On Environment and Development

Geographic environment can have a vital impact on the manner in which cultures develop. In the western hemisphere, many Native American peoples developed cultures and societies directly influenced by the geography of their home regions. One way of determining the extent to which geography impacts the development of civilization can be gleaned by comparing pre-Columbian American societies. In his 2002 essay entitled "1491,"[1] Charles C. Mann provides several examples, but two in particular show not only how the environment affected Native Americans, but also how Native Americans in turn affected the environment.

In the first example, Mann points out that several tribes of the North American plains did not engage in agriculture or animal husbandry. In his own book Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997),[2] Jared Diamond indicated the key reasons for this lack of farming and herding among the Plains Indians, which were primarily a lack of domesticable species of animals indigenous to the Western Hemisphere and a lack of adaptable crops and arable soil in the specific regions where these Native American lived. However, Mann indicates that, through a combination of controlled burning of vegetation, the Plains Indians ultimately made a conscious choice with long-term consequences for the plains: "In North America, Indian torches had their biggest impact on the Midwestern prairie, much or most of which was created and maintained by fire. Millennia of exuberant burning shaped the plains into vast buffalo farms."[3]

The more controversial and surprising claim that Mann makes, among other writers, is that in the pre-Columbian Amazon, complex civilizations arose despite the lack of key resources such as metals suitable for making tools and suitable soil for regularly harvested crops. Mann notes that the soil on the floor of much of the forest, called terra preta in Portuguese, was actually anthropogenic in nature. Relegated to using only stone tools, which made it too difficult to harvest crops annually, the Amazonian Indians elected to plant orchards instead, which required less work on an annual basis and ultimately had longer-term yield. The results, Mann and other have alleged, is that the Amazon rainforest that exists today and the soil from which it arises were the results of human intervention.[4]

Clearly both North and South American peoples affected their environments during the pre-Columbian era. Omitted from the agricultural revolution as seen in the Old World and in Mesoamerica, Plains and Amazonian tribes both harnessed their farming-unfriendly environments into, respectively, large-scale hunting grounds and orchards. The long-term results could be seen for centuries, although in both cases, conservation ultimately became necessary to prevent extinction of these created ecosystems.

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     [1] Charles C. Mann, "1491," The Atlantic, March 2002, accessed December 9, 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/

     [2] Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 1997).

     [3] Mann, ibid.

     [4] Ibid.

Stuff I'm Reading:

The Great Terror: A Reassessment, Robert Conquest