"As opposed to us, American Indians or Native Americans took care of the environment." - "Before 1492, a squirrel could go from the Atlantic coast to the prairie without touching ground." Along with such popular beliefs goes the scientific assumption that for any geographical area there is an ideal vegetation which most often has been disturbed by human intervention (a potential has been thwarted or an original ecological integrity destroyed). The popular beliefs are also reflected in scientific terminology as, for example, the juxtaposition of horticulture (based on older crops and supposedly benign) and agriculture (based primarily on corn and thought to be environmentally degrading).
Now it is one thing to critique these assumptions and beliefs, another to speculate about their origins or purposes. In her presentation Gail focused on the first of these tasks. She showed how, intentionally or unintentionally, humans have always managed vegetation. Indeed, people were able to settle down only by concentrating resources, whether by domesticating crops, or by using fire as a management-tool for mainting huntable forests, and by combinations of various other techniques. There are also stories of early societies falling apart due to environmental gradation, e.g. by using 800,000 logs to build a stockade village and ending up with denuded forests.
With the tools of paleo-ethnobotany archaeology establishes such facts and thereby creates problems for the ecological nostalgia of many environmentalists. And yet, Gail's work does not contradict the larger framework of environmentalism and environmental science. Beyond the destruction of mostalgic and ideologically powerful myths lies anthropogenesis, a rich field of research into the ways in which humans affect landscapes and vice versa. This research yields insights which may be just as useful for the environmentalist agenda as was ecological nostalgia. Environmental psychologists discovered, for example, that "sustained interest" transforms gardening from a utilitarian activity to something that is intrinsically meaningful yet tangible; moreover, they showed that this sustained interest provides for a form of relaxation. There are many other instances where work in anthropogenesis sugests how taking an interest in the environment is good for us as well as for the environment. In some cultures, if maize-beer is offered after a collective barn-raising, this is more than an economic transaction and some reward for hard labor - to the extent that spirits or souls are thought to reside in maize, the communal drinking serves as a communion which reaches for a deeper contract between and among humans and their natural environment. Awareness of such meanings can only strengthen our sustained interest in a sustainable environment.
Alfred Nordmann
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