PaleoTexas

We can look back to project forward. Knowing what happened in the past, and why it happened, can inform projections and policy. The overall objective of this project was to investigate relationships among climates, cultures and ecosystems over the 20,000 years in Texas. Four specific research questions drove the research: 1. What climate change mechanisms influenced Texas during this period? How do these compare with 21st-century projections? Did extended droughts shift the position of the 100th Meridian climatic boundary? 2. To what extent did climate and/or ancient societies impact Texas’ biodiversity? 3.Did human settlement change in response to climate change? 4.Do messages that include observations of paleoclimate change induce stronger intentions to learn than messages that include future projections?  The project team compiled the existing palaeoclimatological, paleoecological, and archaeological datasets for central Texas over the last 20,000 years, specifically targeting the climate-sensitive Edwards Plateau and created a Python library script that extracts combinations of Smithsonian trinomial identifiers for archaeological sites. The Stories of Ancient Resilience team continues to build on the work of this project.