world, but its environmental consequences were global. The first refrigerators sold for domestic and home use were sold in 1911 by General Electric Company and 1913 an invention by Fred Wolf (Heldman, 2003). They were prohibitively expensive for families, however, and even the most wealthy people would have to make a significant investment in order to access one. Additionally, these refrigerators were costly to maintain, did not preserve food efficiently, and required significant space in the home. The Electric World journal said in 1942 “people as yet are skeptical as to the feasibility of electric refrigeration in the home” (Electrical World, 1924). This reality presented a difficulty for their widespread adoption. In response to these obstacles, engineers and refrigeration companies like Servel and Frigidaire began to attempt to mass produce refrigerators, shrink the size of their components, and advertise the feasibility of using a fridge in the home. One advertisement from 1930, markets the refrigerator by addressing all of these potential pitfalls. “Frigidaire is an electric refrigerator available to every electrically wired home. Frigidaire maintains constant, crisp, dry cold—preventing food decay, and the development of menacing bacteria” (Buziak, 2011). This ad explains that these are easy to set up and maintain because they can be simply plugged in. Additionally, the ad asserts that the air stays cool enough in order to combat decay and bacteria growth. The technology was relatively novel and definitely new to the average middle income American. Some companies, such as Frigidaire, capitalized on these early innovations. These ads attempted to explain this new technology, made possible through science, in order to promote the adoption of their product in the home (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/39" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). These new inventions paved the way for the consumer culture began to spread during this time. The Durham Museum collection hosts a 1933 Servel Inc. gas powered refrigerator. It represents a new accessibility to mass consumer goods in the late 1920s -1940s. The advertisement presented below is of our refrigerator. In contrast to their competitors such as General Electric and Frigidaire, Servel was much less widely used. It was “a small fish in a big pond.” Servel never held more than an 8 to 10 percent share of the home refrigerator market. Servel made refrigerators until 1956 but was unable to compete with competitors who relied on compression for their refrigerators (Anderson, 1953). Servel was the only company that used “only gas-powered ammonia absorption technology. (Rees, 2015). Both the absorption and compressor refrigerators rely on heat and then the evaporation of a refrigerant to provide the cooling effect. Compression machines would often use electricity to provide the heating effect and absorption machines relied on some other outside heat source like fire. The absorption technology of our refrigerator relies on three phases for cooling. First, the gas fueled flame evaporates ammonia in a low partial pressure environment. This process extracts heat from its surroundings. Second, the gaseous refrigerant is absorbed by another liquid like a salt solution. Third, the liquid is heated causing the refrigerant to evaporate. The refrigerant passes through a heat exchanger and condenses. The process of evaporation provides the cooling effect. Servel’s story implies a reason why compression refrigerators eventually beat out absorption refrigerators. The manufacturers who produced compression machines used different resources to cool their machines. Servel’s ammonia absorption refrigerator eventually fell waned in appeal in favor of the more efficient compression machines, which, by the 1930s commonly used a new chemical coolant CFCs. During the early 1930s, there were two primary types of refrigeration, gas powered and electric. The gas-powered units boasted a design that was meant to be more fitting of a rural lifestyle due to the fact it did not need electricity to function. Through a series of heating and cooling processes, ammonia gas would be used to pull heat out of the fridge, and in turn cool its contents. This process, aside from the emissions given off by burning the gas, had a small impact on the environment. However, its popular counterpart, the electric fridge, used a more damaging process. Relying on many of the same techniques of as the gas fridge, the electric fridge relies on a compressor to do its heating. It also uses a refrigerant rather than ammonia gas. Refrigerants, most commonly Freon, are a group of gasses that exhibit certain qualities that are helpful in the compression and condensing process of an electric fridge. As cities became more urbanized, and the technology for refrigerators got better, the market for them boomed. “By the 1920s, the household refrigerator was an essential piece of kitchen furniture. In 1921, 5,000 mechanical refrigerators were manufactured in the US. Ten years later that number grew past one million and just six years later, nearly six million.” (Krasner-Khait, 2000) CFCs, Freon, or Chlorofluorocarbons were commonly used by Servel’s competitors, specifically General Electric, in their compression machines. The gas-powered ammonia flame, that Servel used, would oftentimes result in fires and high exposure to toxic ammonia. CFCs are not toxic to humans and do not require flames to fuel them. Therefore, CFC machines were more appealing to consumers. The development of Freon led to the development of safer, smaller, lighter, and cheaper refrigerators. These competitors that used compression machines would use a compressor powered by electricity to increase pressure on Freon. The gas produced by this pressure then condensed to a liquid by cooling in a heat exchanger. At this point, the liquid is passed through a valve to the evaporator. The liquid then evaporates and absorbs heat from the area where food is kept. The Freon then returns to the compressor to repeat the process. The accessibility to refrigerators in general created a change in the domestic lives of Omahans and Americans. This image from the Wentworth collection from The Durham Museum digital archive shows a woman in Omaha standing next to her electric refrigerator in 1938 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/38" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>). This image connects Omaha to this new culture of consumerism and in turn to anthropogenic change. The development of these cheaper, smaller, and “nontoxic” contributed to the continuous growth of the refrigerator. Furthermore, with the development of affordable, efficient refrigerators Americans were now able to store food regardless of weather. “ In recent decades, cold chains have propagated and lengthened, moving more goods and including more countries” (Rees, 2015). Consequently, refrigeration connected the United States globally and domestically. As seen, the refrigerator began to gain popularity in the United States and globally, but not without environmental consequences. Our Servel “Electrolux” refrigerator contributed to these changes, however new electric refrigerators that used artificial coolants began to displace them by the 1950s. These more “modern” consumer appliances were supposed to be longer lasting and more safe for the consumer. Dependability, and reliability were the mainstays in refrigeration advertisement (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/40" title="FIgure 3" target="_self">Figure 3</a>). In the advertisement shown below in the 1933 San Antonio ad, Majestic says, “the refrigerating unit is made with such precision, and of such dependable, well tasted parts that it can safely be SEALED within a steel dome.” (Novak, 2012) Safety was a mainstay in electric refrigerator advertisements. On the surface level this seems obvious because they replaced toxic ammonia gas, with non-flammable, nontoxic, non-corrosive, and highly non-reactive gases. On the other hand, the transition from gas powered fridges like out Servel Electrolux to seemingly “safer” modern option presented new dangers, this time on a global scale. Thomas Midgley, an American Chemist, synthesized chlorofluorocarbons in 1928. They seemed a miracle refrigerant. CFCs were much safer to inhale, and much less volatile. Marketed as “Freon” by the DuPont corporation, CFC proliferated following the second world war as consumer demand increased. In addition to refrigerators, CFCs were used in many household items, bug sprays, paints, hair conditioners, and other health care products are just a few examples of their extensive usage. They provided an inexpensive solution to the desire for air conditioning in an increasingly modern society. CFC use peaked at annual sales of about a billion dollars, and more than one million metric tons of CFCs produced. (Elkins, 2005) Mario Molina, a PhD researcher at the University of California Irvine was the first to make the shocking discovery about the environmental impact of CFCs. Molina found, that CFCs when reacting with UV radiation in the atmosphere, would destroy an oxygen compound called ozone (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/41" title="Figure 4" target="_self">Figure 4</a>). He predicted that they could deplete the ozone layer at a staggering 7 percent over 60 years putting us in real peril. (ESDE) Globally, this was troubling news, the depletion of the ozone layer meant a number of things. First and foremost for humans, the increased amount of UVB radiation can cause certain types of cancer, and result in the early development of cataracts. Furthermore, there are consequences for plant life, marine life, and the biochemical system as a whole. Plants more quickly develop disease, marine animals see a decreased ability to reproduce therefore throwing off the food chain. It also inhibits the growth and movement of phytoplankton. (EPA, 2016) Many of these of these consequences have cascading effects, for example, an ecosystem that previously was lush with plant life may see a small reduction. Animals that depend on those plants were then left with either not enough food and their numbers diminish, or they are forced to decimate the plant population to an unrecoverable point. As a result of these findings, people finally started to realize that their actions could have environmental impact on a global scale. Mario Molina said, “It doesn’t matter where CFCs are emitted. It is a global problem. What is important is that it led to an international agreement that solved the problem.”(American Chemical Society) And that is exactly what happened. In 1986, the Montreal Protocol banned their use. Since then, we have seen an overwhelming amount of evidence that the ozone layer is rebuilding itself and that we are well on our way to fixing the damage we have done. Currently companies use HCFCs, mostly HFC-134a which is as effective as Freon, but does not have the detrimental effect on the environment. Overall, the story of our Servel Incorporated Electrolux refrigerator proves that everyday objects do play a role in environmental change. The development of these CFCs were more efficient, non-toxic to humans, and seemingly improved everyday life. However, this new technology led to a potentially disastrous environmental repercussion. Not only do new developing technologies have unexpected consequences as seen by our refrigerator, but so do the decisions consumers, companies, corporations, governments, and people make. It is important to consider the consequences that new convenient technologies may have on the environment. The story of CFCs and their effects on our home is a teaching point about what improvements must be made. Sufficient research and testing is essential in ensuring that we maintain the natural processes of our planet, and we don’t continue along the path we find ourselves on in the Anthropocene. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Heffelfinger Fletcher Guinn Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived American Chemical Society National Historic Chemical Landmarks. The Vitamin B Complex. http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/cfcs-ozone.html Anderson, Jr. Oscar Edward, Refrigeration in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 105. "Bottled air from all over the world tells story of ozone-Depleting gases and their connection to climate change", NOAA Climate.Gov, 18 May 2015, www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-tech/bottled-air-all-over-world-tells-story-ozone-depleting-gases-and-their. Buziak, Ed, “What a Difference Frigidaire Made!” Alamy.com, 25 June 2011, l7.alamy.com/zooms/c6a55dfde88f4f56a2e53d322cf0edb2/1920-1930-advert-for-frigidaire-refrigerator-from-english-homes-gardens-ep8jrn.jpg. Department of Energy, "Mario Molina, Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and Ozone Depletion.” www.osti.gov/accomplishments/molina.html. Electrical World 36 ( July 1924):28. Electrolux. “ELECTROLUX Gives You Everything You Expect…AND MORE!” Periodpaper.com, cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1021/8371/products/SEP3_018.jpg? v=1493262408 Elkins, James W. “ESRL Global Monitoring Division - Halocarbons and other Atmospheric Trace Species.” NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, 1 Oct. 2005, www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/hats/publictn/elkins/cfcs.html. Environmental Protection Agency, “Health and Environmental Effects of Ozone Layer Depletion.” 28 Dec. 2016, www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/health-and-environmental-effects-ozone-layer-depletion. Heldman, Dennis R. “Extruder Power Requirements .” Encyclopedia of Agricultural, Food, and Biological Engineering, Marcel Dekker, 2003, pp. 305–305. Krasner-Khait, Barbara, “The Impact of Refrigeration” History Magazine (February/March 2000), https://history-magazine.com/refrig.html Novak, Matt. “The Great Depression and the Rise of the Refrigerator,” Pacific Standard Magazine. Oct 9, 2012. Rees, Jonathan. Refrigeration nation a history of ice, appliances, and enterprise in America. “Shopify.com.” Shopify.com, cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1021/8371/products/SEP3_018.jpg?v=1493262408. Wentworth, William. Westinghouse 1417 No. 22nd St. Omaha, 18 June 1938. Westinghouse 1417 No. 22nd St. Omaha, 18 June 1938. CFC Consumer Revolution Montreal Protocol Ozone Depletion Refrigerator https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/d6764bf36c8a796ded8acbfaca0e3526.JPG 0cc7856a7987afb2059240f05d5de5f3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Scout the Bison Description An account of the resource Scout, the North American Bison on exhibit at the Durham museum in Omaha, NE. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Courtesy of Chelsey Dizon and Kevin Vincent https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/4bd4d45183e12b08efbae31ec8bb0369.jpg 79ba8319364992dac06e370d71987141 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1 Description An account of the resource Scout, the North American Bison on exhibit at the Durham museum in Omaha, NE. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Photo by Chelsey Dizon and Kevin Vincent Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bison Subject The topic of the resource This is Scout, a symbol of the fall and rise of the American Bison. Before westward expansion in the 1800s, between 30-60 million bison roamed the Great Plains. They played an important role in the ecosystems. For example, bison ‘wallowed’ or rolled in the dirt to get rid of insects and to cool off. At the same time, this behavior created depressions that encouraged new plant growth. Bison are central to Native American cultures on the Great Plains. They used bison for food, shelter, clothing, and ceremonies. When European settlers moved west, bison became commodities and hunts grew in size. By 1889, less than 2,000 bison remained. But, recent conservation efforts are increasing their numbers. Nebraska is the second highest producer of bison in the U.S. Although bison will never return to the prominence they once held in the Midwest, their recovery story, which Nebraska is a part of, inspires hope for their future. Description An account of the resource Visitors of the Durham Museum begin their journey through history with Scout. Scout is a North American Bison who has been a part of the Durham collection since 2006 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/33" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). Scout’s story is complicated. On the one hand, he represents bisons' past dominance of the prairies and their erased ecological system. Scout reminds us of the slaughter and near extinction of his species brought about by humans. On the other hand, Scout represents the Bison bison’s slow, but persistent recovery. Both stories are part of the Anthropocene narrative. Human activity, specifically Euroamerican settlement, were the main destructive force behind bisons' near extinction. Slaughtered in the millions for their hides, horns, and meat during the nineteenth century, the rapaciousness of western expansion was certainly culpable for their decline. However, people have also played a major role in bisons' recovery, an often untold but necessary narrative that inspires hope for the future of bison. The bison is an important artifact in Omaha’s environmental history because they were once the dominant keystone species of the grasslands, but now have been reduced to peripheral importance. It links Omaha’s environmental history to the global history of the Anthropocene by epitomizing human power over nature. Bison once dominated the Great Plains. According to Colonel Richard I. Dodge, the commander of Fort Dodge, KS in 1851, there were "60 million bison in primitive North America” (D. Lott, 2003). Twenty years after the Civil War, bison population was below two thousand. The dramatic decline of the keystone species had cascading influences across the Plains ecosystems. For example, bison urine, wallowing, and carcasses all uniquely contributed to the ecological health of the Great Plains. According to Flannery, a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the director of the South Australian Museum, "the key to the bison's role in the prairie ecosystem lay in the fact that the great grasslands were piss-driven" (T. Flannery, 2001). Bison urine is essentially "a bath of nitrogen dissolved in water," which means that the urine leaves behind a high concentration of ammonium and nitrate in the soils (D. Lott, 2003). Wallowing, or rolling on the ground, relieved bison of insects and heat. More importantly, this created “compacted bowls of soil that hold rainwater, creating a microenvironment in which seeds can sprout” (D. Lott, 2003). Essentially, bison urine and wallowing laid groundwork for healthy plant growth and diversity. Last, bison carcasses played a key role in the ecology of the Great Plains. Not only are carcasses a food source for other animals, but they release fluids that eventually create “zones of high fertility" (A. Knapp, et. al. 1999). These characteristics exemplify the codependence between the bison and the prairie. The Native Americans were the first humans to interact with the bison. Soon, the tribes of the Great Plains became dependent on bison for hunting. Initially, Native Americans tactics involved disguises that allowed them to hunt with greater accuracy (V. Geist, 1996). However, the introduction of the horse in the 1600s made game driving the gold standard (V. Geist, 1996). Although bison hunting has been part of North American history for centuries, its height was during Euroamerican westward expansion in the 1800s. This expansion propelled the destruction of bison in numerous ways. First, natural catastrophes and Pre-Euroamerican activity impacted bison populations. From drowning when fording a river to the harsh winter weather of the plains, bison faced life-threatening situations constantly. As McHugh, a biologist and zoologist with a background in wildlife management, states, “the ravages of nature were taking a recurrent, at times disastrous, toll of the herds” (T. McHugh, 2004). For example, in 1867 “a herd of four thousand bison attempting to ford the Platte River in Nebraska walked into channels of loose quicksand" (T. McHugh, 2004). As the lead bison were slipping into the sand the remaining herd kept moving, causing the death of two thousand bison. Devastation surged with the increased influence of humans on the herds. For example, “[Paleoindians] would drive a bison herd into a gully, a canyon, or some other natural trap having inescapable sides” (H. P. Danz, 1997). This game driving (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/34" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>), allowed hunters to easily kill large amounts of bison. Particularly, when bison were driven off cliffs and maimed, hunters could finish them off without using ammunition.  Lewis and Clark, two famous westward explorers of the 1800s, described this phenomenon in their journals when they observed a young Indian man deceiving bison herds by disguising himself: the skin of the head with the ears and horns fastened on his own head in such a way as to deceive the buffalo … the disguised Indian leads them on at full speed towards the river, when suddenly securing himself in some crevice of the cliff (H. P. Danz, 1997). This manipulation of animals and nature demonstrates the impacts humans had on bison populations during the period. Although Pre-Euroamerican impacts and nature decreased bison populations, it was the industrial revolution that put them in grave danger. The industrial revolution was an important precondition for the decline of bison herds. The introduction of the railroad through the Midwest provided quick and easy transport of people and material. This made the plains more accessible for Euroamericans, and with the romanticizing of bison hunting by many Europeans, much more popular. This idealistic view of wild animals paired with increased access and easy transportation propelled the destruction forward. With the introduction of railways and westward expansion, bison habitat shrank dramatically. With the landscape disappearing, bison herd bunched. This "resulted in harmful competition" especially during times of drought, food shortages, and heavy snow (H. P. Danz, 1997). Furthermore, crowded herds furnished an "easy route for the spread of parasites and disease" such as anthrax and tuberculosis (H. P. Danz, 1997). Prevalent disease paired with other human influences created excellent conditions for hunting, but, by the end of the nineteenth century, led to the near extinction of the North American bison. Slaughtering bison was as much a political act as it was economic and environmental. Euroamerican conflicts with Native Americans prompted the American government to actively hunt and kill bison. Great Plain tribes such as the Sioux, Blackfoot, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Arikara, Pawnee, Wichita, Kiowa, and Comanche depended on the bison for their very existence. The bison served many purposes for them. Although primarily used for food, bison also provided hide for housing, clothing, and bedding; bones, organs, and feces were used as fuel and markers (H. P. Danz, 1997). Native Americans placed religious importance and mystical symbolism on bison, especially white bison. Occasionally, an albino or light cream-colored bison would materialize in a herd “an event that nearly always resulted in the eventual killing, or sacrifice, of the animal, followed by ritualistic and religious ceremonies” (H. P. Danz, 1997). Knowing that these tribes revered and depended on bison, the American government targeted bison as a way to undermine Native American culture and reduce their populations. In 1873, for instance, President Grant's Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano wrote, "'I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western prairies, in its effect upon the Indians' … the destruction of the herds would have a beneficial effect in reducing Indian resistance"(S. M. Taylor, 2011). Although no official statement from the Army states they intentionally targeted bison, it was clear through their eagerness to break Indian resistance. Railroads, from a tactical perspective, also played a large role in their late nineteenth century decline. When it was discovered that the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific railroads interfered with bison territory, military commanders increased their pressure on bison herds. This strategy cleared the path for railroads and undermined Native American societies in the area. In the words of Army General Philip Sheridan, "I think it would be wise to invite all the sportsmen of England and America this fall for a Grand Buffalo hunt" (D. D. Smits, 1994). Military commanders also deliberately permitted their troops to kill bison in order to decimate the Native American frontier. After all, the bison and the Plains tribes were inseparable and the bison were an easier target. The destruction of the bison was a political and economic act that fundamentally reshaped the human ecology of the Great Plains.  Even though human involvement and natural catastrophes devastated bison herds throughout the United States, the force driving the slaughter of bison was capitalism. Because the supply of bison was so plentiful and the railroads made shipping quicker, companies, such as the American Fur Company, could "sell the [bison fur] robes at a moderate price and still reap profit" (Isenberg, 2000). This, however, put "heavy pressure on the herds" themselves (Isenberg, 2000). Ultimately, profits depended less on the price of the robes than "on the sheer volume shipped east" (Isenberg, 2000). According to environmental historian Andrew Isenberg, the Native Americans participated in the bison robe trade. Native Americans also participated in the beaver fur trade that spanned between the late 1600s to the early 1800s. Similar to the bison trade, the Euroamericans prized beaver fur and Native American tribes hunted beaver for food. However, other game, such as muskrat, mink, otter, and lynx were available in the case of beaver shortages (A. J. Ray, 2017). The difference between the bison fur trade and the beaver fur trade was that the nomadic lifestyle of the bison was mirrored by the Native Americans on the Great Plains. Thus, even though Native American tribes participated in the beaver trade, the tribes on the Great Plains experienced greater difficulties when they transformed their main source of livelihood, the bison, into capital. From the Euroamerican perspective, Native American involvement benefited the American Fur Company so much that by 1835, “an average of over 130,000” bison robes were shipped per year (Isenberg, 2000). This, in conjunction with the fixed low robe prices, made profits dependent on the volume of bison robes rather than on their prices. These industrial pressures caused the western plains to become “a remote extension of the global industrial economy and an object of its demand for natural resources" (Isenberg, 2000). This exploitation nearly brought the North American bison to extinction, all the while fueling the United States’ global economy.  The story of the downfall of the bison is a sad one. By 1889, there were only “1,089 bison left in North America” (H. R. Harris, 1920). The diagram pictured above (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/36" title="Figure 3" target="_self">Figure 3</a>) shows the decline of bison herds after Euroamerican expansion in1889. However, a more recent history, of which Scout is a part of, is hopeful. Today, “approximately 500,000 bison live across North America” (Defenders.org, “Basic Facts About Bison"). Populations persisted in Canada and, surprisingly, on Catalina Island. 23 bison were brought to this foreign island to film a movie, but ended up staying when 22 new bison were imported to Catalina Island between 1969 and 1971 to mix with the island herd and maintain population health (R. A. Sweitzer, et. al. 2005). Again, bison were saved from near extinction “in the late 1800s by 5 private herds established by ranchers and by a sixth herd at the New York Zoological Park”, meaning that the present-day plains bison population is “descended from less than 100 founders” (P. W. Hedrick, 2009). Because the number of bison remaining on the continent was so limited, conservation promoted hybridization between bison and cattle. Breeding bison with cattle resulted in a changed population, however. A scientific study demonstrated that in both a nutritionally poor environment (Santa Catalina Island, California) and a nutritionally rich environment (Montana), bison with cattle mtDNA had lower body weights and were shorter than their counterparts with bison mtDNA (J. N. Derr, et. al. 2012). Although this decreases the bison's overall fitness due to the smaller stature, it keeps alive some degree of bison. Some critics complain that this does not stay true to conserving organic bison, but this is a critical step in the right direction for the conservation of bison in modern times.  These early successes prompted a wave of recent efforts to sustainably increase bison populations and reintroduce them to the American Midwest. In the late 1900s, organizations such as the National Bison Association and the Canadian Bison Association worked with individuals to promote raising bison in every state and nearly every province, especially those with plains (D. E. Popper and F. J. Popper, 2006). Wealthy entrepreneurs and conservations have even gone so far as to promote the recovery of large regions of the plains as a bison ecosystem, a movement known as Buffalo Commons. This movement has “coincided with numbers of important shifts: from a paradigm of mastery of nature to one of cooperation based on ecology… As one result… prairie dogs were saved from extermination in Lubbock, Texas, because of their identified role in the ecosystem” (D. E. Popper and F. J. Popper, 2006). These efforts are part of a global movement to “rewild” anthropogenic landscapes, breed endangered or even extinct animals.  Today, bison have reemerged as an economically significant source of food. A Nebraskan farmer, Dave Hutchinson, was recognized in September 2017 in the Omaha World Herald for promoting organic bison, "raised and finished on grass" (S. B. Hansen, 2017). His land “has been certified organic since 1980 and his animals since 1990” (S. B. Hansen, 2017). This is particularly notable for Nebraska because according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2012 Census of Agriculture, there's "about 23,000 bison in Nebraska and 88 operations raising the animals, making Nebraska the second highest producer, behind South Dakota" (S. B. Hansen, 2017). Certainly, the attitude towards bison is shifting towards an approach that encourages natural bison growth, in Nebraska, nationally, and internationally. Hutchinson’s farm attracts local, domestic, and foreign visitors that are intrigued by his dedication to organic farming and conservation. Hutchinson demonstrates how humans can positively employ their power to help conserve nature.  Nebraskans continue to be a leading force in bison conservation. Across the U.S., the bison is now considered the national mammal (World-Herald Editorial, 2016). Nebraskans recognize the bison’s impact on Great Plains ecology and Native American culture. U.S. Representative Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, a sponsor of the National Bison Legacy Act, says, “bison have a storied history in Nebraska and are an important part of our nation’s frontier heritage… By naming bison as our national mammal, we are supporting the ongoing preservation of this majestic species and their essential tie to the American experience” (World-Herald Editorial, 2016). This admiration for the North American bison inspires a spirit of activism towards the bison that once roamed the Great Plains.  Bison will never reassume the prominence they once held in Midwest ecologies and human societies. From that perspective, a twenty first century bison like Scout serves as a culturally resonant reminder of past mistakes. The massive decline in the bison population demonstrates our selfish, greedy nature that drives us to push nature and its creatures to its limits. However, the bison recovery represents a different perspective on the Anthropocene. It shows that with conscious effort, humans also have the capability to create new relationships with nature. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chelsey Dizon Kevin Vincent Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived “Basic Facts About Bison.” Defender.org. https://defenders.org/bison/basic-facts (26 November 2017). Danz, Harold P. Of Bison and Man: From the Annals of a Bison Yesterday to a Refreshing Outcome from Human Involvement with America's Most Valiant of Beasts. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1997. Derr, James N., Philip W. Hedrick, Natalie D. Halbert, Louis Plough, Lauren K. Dobson, Julie King, Calvin Duncan, David L. Hunter, Noah D. Cohen, and Dennis Hedgecock. "Phenotypic Effects of Cattle Mitochondrial DNA in American Bison." Conservation Biology 26, no. 6 (2012): 1130-136. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01905.x. Flannery, Tim F. The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples. London: Penguin, 2001. Geist, Valerius. Buffalo nation: history and legend of the North American bison. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1996. Hansen, Sarah Baker. "Nebraska Man Raises Organic Bison." Omaha World-Herald, September 17, 2017. Accessed November 7, 2017. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/nebraska/articles/2017-09-17/nebraska-man-raises-organic-bison. Harris, H. R. ""John Full of Pep," Only Surviving Paleface to Hunt Buffaloes with Pawnees, Recalls Days when Hoof Beats Resembled Thunder on Plains." The Omaha Sunday Bee, August 29, 1920. Accessed December 10, 2017. Hedrick, Philip W. “Conservation Genetics and North American Bison.” Journal of Heredity 100, no. 4 (July 2009): 411-420. doi:10.1093/jhered/esp024 Isenberg. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Studies in Environment and History). Cambridge University Press, 2000. Knapp, A., J. Blair, J. Briggs, S. Collins, D. Hartnett, L. Johnson, and E. Towne. "The Keystone Role of Bison in North American Tallgrass Prairie: Bison Increase Habitat Heterogeneity and Alter a Broad Array of Plant, Community, and Ecosystem Processes."BioScience, 1999. doi:10.1525/bisi.1999.49.1.39. Lott, Dale F. American Bison: a Natural History. University of California Press, 2003. McHugh, Tom. The Time of the Buffalo. New Jersey: Castle Books, 2004. Popper, Deborah E., and Frank J. Popper. "The onset of the Buffalo Commons." Journal of the West 45, no. 2 (2006): 29. Ray, Arthur J. Indians in the Fur Trade: their roles as trappers, hunters, and middlemen in the lands southwest of hudson bay, 1660-1870. Toronto: Univ of Toronto Press, 2017. Smits, David D. "The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883." The Western Historical Quarterly 25, no. 3 (1994): 312. doi:10.2307/971110. Sweitzer, RICK A., Juanita M. Constible, Dirk H. Van Vuren, PETER T. Schuyler, and FRANK R. Starkey. "History, habitat use and management of bison on Catalina Island, California." In 6th California Islands Symposium, Institute for Wildlife Studies, Ventura, CA. 2005. Taylor, M. Scott. "Buffalo Hunt: International Trade and the Virtual Extinction of the North American Bison." American Economic Review 101, no. 7 (2011): 3162-195. doi:10.1257/aer.101.7.3162. "World-Herald editorial: Bison are a fitting symbol for Plains, U.S." Omaha.com. May 18, 2016. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.omaha.com/opinion/world-herald-editorial-bison-are-a-fitting-symbol-for-plains/article_c6f22d14-e8a6-5f3a-9c30-b043011909b3.html. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Durham Museum Collection Bison Great Plains Ecology Overkill Prairie Ecosystem Rewilding Second Industrial Revolution Westward Expansion https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/7251bc5e03c628b4611f06d03fce68aa.jpg 382e89ffa87569490b7f6b9d0eb7feee Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Omaha in the Anthropocene Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource A Collaborative Global Environmental History Exhibit