Sections
The Planetary Foundation of Our Shared Reality
It’s easy to forget where we actually are, even as we hurtle through the endless expanse of space at 66,000 miles per hour, locked into a perpetual orbit around our solar system. At its center, a blazing fireball, burning with the intensity equal to the explosions of billions of thermonuclear bombs.
Ours is an exceptionally rare planet, uniquely hospitable to life, at least as far as we know. It is held within a goldilocks zone, balanced perfectly between its centrifugal push outwards against the sun’s gravitation pull inwards, neither too close to the intense heat of the sun nor too far. Our atmosphere absorbs sunlight and warmth, fueling our planet’s ecosystems with photosynthetic plant growth. This solar radiation provides the energetic foundation for the emergence of food webs, supporting the survival of millions of species such as ourselves.
Every breath of air you inhale is the byproduct of this chain reaction, absorbing the potential energy locked within oxygen molecules. Until ultimately, this life sustaining gas is pumped throughout your body, by the rhythmic pulse emanating from within your chest. We give these subconscious biological processes little thought, as they silently provide us with the gifts of mobility and consciousness.
So too do we tend to give the planet itself little thought, despite it providing us with the ecological underpinnings of all we experience. Many of our distant ancestors had a very different relationship with these natural forces. Without yet having an understanding of physics, some saw the Sun and the Earth as deified, god-like beings. For example, the Andean Quechua culture worshipped Inti, the Sun God, that provided the sunlight necessary for their plants to grow. And Pachamama was Mother Earth, providing the nourishing soil from which their food emerged. Many indigenous people saw other creatures inhabiting their world as their sentient brethren, as possessing animalistic spirits, part of an interconnected metaphysical world that they together shared.
We’ve now largely abandoned our collective belief in supernatural interpretations of nature, replaced with scientific mechanisms. And perhaps that’s for the better, rather than to continue to worship the mythological for phenomena were we do now have more rational explanations. But with most of us now living within climate-controlled buildings, traveling in motorized vehicles, no longer growing our own food, we seem to have also lost our ancestral connection to these elemental forces. Have we also forgotten some of the justifiable reverence we once held for the natural world, and of the other species that share it? Have some of us lost sight of our place within the grand scheme of things?
What is Earth As We Know It ?
Earth As We Know It brings you an evidence-based, photojournalistic exploration of the natural world and humanity’s place within it. The central focus is the intersection of ecology and culture, on how people depend on the land, and how we have in turn impacted local ecosystems. The articles presented here tell a wider story about the geography of various regions, of land use and resource management practices, on balancing conservation with economic utilization, and of how both local people and species struggle for their survival on the edges of wilderness. These stories investigate the latest research related to these locations, such as how geology and climate have altered landscapes, the interaction of species, and the archeology and history of the people who reside there.
Some of the motivation behind Earth As We Knew It is in response to what appears to be a deteriorating media environment. We now live in a time following the decline of traditional printed media, which has largely been replaced with online sources. Traditional editorial departments' budgets have been cut, as have funds for full time staff reporters. Similarly, a flood of digital images from the advent of digital photography has overturned the economics for professional photographers, where stock photos now sell for pennies. The consumption of information has increasingly shifted towards short-form content on infinitely scrolling social media feeds, where most of the advertising revenue from this content is now being funneled towards the tech giants.
Unfortunately, a lot of poor-quality content has filled this void: online articles written as click-bait, over-sensationalist spin, manufactured outrage, making unsubstantiated claims, and propagating dubious conspiracy theories. Much of this is designed to drive engagement, in a numbers game where the central goal is maximizing advertising revenue. The emergence of artificial intelligence is now compounding these problems, where stories and images are being increasingly produced by A.I. Within this new media landscape, there seems to be less emphasis on simply trying to articulate a nuanced understanding of what is true, based upon the best available evidence.
At the same time, we also now face a wide range of severe ecological challenges. Worldwide, the diversity and biomass of flora and faunda is rapidly declining in what’s been dubbed as the Sixth Extinction. According to the World Wildlife Fund, we've experienced a 73% decline in wildlife populations in just the last five decades. Humans too face increasing threats from natural disasters, such as strengthening wildfires and hurricanes, and food insecurity resulting from the likes of heat waves, droughts and depleted fisheries.
These environmental pressures aren’t entirely new, as our planet has been undergoing climatic, biologic, and geologic upheavals since time immemorial. How much of this is normal, a continuation of longer patterns in Earth’s history, verses what is the biproduct of anthropogenic causes? There’s a lot of misunderstanding about these topics, and much of that is tied to our politics and media. Incentive structures seem misaligned. But having greater awareness of what’s really occurring is going to help us find better solutions to some of these challenges. We can inform ourselves to more skillfully navigate towards a more sustainable future. That path forward, however, isn’t always clear, often involving difficult tradeoffs and consequences.
Meanwhile, within academia and the sciences, new research on these issues is advancing our collective knowledge. These are often relatively narrow and incremental findings, building upon a large body of prior research. Their papers are commonly tailored for their professional colleagues with subject-matter expertise, full of expert jargon and too dense for many lay readers to easily comprehend. These research papers tend to be published in scholarly journals, blocked by paywalls, discouraging a wider audience.
Consequently, lots of fascinating research is being done that doesn’t get surfaced to the general public. I’d like for some of my writing here to help shine a light onto some of this scientific body of work, to pull together a wide-range of literature on these topics, making it more accessible for those outside of academia. Some of this website’s articles are longer reads, providing more background into these subjects than what you’ll typically find online. The goal here is to prioritize quality over quantity, to amplify the signal over the noise, through well-communicated, well-sourced content, free from distracting ads.
If you support this vision, then please help to grow a community surrounding this work. Show your support by subscribing to our newsletter, digest our RSS feed, or give us follow on your preferred social media platform.
About the Author
Tony Trupp - Photojournalist, Independent Researcher, Web Developer
My interest in some of these geography-centered topics began while studying photography at Northern Arizona University, practicing the craft while exploring the desert landscapes of the North American Southwest. College taught me the fundamentals and the technical side of photography. I began with shooting and developing black and white film in my school's darkroom. I shot with an old hand crank manual Nikon back then, before moving onto a wooden, large format 4x5 camera. I'd go backpacking with a half-dozen large format cartridges loaded up with just a few sheets of Velvia 50 ISO slide film. I really had to make each shot count. I'd fine tune the sharpness with a magnifying glass underneath a dark focusing cloth, then count off the exposure time with my watch. A lot has changed since then with the advent of digital cameras, but learning those traditional techniques really does give one an appreciation of the medium of photography and its role as a communication tool.
I spent much of my free time back then exploring the wilderness, seeking out intriguing geological formations and Native American ruins. During summers I got jobs working in national parks, such as Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Sequoia/Kings Canyon, and the Grand Canyon. Plentiful wildlife inhabited these protected lands. I learned how to photograph these animals, studying their behavior, and honing skills like spotting, how to slowly approach without them getting spooked, and how to be patient. It began a lifelong interest in ecology. After moving out to the West Coast (Oregon, California, and now Washington), I began exploring the edge of the ocean and inland waterways via kayak. Silently gliding across the water provided a different vantage point of marine life, offering intimate encounters with sea creatures that never would have been possible traversing by land.
Over the years, I've started seeing my relationship with photography more in terms of photojournalism, trying to tell a story with a wider set of images. I began to more intensely research and write about what I saw, developing my skills as a writer to try to share some further geographical and historical context behind the images. Photography was the initial motivation to seek out new adventures, to put myself into situations that I wouldn't otherwise experience, to help to develop that wider perspective. Those explorations have since become something more, part of a search for a deeper understanding about the natural world and humanities place within it.
The South America Project
My first South American journey was a long time in the making, something I'd been dreaming about doing ever since first reading about some of these sites in old National Geographic magazines as a child. I was captivated by images of ancient stone cities nestled high in the Andes, overgrown rainforests intersected by massive rivers, volcanic islands crawling with strange reptiles, an unfamiliar continent overflowing with life. I was determined to someday make it there, to witness these places firsthand, even if that was going to be decades later. My life required some major upheavals to finally make this happen. It's often hard to break away from the daily grind to pursue such dreams. Many late nights were spent studying maps and planning, and years spent saving. But eventually I stashed away enough to quit my job, packed all my belongings into storage, shut off my bills, and bought a one-way ticket to Peru. All I brought with me was what I could carry in my backpack, the bulk of which was my camera equipment.
During that initial six-month trip, I looped through Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, including traveling to the continent's most iconic locations, like the Amazon, the Atacama Desert, Patagonia, and the Galapagos Islands. The ecosystems here were unlike anything I'd ever encountered. But the experiences that left the most profound impact on me was learning of the pre-colonial civilizations of the Andes, notably the Inca and the ancestor cultures that preceded them.
I had viewed South America's early cultures as something of an enigma, as shrouded in mystery and myth, so distinct from those of Western Civilization. After the first people entered the Americas, the Bering Landbridge became submerged. The unfolding of human civilization had diverged, with the New World geographically isolated from the rest of humanity in the Old World, developing independently, both culturally and technologically. And yet, we still see human society evolving in the Americas that was in many ways in parallel, resembling certain aspects of major changes occurring within the Old World, such as with its own Neolithic Revolution and the emergence of chiefdoms, kingdoms, then empires, constructing their own impressive monuments. This development of increasing social complexity and urbanization within South American reached its zenith with the Inca. At its peak, it spanned all the way from Central Chile through Southern Colombia. With a population of roughly ten million, it was the world's largest empire.
I wanted to learn more about what unfolded here. How did Andean civilization first arise? How did they construct their tight-fitting polygonal buildings? How did they move those megalithic stones? How were the Inca elite able to rule an empire of this size? What were their religious beliefs, and what happened to that belief system when confronted with European ideology? How were they able to domesticate so many of the foods that we depend upon today? And how were the Spanish conquistadors, so few in number, able to topple an empire that held so much territory and power?
I began digging into South America's history and archeology, reading scholarly research papers, familiarizing myself with the controversies, even going back to the original writings of the early Spanish chroniclers. Unfortunately, unlike the Maya of Mesoamerica, no pre-Columbian South American culture had a complete written language (only quipus, which are more of a record keeping system). However, despite the common framing that their culture was an unknowable mystery, with the answers to these questions lost for all time, what I instead found surprised me. The conquistadors wrote prolifically of their early expeditions throughout the Americas, and of the many indigenous cultures they encountered. And multiple Spaniards recorded a thorough recounting of the Inca's very detailed oral history, along with their own eye-witness accounts. These documents provide a rare window into the culture of the Inca shortly following the Spanish conquest. Strangely, many of these historical sources seem to be rarely referenced within the modern discussion of these cultures. The archeological record then provides another angle from which to view pre-Columbian Andean history, to cross-check those contact period references, and also providing a way of looking thousands of years further into the distant past.
On subsequent journeys to South America, I began exploring lesser-known locations. Those trips included visiting dozens of archeological sites and museums, to learn more about some of the continent's other early cultures, such the Caral-Supe, Chavín, Moche, Chimú, Chachapoya, Nazca, Muisca, and Tyrona, to name a few. Plans are now underway to return to Peru for a fourth time, to visit more Inca and Wari sites, and then into Bolivia to see the ancient monuments of the Tiwanaku culture.
My long-term goal with this project is to ultimately release some of this research and photography as a South American focused book. After over a decade of intense study of the existing literature, this is a subject that I feel that I am now qualified to speak on. I see my role here as mostly journalistic, in terms of synthesizing all these sources into something more accessible, while also sharing a few of my own observations. A primary goal here is accuracy, leaning heavily upon peer-reviewed research and original historical sources, where claims made about these cultures will be well-supported by evidence. I'm beginning to release some of this work through this website, as a way to begin to gain some readers, to get some early feedback, and to gauge interest on particular topics. If this is an area that interests you, then please subscribe to the newsletter and follow Earth As We Know It on your preferred social media network.
