How Human Beings Shaped “Wild” Forests

Here’s a doubly interesting Smithsonian

story about a study in southeast Asia. After examining pollen
samples from Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Thailand, and Vietnam, the
magazine reports, the paleoecologist Chris Hunt and the
archeologist Ryan Rabett concluded that “humans have shaped these
landscapes for thousands of years.” That may sound uncontroversial,
but it isn’t: “Although scientists previously believed the forests
were virtually untouched by people, researchers are now pointing to
signs of imported seeds, plants cultivated for food, and land
clearing as early as 11,000 years ago—around the end of the last
Ice Age.”

The article goes on to explain the evidence and reasoning that
led Hunt and Rabett to their conclusions, as well as how their
findings feed into “a larger discussion about when and how our
species began shaping the world around us.” All very interesting
stuff, especially for those of us who do not fetishize “untouched”
“wilderness” and see human beings as a part of nature, not an
intrusive alien force.

And then we get to the other reason the piece is interesting.
Hunt thinks there’s a political dimension to his work, a way to
help indigenous people stake out a Lockean claim to their
territories:

This kind of research is about more than glimpsing
ancient ways of life. It could also present powerful information
for people who live in these forests today. According to Hunt,
“Laws in several countries in Southeast Asia do not recognize the
rights of indigenous forest dwellers on the grounds that they are
nomads who leave no permanent mark on the landscape.” The long
history of forest management traced by this study, he says, offers
these groups “a new argument in their case against eviction.”

Such tensions have played out beyond Southeast Asia. In Australia,
for example, “the impact of humans on the environment is clear
stretching back over 40,000 years or so,” says environmental
geoscientist Dan Penny, of The University of Sydney. And yet, he
says, “the material evidence of human occupation is scarce.”
Starting in the 18th century, the British used that fact “to
justify their territorial claim” to land inhabited by Aboriginal
Australians—declaring it terra nullius (belonging to
no-one), establishing a colony, and eventually claiming sovereignty
over the entire continent.

It would be a stretch, of course, to treat that pollen alone as
a property title, especially so many centuries later and among men
and women who aren’t necessarily the descendents of the people
who lived in those forests 11,000 years ago. But as a way to change
the terms of the conversation around those seizures and
evictions—to show that mixing your labor with the land can take
many forms, and that individuals can intervene in their
environments in ways that aren’t always obvious to outsiders—Hunt
may well be right about his study’s implications. 

You can read the rest of the Smithsonian
article here.
And if you’re willing to shell out $35.95 for it—or if you have
access to the site through an academic institution—you can download
Hunt and Rabett’s paper from the Journal of Archaeological
Science
here.