Our ability to create and destroy knows no bounds
On this day in 1911, an American explorer named Hiram Bingham was on an expedition in South America when a local villager led him up a mountain to a ridge with ruins entirely enveloped in vegetation.
The soon-to-be-excavated site underneath was occupied for only 80 years in the 15th century, but during those years, housed as many as 750 inhabitants who were there largely to serve the occupant of this royal retreat, the Inca emperor Pachacuti.
The estate of Machu Picchu was abandoned with the Spanish conquest and the Lost City remained undiscovered for centuries until Bingham’s expeditions. Named one of the Seven Wonders of the World, it demonstrates the incredible capabilities of human ingenuity.
Our colleague Taylor can share pictures with you from her recent visit, although it lasted a little longer than she planned. Machu Picchu was blockaded for a few months during last year’s Peruvian protests, leading to airlift evacuations of trapped tourists.
On Monday, we experienced the highest global average temperature in recorded history. Congratulations to Sacramento for your substantial contribution to this new record. Interestingly, Wikipedia reports that on this day in 1935, the Dust Bowl heat wave reached its peak with greater than 100-degree temperatures throughout the Midwest.
The Dust Bowl was the greatest man-made ecological disaster in American history. Poor farming methods by waves of settlers with land grants via the Homestead Act led to the mass destruction of topsoil. This coupled with an extended drought devastated the region and its economy.
As soil turned to dust and black blizzards darkened the skies all the way to the East Coast, millions of impoverished farmers fled. The largest number, over 300,000, resettled in California, more than during the entire gold rush. These settlers came to be known as “Okies” and they arrived in the midst of the Great Depression relegated to a desperate way of life best chronicled in the Grapes of Wrath.
The federal government became actively engaged in soil conservation and land management, launching a multitude of agencies, programs and incentives to adapt to better farming methods at the outset of the Roosevelt administration. As a result, we now refer to this region as America’s breadbasket.
Humans have overcome natural barriers to create the magnificent but impractical retreat of Machu Picchu and yet devastated our natural environment leading to the Dust Bowl. Let’s hope that we’ve learned from the past on how we engage with nature for a better future.
