Legacies of childhood learning for climate change adaptation
通过分析中世纪格陵兰岛北欧人和因纽特人的玩具，发现童年学习方式（如北欧的指令式学习与因纽特的自由探索）会影响社会应对气候变化的能力，为当代教育提供历史教训。
• Archaeological research provides important insights into climate change adaptation. • Norse and Proto-Inuit cultures developed in different learning environments. • Different learning environments produce different responses to environmental change. • Archaeology offers evidence of multi-century information transmission and learning. Using archaeological, historical, and ethnographic analysis of Norse and Inuit toys and miniatures, this paper argues that legacies of childhood learning can create limits to climatic change adaptation and provide lessons from the past relevant today. In Medieval Greenland, Norse children played with objects that would have familiarised them with the expected norms and behaviours of farming, household activities, sailing and conflict, but not with hunting, which was a key omission given the fundamental importance of wild resources to successful climatic adaptation in Greenland after the climate shocks of the mid-13 th century. The restricted range of toys combined with an instructional form of learning suggests a high degree of path dependence that limited adaptation to climatic change, and we know the Norse settlement ended with the conjunctures of the 15 th century that included climatic change. Inuit children, by contrast, learnt highly adapted behaviours and technologies through objects that taught locally tuned hunting skills. Inuit approaches that prioritised unstructured learning time aided the development of creative skills and problem-solving capabilities, and the Inuit successfully navigated the climatic changes of the Little Ice Age in Greenland. This insight from the past has implications for our approaches to childhood learning in the 21 st century and the unfolding climate crisis. Innovative approaches to childhood teaching and learning in the context of climate change adaptation could provide effective solutions, on a timescale commensurate with that of projected climate impacts.