Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.3
Tundra formation of mosses, grasses, and sedges, Devon Island, Northwest Territo-
ries, Canada. Photograph courtesy of Larry Bliss.
is
81°F) on 3 February 1947 at Snag Airport in the Yukon. At the
same time of year sixty-one years later, on 18 February 2008, the tempera-
ture at the airport was 6°C, that is, 68°C warmer.
In the coldest northern part of the Arctic, precipitation is less than in
the deserts of North America and moisture in the form of meltwater is avail-
able only for about three months of the year. The northern lights shim-
mering eerily across the sky must have been cause for refl ection among the
early people. The tundra covers about 4 million km
2
, or 19 percent of North
America north of Mexico, and it extends southward at progressively higher
elevations in the western mountains as alpine tundra that in Latin America
is called páramo.
It is understandable that the extreme conditions, even more marginal for
life during the Last Glacial Maximum, and the everyday dangers of hunt-
ing the huge megafauna, would have caused people even 15,000 years ago
to seek the protection of spirits. This scenario is given credence by new
suggestions that in the human brain there may be a “natural cognitive foun-
dation for religion,” potentially present in all civilizations, that eases fear
by assuming an agent behind frightening and unexplained events, and en-
dowing that agent with supernatural powers (Tremlin 2006). This posited
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62°C (
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