The National Parks of America
America’s national parks are one of the country’s most remarkable and influential initiatives. The concept of the national park originated in America, though it was quickly replicated by similar parks in Canada, Finland, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere. The first American national park was Yellowstone, created in 1872. Yellowstone comprises some 3,500 square miles of wilderness and today attracts more than four million visitors a year. Since 1872, nearly 60 additional national parks have been established in the USA, incorporating almost every type of natural environment, from mountains to deserts, lakes, rivers and coastlines. They are administered by the National Park Service (NPS), which also manages significant monuments and historic structures such as the Statue of Liberty, the Gettysburg Museum and Ford’s Theatre, where President Lincoln was assassinated.
The creation of the national parks came in response to a growing attachment to the natural world that was developing in American society. In 1832, the painter George Catlin dreamed of creating ‘a nation’s park’ to preserve the grasslands in the state of South Dakota. Catlin failed to see such a park established in his lifetime, but his vision lived on. Four years later the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson published an important essay entitled ‘Nature’ in which he argued that natural landscapes should be protected rather than exploited for agriculture and commerce. The campaigner Frederick Olmsted went further, claiming that every American, not only the wealthy and powerful, had the right to access places of natural beauty. The creation of a public park in the Yosemite Valley was directly the result of his work.
The development of the national parks was a process that continued through the late 19th century and the early 20th century. The establishment of the first park at Yellowstone in 1872 was perhaps the defining moment in this process. The Yellowstone national park not only preserved the headwaters of the Mississippi, Colorado and Snake rivers, but also provided a sanctuary for countless endangered species by imposing a ban on hunting in all its forms. Today such an initiative would be commonplace but in these earliest days of the conservation movement, many Americans still regarded it as their right to shoot or trap wild animals.
Yellowstone was followed by Sequoia (1890), Mount Rainier (1899), Crater Lake (1902) and Wind Cave (1903), among many other parks. But while the creation of additional parks enjoyed wide popular support, there were frequent disagreements about their purpose. For some, the primary goal was the protection of the natural world, while for others the parks were about providing public access to nature. These two goals were at times contradictory and led to a variety of competing voices and factions. In recognition of the difficulties of running these vast wilderness areas, their management was for many years placed in the hands of the military, rather than the federal or state government.
The late 19th century was also a time when railroads were being constructed across America. Increasingly, these ran through even the most remote areas, where many parks were located, making tourism possible in these locations for the very first time. While this was welcomed by many park supporters, others were concerned that visitors should appreciate the parks in particular ways. Nathaniel Langford was instrumental in setting up Yellowstone and saw the park as an ideal opportunity for the education of ordinary citizens in all aspects of the natural world and environmental conservation, which was his number one priority. In the early 20th century, the first really significant development was the setting up of the NPS in 1916. Now for the first time a single body was charged with administering the network and managing the numerous groups and interests that had a stake in it. Stephen Mather was appointed as the first Superintendent of Parks and under his leadership seven new parks were established, including Grand Canyon, Hawaii and Mount McKinley. However, arguably even more important was Mather’s transformation of the hitherto poorly managed finances of the parks.
The NPS generally saw the primary role of the parks as being environmental protection. For this reason, most human activities were regulated – farming and forestry were certainly not allowed. However, the controversial decision to permit the construction of dams in national parks was made on the basis that the resulting supplies of water and hydroelectric power would be in the public interest. Certainly, visitor numbers were unaffected as park admissions increased every year. Then in the 1930s the number of visitors expanded dramatically, largely because mass-produced automobiles became affordable, allowing ever more city-dwellers to reach the park network. With this, the national parks assumed a pre-eminent position in the social fabric of America, a legacy that continues to the present day.
Achieving a Work–life Balance
Research suggests that working fewer hours may be beneficial
A Anthropologists calculate that in the Stone Age, approximately one to two million years ago, the ancestors of modern humans worked on average two or three hours a day hunting and gathering food. This amount of labour was all that was necessary for survival. Today, it’s not uncommon to work 50–60 hours a week, and sometimes more. At the same time, there is a substantial body of international research showing that levels of work-related stress have never been higher. However, psychologist Dr Gina McDowell argues that the problem of stress caused by working too many hours still doesn’t receive sufficient recognition and ought to be addressed with greater commitment by executives, employees and academics. Dr McDowell is one of many calling for a better work–life balance: spending an appropriate amount of time at work, but leaving sufficient hours in the day to enjoy family, friends and recreations.
B Perhaps leading the search for work–life balance are technology companies, who frequently allow employees greater flexibility in everything from working hours and dress code to office design. Global tech giant MEdia operates what it calls the ‘20% scheme’: its engineers are free to use 20% of their working week (one full day) in any way they want. Ryan Schmidt, the director of human resources at MEdia, says that ‘Productivity in the economy generally has increased significantly over the last 50 years but there’s a common perception in the workforce that standards of living have not kept pace. Our company intends to turn that around.’ Business analyst Carla Deng has made a study of MEdia’s 20% scheme and says the results are overwhelmingly positive. Says Deng, ‘Our research found that when employees have greater individual choice and responsibility for their work time, they still devote some of those “free” hours to fulfilling their normal working roles. And they also feel a lot happier.’
C An alternative approach taken by some other American companies is the four-day week. Ordinarily, Americans work eight hours a day, five days a week, making 40 hours in total. In a four-day week, they work four 10-hour days instead, still completing 40 hours in total but having three days off. In general, several studies have shown benefits, including reduced stress, increased productivity and more fulfilled employees. However, there may also be downsides, according to Dean Hazel, a professor of economics. For example, customers may expect a certain employee to be present five days a week and feel disappointed when they are not available. ‘The truth is that such a four-day week has many attractions but it will not be appropriate in every instance,’ says Professor Hazel. ‘It depends very much on the company concerned, its size, internal structure and the nature of its relationships with customers, partners and suppliers.’
D Indeed, some commentators question the very idea of work–life balance. Faisal Hadi, a lecturer in sociology, argues that the term work–life balance implies that the two represent distinct aspects of life that are easily separable. But in fact, for many of us ‘work’ and ‘life’ intrude on each other all the time and trying to ‘balance’ them precisely represents a goal that can never be achieved. ‘This term work–life balance has become a cliché,’ says Hadi. ‘In reality, life is an intricate mix of work and leisure and the relationship between the two has so many strands that they cannot be neatly divided. The idea of work–life balance as it is often understood has limited value.’
E However, a recent experiment has certainly challenged this idea. Employees at the New Zealand company involved worked four eight-hour days a week, but were paid for five. The experiment was conducted at Certified Life, a firm which has sold insurance for more than six decades. At the end of the experiment, 78% of employees felt they were able to manage their work–life balance, up from 54%, when working a standard 40-hour week. The 240 employees at Certified Life completed surveys at the beginning and end of the experiment to provide information for the study. The employees themselves worked out how all the necessary tasks could be completed within deadlines while working fewer hours, and were then responsible for implementing those decisions. Lead researcher Dr Hannah Graham says that the experiment produced such positive results partly because employees were given a role in decision-making throughout it.
F The New Zealand experiment also showed a 7% drop in stress levels when working fewer hours, without any drop in productivity. The chief executive of Certified Life, Tane Robinson, says that the four-day week boosted the firm’s reputation and made it easier to retain staff who might otherwise have moved on. Furthermore, cooperation between employees was seen to improve significantly when working shorter hours and team cohesion was significantly enhanced, according to the supervisors. Quite apart from the benefits at Certified Life, Dr Graham also suggests that such schemes might also address the issue of congestion in major cities by restricting the numbers going to work each day. Roland Gillespie, workplace relations minister in the New Zealand government, described the findings as ‘enormously encouraging’ and said that he was keen to see businesses experiment with similar new and improved work models. Meanwhile, Certified Life has plans to see the four-day week implemented long term. It may become an initiative that is replicated in other companies.
The peopling of Patagonia
Anthropologists continue to investigate human migration to Patagonia at the southern tip of South America
A The human settlement of the southern extremity of the Americas has always fascinated pre-historians. Viewed from a global perspective, this was the last major continental land mass to be reached by human beings. The earliest occupation of Patagonia carries obvious implications for understanding when the North and South American continents were peopled, because it gives a baseline that all calculations regarding the rate of dispersion of humans throughout both continents must take into account.
B For many years the human settlement of North and South America has been conceived of as beginning in the far north and travelling progressively southwards to Patagonia. However, fundamental disagreements developed concerning the length of time involved. Some scholars accepted a human presence in the Americas as early as 20,000 years ago, while others proposed that it could date no earlier than 8,000 years ago, and the debate is still with us today.
C The idea of a relatively ‘late’ settlement of the Americas (around 8,000 years ago) implies that a rapid process of migration took place. Herein lies a second debate which revolves around the question of how migration is to be understood. The ‘late’ model demands a hypothetical migration conceived of as a single, continually advancing wave of settlement. This has always been difficult to take seriously and many scholars now support the idea of an ‘early’ model that sees the migration as a less ordered movement, and this is surely the most realistic scenario as migrants slowly adapted to the diverse natural habitats they would have met while travelling through the continent.
D Those who argue for an earlier settlement, however, must contend with the lack of unequivocal evidence for archaeological sites older than around 14,000 years. Nevertheless, evidence for human occupation of the centre of South America is now securely dated to around 12,500 years ago at the Monte Verde site, which casts doubt on the ‘late’ model. The lack of archaeological evidence further south for this time period may be explained by the obstacle to humans on foot posed by the huge glacial streams that were present at that time.
E We can speculate then that the retreat of the Patagonian glaciers around 14,000 years ago allowed the initial human intrusion into a pristine environment, which was similar to that of early post-glacial Europe. Human settlement of the vast horizontal expanse of treeless high country must have been tenuous at best, and the evidence for this occupation remains relatively scant, most of it coming from rock shelters in Argentina and Chile. There is, however, reliable evidence from these sites to confirm the presence of humans by around 11,000 years ago in different habitats, and some hints of an even older occupation. However, some other sites where evidence for even earlier human occupation was initially posited have recently come under fresh scrutiny. This is because anthropologists have come to recognise that bones or other evidence may be deposited in caves by natural agency, in other words by other forces such as floods or predators, and not necessarily by humans.
F We shall turn now to a more detailed discussion of the archaeological evidence found in various parts of Patagonia. At the site located beside Chinchihuapi Creek, excavations have produced convincing evidence of human occupation, including hut foundations and wooden artefacts. They were buried in layers of peat, which has the property of preserving wood remarkably well, and as a result radiocarbon dating tests have shown these artefacts to date from around 12,500 years ago. One of the most famous Patagonian sites is a cave known as Los Toldos. However, the evidence from this site has recently been called into question, because dispersed flecks of carbon used in the test process were taken unsystematically from many different places in the site. As a result, the association of this material with the artefacts is not at all clear. About 150 kilometres south is the site called El Ceibo, where a similar collection of artefacts to that found at Los Toldos has been discovered from the lowest levels of the dig, but as yet no radiocarbon dates are available and this sort of analysis of the existing evidence is required before the site’s value can be confirmed.
G The Arroyo Feo site is located very close to the high plateau. The artefacts from the earliest occupations were found at the same depth and have the same origins as those from Los Toldos, and have been securely dated to around 9,000 years ago. Another site that is mentioned in the debate is at Las Buitreras, where a number of stone flakes associated with bone remains of various animals have been discovered. However, anthropologists now believe that presumed cut marks on the bones are somewhat dubious, and despite detailed testing there is no way of securely relating any of these remains with human occupation. Finally some 50 kilometres to the south is the site at Cueva Fell, which was the first Patagonian site to be systematically studied by modern archaeological methods. However, it is now recognised that the utility of this site must be restricted to its direct vicinity, given changes to the nearby area caused by flooding, and findings cannot be freely extrapolated further afield.
H In conclusion, based on the evidence from a number of reliable sites, it seems probable that human populations reached Patagonia around 11,000 years ago.
* radiocarbon dating: finding out the age of an organic object by examining carbon it contains