Lecture 2b “Mountains and Humans”

"You can’t conquer a mountain, though it may conquer you." (Jimmy Chin)

Mountains and Humans

Preamble:

Mountains represent some of the most distinctive and dynamic landscapes on our planet. Over the long durée—from decades to millennia—humans have interacted with mountain systems and alpine environments in diverse and complex ways.

Due to their often extreme topography, mountains create unique conditions where topographic–climate interactions generate:
  (i) a wide array of ecological niches and high levels of species diversification,
  (ii) enhanced water availability compared to surrounding lowlands, and
  (iii) steep climatic gradients over short elevation distances, leading to a mosaic of microhabitats.

At the same time, mountainous terrain presents significant challenges to life. With increasing altitude, temperatures drop, air pressure and oxygen availability decrease, habitat productivity declines, and the terrain becomes increasingly fragmented due to erosion and slope instability. For human populations, these environmental constraints are compounded by reduced agricultural potential, higher resource acquisition costs, limited physiological performance, and historically higher infant mortality rates.

Despite these challenges, indigenous high-elevation populations have developed physiological and genetic adaptations to cope with the stresses of altitude, offering fascinating insights into human resilience. In modern times, mountains have gained prominence as spaces for recreation, while also being romanticized as the epitome of wilderness and untouched nature. Simultaneously, they are increasingly recognized as sensitive ecological systems, highly vulnerable to climatic shifts and anthropogenic pressures.

This lecture explores the evolving relationship between humans and alpine environments. We will examine:

(i) how pre-industrial and prehistoric societies utilized and shaped these landscapes,

(ii) the impacts of modern industrial society on alpine ecosystems, and

(iii) possible adaptation and mitigation strategies under current and future climate change scenarios.

Historical and long-term perspectives will be used to provide a critical baseline for understanding the natural variability and resilience of mountain environments. The lecture will integrate findings and methods from geosciences, archaeology, and the historical sciences as well as from economic and tourism studies, offering a multidisciplinary approach to human–environment interactions in mountain regions across time.

Benefits from lecture:

• Develop an understanding of the long-term human interaction with alpine landscapes, from prehistory to the present.
• Explore human–environment interactions in mountain systems from a multidisciplinary perspective, including insights from archaeology, environmental history and the geosciences as well as tourism and economy.
• Gain an overview of the diverse ways in which humans have appropriated and shaped alpine space, including subsistence strategies, settlement patterns, and contemporary uses such as tourism-driven symbolic projection and recreation

Special features of lecture:

• Improved interdisciplinary communication skills through the collaborative development of a Wikipedia-style glossary in student groups.
• Applied learning experience via a half-day interdisciplinary field excursion to the Hötting district, including a visit to the Hötting quarry.
• Peer-led seminar sessions, featuring student presentations and discussions of selected research papers.

 

Main lecturers:

• Joachim Pechtl
• Aydin Abar
• Kurt Scharr
• Michael Meyer
• Mike Peters

 

P - Presentation , D - Discussion

Lectures

• Unit 1
• Unit 2
• Unit 3
• Unit 4
• Unit 5
• Unit 6
• Unit 7
• Unit 8
• Unit 9
• Unit 10
• Unit 11
• Unit 12
• Unit 13