Landscape Effects of Hunter-Gatherer Practices Reshape Idea of Agriculture – Eurasia Review
A new study in the journal Science overturns a popular theory regarding early agriculture in Eurasia. Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Copenhagen have concluded that early farmers didn’t always cause dramatic landscape change and that hunter-gatherer practices, as well as agriculture, had major impacts on ecosystems in early Neolithic Eurasia.
“The popular narrative about the transition to agriculture assumes early farmers radically transformed landscapes and their impact was unique,” said lead author, Dr. Nicole Boivin, a professor of archaeobiology and bioarchaeology at the University of Copenhagen. “We demonstrate that long before farmers, hunter-gatherers were already having a major impact on plant and animal communities and influencing landscape patterns.”
The researchers gathered an unprecedented collection of fossil pollen, phytoliths, and macrofossils from archaeological sites in the Fertile Crescent spanning over 20,000 years to reconstruct past vegetation patterns in the region. These new data reveal that human activities – farming and foraging – influenced changes in plant diversity and landscape patterns. Previous assumptions about how hunter-gatherers shaped the environment have been incorrect, highlighting the need to reconsider the “agricultural revolution” and its effects.
Hunter-Gatherer Practices Reshape Landscape
One of the key findings of the study was that the diversity of plants was already quite low before agriculture was introduced in the region. While farming did indeed increase some human impacts on plant and animal life, previous hunter-gatherer activities contributed significantly to the pre-existing ecological transformation. This study suggests a more nuanced view of early human-landscape relationships and suggests that environmental change was gradual. This contradicts past hypotheses about how agriculture drastically altered the landscape.
The research team used fossil pollen, microscopic plant remains known as phytoliths, and large plant remains called macrofossils to paint a picture of plant life and human activity at these archeological sites. This “triple proxy” approach reveals new and unique information regarding vegetation dynamics, land-use practices, and their co-evolution in these early Neolithic settings. These data suggest that human actions over time and space played a crucial role in transforming ecosystems long before the adoption of agriculture.
Reconsidering the Agricultural Revolution
Boivin states, “We propose that in early farming communities, hunter-gatherers were integral in adapting and contributing to local landscapes, leading to a shared trajectory for agricultural communities and hunter-gatherer groups, creating interconnected environments shaped by multiple factors.”
In conclusion, this research provides strong evidence against the commonly held belief that the “agricultural revolution” brought immediate drastic shifts in the environment. In reality, agriculture is part of a longer narrative of human interactions with nature, going back tens of thousands of years. The researchers suggest future studies use more precise methods like pollen analysis, phytoliths, and macrofossil analyses, to explore early human ecological interaction in greater depth, uncovering how ecosystems were molded in prehistory by foraging societies as well as farming communities. This research may be essential to understanding the future trajectory of environmental change.
