Ecology: Biology of Interactions. III-17. (Supplement) Biomes and Human Culture

Appendices: Syllabus. Questions. Bibliography. Persons. Glossary. R commands.

III-17. (Supplement) Biomes and Human Culture
The characteristics of the natural environment determine the characteristic relationships that human society maintains with it, and therefore the characteristic features of that society. This material could have been placed in the section devoted to human ecology, but since it concerns the key influence of biomes on human culture and history, we examine it here.
Humans evolved as a species with extraordinarily plastic behaviour, capable of occupying diverse ecological niches (that is, of standing in different relationships to the environment and performing different ecological roles). These roles require adequate social organisation. In very broad terms, the following types of traditional human lifestyles can be distinguished.
Appropriation economy: hunting, fishing, gathering. Societies with this type of economy can live in a wide variety of biomes. This highly diverse mode of human existence is the ancestral condition for our species.
Slash-and-burn and forest-field agriculture (and other types of shifting cultivation). Typical of forest biomes. In slash-and-burn agriculture, a community of cultivators clears and burns a plot of forest and then uses the cleared land as a field for several years (until soil exhaustion). A new plot must then be used, while the old field is abandoned, becomes overgrown, and gradually recovers its fertility.
Nomadic pastoralism. Typical of open biomes (steppes, savannahs, etc.). A pastoral tribe migrates across open expanses together with its herds, moving towards whichever pastures are richest at a given time.
Terraced farming and transhumance. Characteristic of foothills and mountains. Highland clans make use of small plots of land suitable for cultivation. To conserve soil and ensure irrigation, slopes are terraced (divided into individual level sections). Such cultivation is usually combined with herded grazing of livestock. Soil fertility is maintained through natural fertilisers.
Irrigated agriculture. Characteristic of the highly centralised societies of Asia and the Middle East. These societies exploit potentially fertile arid open biomes by increasing the quantity of water available to plants through irrigation systems. The large volume of communal labour required and the possibility of centralised control over water supply leads to the formation of despotic states.
This list, of course, does not exhaust all possible human ways of life. From subsistence food production, as technology advanced and population density increased, people moved towards semi-commercial and commercial production. Primitive farming gave way to intensive farming, and nomadic and transhumant (pastoral) animal husbandry gave way to stall-keeping. As urbanisation proceeded, an ever-growing proportion of people moved to cities. However, many modern cultures trace their history back to the primordial modes of economic life mentioned above.
Importantly, each of these modes of economy corresponds to its own social organisation, its own type of human relationships, its own culture. For example, the emergence of complex hierarchies and states with bureaucratic apparatus is characteristic primarily of agrarian cultures. Where there are grain surpluses, the possibility arises for their redistribution and for the emergence of corresponding social structures. Large-scale wars are not characteristic of hunter-gatherers; in their lives there are only conflicts (possibly acute) at the boundaries between the territories of different groups. When a state bound to a particular cultivated territory arises, the possibility of organised warfare also arises.
Broadly speaking, the history of human cultures is intimately linked to the history of natural ecosystems. An example that will allow us to substantiate this claim is the history of the Left-Bank Forest-Steppe of Ukraine. We shall examine it if only because Kharkiv and Kharkiv University, on whose ecology course this textbook is based, are located within it.
In the forest-steppe zone, two types of ecosystems can be stable. Forest requires more water than steppe, but forest soil retains water more effectively than steppe soil. Where there is forest, there is sufficient water for forest. Where there is steppe, there is insufficient water for forest and only steppe is possible.
As climate humidity or temperature changes, the boundary between forest and steppe shifts gradually. A drying forest is replaced by steppe; a moistening steppe is colonised by forest. Nevertheless, a broad belt remains in which the two ecosystem types alternate in mosaic fashion. Waterside plots, ravines, and lowlands tend to be forested, while plots with sandy soils and well-warmed slopes tend toward steppe.
Both forest and steppe give rise to characteristic cultures and societal types. In the forest-steppe they encounter one another.
The steppe has good soils, but droughts are frequent, and cultivators face unstable harvests. The steppe, however, is almost entirely a pasture, where animal husbandry is optimal. The characteristic way of life of steppe peoples is to roam the broad steppe with their herds. The dwellings of nomads are collapsible hide tents. The basic social unit is the family, sharing communal ownership of livestock. The family migrates, interacts with other families, and forms part of tribes with a complex structure.
In the forest there is nowhere to roam with herds, but the harvest is more reliable. One need only clear a field. The forest is felled, the remaining trees are burned, and for a period the field rewards the cultivator's labour a hundredfold. Then soil fertility declines, and a new plot must be cleared. This culture is characterised by settlements with permanent wooden dwellings. Fields are cleared in the vicinity of the settlement. A field can be maintained only by a community strongly cohesive within itself but weakly connected to other communities. The basic social unit may even be larger than that of the steppe people, but its bonds with equivalent units are weaker.
Different modes of life generate a multitude of differences, including different character in human interactions. Even nomads and cultivators sharing a common origin will develop serious differences and will regard one another negatively. Differences in moral codes lead to sharp condemnation of the opposing side and to conflict. The morality of each society does not extend to outsiders. Incidentally, the biblical story of Cain and Abel (sons of Adam and Eve) reflects this conflict. Cain, the elder brother, was a farmer, and killed Abel, who was a herdsman. The cause is also indicated: the sacrifice offered by Cain was rejected by God, while Abel's was accepted. Bear in mind that sacrifices were burned on the altar. The smell of roasting meat is far more pleasant than the smell of burning bread...
The steppe peoples are mobile. Their form of warfare is the raid. They assemble in a group, appear swiftly, plunder, and withdraw. The sedentary inhabitants cannot muster in time, and each community defends itself alone. Why is the pig the favourite animal of Ukrainians? Steppe peoples often professed Judaism or Islam, did not eat pork, and did not carry off pigs. Naturally, the steppe peoples drove forest dwellers back and kept them within the forested massifs. The forest-steppe was a no-man's land, open to nomadic raids.
For forest dwellers the characteristic form of warfare is the campaign. When war was declared, each community furnished and supplied a certain number of fighters who were dispatched on military service. More often than not, by the time the army had marched to the nomads, those nomads had broken camp and departed. A great feat was the formation of such a levy of cultivators as would reach the heart of the nomads' country and destroy their capital. Within settlements, militia groups were formed (later called Cossacks) to guard the frontiers and muster at an alarm. To protect the main body of the populace from raids, outposts were established—fortified towns arranged in a defensive line.
Yet at one time the forest-steppe was settled more rapidly than other zones, for conditions for human life were especially favourable there. The first highly developed agrarian cultures appeared here several thousand years ago. The Trypillian culture (6–7 thousand years old) existed largely within the forest-steppe. Before that, during the Ice Age, a mammoth steppe lay here, inhabited by tribes of hunters of large animals. In the 3rd century CE, large Gothic (Germanic tribal) settlements existed in the western part of the Kharkiv region, with Slavs as their slaves. By the 12th century the Slavs had largely adopted the Gothic way of life, but were easily subjugated by the steppe peoples—the Mongol–Tatars. Since direct military operations in forests were unfamiliar and extremely hazardous for the steppe peoples, when they seized large territories in forested regions, the nomadic-pastoral states transferred control over the captured territories to their vassals drawn from among the sedentary cultivators. The role of vassals and representatives of the Golden Horde contributed to the rise and flourishing of Moscow and Muscovy, and in time to the transformation of Muscovy into an empire.
The role of sedentary vassals of a great nomadic state opens interesting possibilities. The vassal state finds itself protected from raids for a time and can gradually accumulate strength. Eventually, the state of the sedentary culture may prove stronger than the nomadic states. This is a consequence of the fact that the same area of land can feed more cultivators (predominantly first-order consumers) than nomads (second-order consumers). The produce of cultivation is easier to stockpile, and the population is more stable. Epidemics spread more readily among the mobile and sociable steppe peoples. As Slavic strength grew, they began to settle the forest-steppe. One of the important frontiers ran along the Siverskyi Donets river. Vovchansk, Chuhuiv, Zmiyiv, Izium—these were strongpoints on the border of forest and steppe. After the steady displacement of the nomads southward, Sloboda Ukraine (so called initially because it was no-man's land) began to be settled by migrants from various regions. The authorities particularly encouraged the settlement of southern districts by Cossacks (militarised cultivators)—this curtailed the capabilities of the historical adversary. The final victory over the old enemy came at the end of the 18th century.
The last outpost of nomadic culture and statehood was Crimea—well isolated and defended. Until the end of the 17th century the Muscovite state paid the Crimean Khanate "gifts" (pominki)—tribute. In 1473, the Muscovite Tsar Ivan III had sworn allegiance to the Crimean Khan and become his vassal. This was a means of escaping vassalage to the Great Horde. When Moscow failed to meet its payment obligations, in 1571 the Crimean Khan Devlet Giray burned Moscow (from which, at the approach of the Crimean army, Tsar Ivan the Terrible had fled). Payments resumed and were halted only by the Treaty of Constantinople, concluded in 1700 between Muscovy and the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople following Peter the Great's Azov campaigns. In the 18th century, in the course of the Russo-Turkish Wars, Muscovy (which had adopted the name Russia) was able to inflict a series of defeats on Crimea and finally seized it in 1783, exploiting the precarious position of the last Crimean Khan, Shahin Giray. The fragility of the Russian Empire's hold on Crimea was manifested in the Crimean War of 1853–1856. Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea was a deferred echo of the struggle with the Crimean Khanate in the 18th century. The artificially altered demographic composition of Crimea and Russia's imperial propaganda created certain preconditions for the occupation and annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. Events in Crimea remain to this day one of the factors most determinative of world history.
Conflicts between fundamentally different cultures continue to the present day. Russia, for instance, continues to wage bloody clashes with the highlanders of the Caucasus. This is yet another type of culture on which it is not easy to impose alien values. In the mountains there are very few habitable places, and the population is divided into small groups. The basic social unit is the clan, strongly isolated from all others. There is nowhere to spread out; each clan fiercely defends its property. Offensive warfare in the mountains is difficult, while defence holds a substantial advantage. Even a small clan on its own land can mount very strong resistance. Conditions are extremely harsh; survival is possible only with strong mutual support, and therefore clan bonds are very strong. Mortality is very high, and harsh individual selection of men takes place. Those who live to old age command great respect, embodying the clan. The character of warfare: protracted conflicts involving the defence of one's own territory and heroic sorties into enemy territory. Conflicts take on a personal character and, in the event of one party's death, may be continued in subsequent generations—the blood feud arises. After the collapse of the USSR, Chechnya attempted to gain independence from Russia. Plains Chechnya was pacified relatively quickly, while in its mountainous part a centre of resistance persisted for a long time. The "armed formations" sustaining the resistance draw on the traditions of the society and therefore continuously enjoy the support of a significant part of the population. Acting in a manner that is criminal from the standpoint of one value system, they operate within the stream of tradition from the standpoint of another. One reason for the specific character of authority in Chechnya even in Soviet times is the penetration of clan (in Chechnya: teip) structures into the power apparatus. The central authority attempts to suppress these centres of resistance through its local vassals. This story is also not yet finished.
Can one say that such-and-such a culture is good and such-and-such a culture is bad? No. The fundamental character of a culture is determined by factors that precede moral choice. One can speak of morality when there is a choice, when one can act differently (to strike or not to strike, to steal or not to steal). If there is no choice, or if the choice is conditioned by history, the criteria of "good" and "bad" do not apply. One can only say that certain elements of a given culture correspond better (or worse) to a certain tendency; that one culture or another is more capable of developing one or another aspect of social life. Nevertheless, the actions of each individual person, whatever culture shaped them, can be evaluated from the standpoint of morality, from the standpoint of conformity to one or another value structure.