Six traditional ecological niches and six social worlds of traditional human cultures. Column for Computerra #117

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Dmytro Shabanov
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{"author":"Dmytro Shabanov","title":"Culturally Adapting Opportunists, or On the Diversity of Ecological Niches of Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758","subtitle":"Six Traditional Ecological Niches and Six Social Worlds of Traditional Human Cultures","additional_title":"The Predestined Fate of the Forest-Steppe, or the Hidden Springs of History","sections":[{"type":"metadata","columns":[{"number":"#116"},{"number":"#117"},{"number":"#118"}],"journal":"Column for Kompyuterra"}],"content":"Everything I wanted to tell about the differences between traditional societies simply won't fit into this column. I will proceed as follows. I will explain the causes of the Paleolithic crisis that led to the emergence of new human lifestyles in the Neolithic. Then I will briefly enumerate the types of traditional cultures that arose during the Neolithic revolution and explain why I consider them different social worlds. I will simply not have time to discuss much in this column. And I will have to postpone until a more suitable occasion both the comparison of the picture drawn here with the views of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov and the discussion of how the patterns I have described were reflected in the course of history.\n\nI concluded the previous column by stating that the invasion of people who practiced the original hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our species led to ecological crises. Of course, this statement raises many questions. Why do other predator species coexist with their prey species for evolutionarily long periods of time, while humans needed only centuries or millennia to undermine the basis of their own existence?\n\nThe culture we are discussing is called Paleolithic (\"ancient stone\"). Archaic stone tools were sufficient for hunting large animals. The level of adaptation that Paleolithic humans achieved was sufficient to make them a super-successful predator.\n\nHere it is explained why humans could destroy mammoths. A predator will not exterminate its prey if a decrease in prey numbers is followed by a decrease in the number of predators. In the case of humans, the operation of this mechanism was not reliable: the diversity of food-seeking strategies of our species was so great that for some time mammoth hunters could survive without mammoths. The reproductive rate of predators is usually lower than that of their prey — but humans reproduced faster than mammoths. Predators usually do not hunt rare prey, but this mechanism could not protect the desirable and valuable catch for ancient people.\n\n\"At the Paleolithic human site of Predmost (Czechoslovakia), remains of a thousand mammoths were found. Mass finds of mammoth bones (more than 2,000 individuals) are known from the Volchya Griva site near Novosibirsk, dating to 12,000 years ago. <...> At the Solutré site (middle Upper Paleolithic) in France, remains of about ten thousand wild horses — tarpans — were found. At the Ambrosievka site in Ukraine, remains of thousands of wisents were found\" (N.N. Vorontsov).\n\nIn some places, the introduction of people was accompanied by outright ecocide. Thus, Australian aborigens burned the landscape, fundamentally changing the nature of the ecosystems they colonized. In other cases, the change in ecosystems had more complex reasons. The disappearance of a particular biome (regional type of ecosystem) — the mammoth steppe — in Eurasia was very likely connected with the destruction of large herbivorous animals that maintained the corresponding plant communities.\n\nWith the arrival of humans, mammoths, rhinoceroses, tarpans (ancient horses), aurochs (ancient bulls), cave bears (huge, predominantly herbivorous relatives of brown bears), giant deer, and other animals disappeared or sharply declined in numbers. Specialized predators that fed on this megafauna (like cave lions) passed into oblivion, unable to withstand competition with humans. In some cases, the character of vegetation changed irreversibly. The former lifestyle of the people who caused these changes turned out to be impossible.\n\nActually, I have simplified. Not all humanity consisted of hunter-gatherers. Quite early among them, coastal gatherers and fishermen distinguished themselves. At first they fed on the gifts of the waters that could be gathered along the shores, and then step by step perfected fishing technologies. It seems that representatives of such groups of people almost never managed to undermine the resources in their habitat, and therefore they did not have to experience such overpopulation crises as typical \"land\" hunters. However, those fishermen who transitioned to hunting large and scarce prey could also exterminate it without remainder. Thus, in particular, it happened with sea cows — the largest representatives of the siren family. They were hunted almost everywhere; sea cows survived only on the Commander Islands, where they were finished off (in just 27 years!) by navigators of the 18th century.\n\nThe number of Paleolithic hunters was declining. The necessity of mastering new prey species dictated new hunting technologies. The Mesolithic, which began about 15 thousand years ago, is characterized by the use of domesticated dogs, bows and arrows. Not only the number of prey species increased. Effective weaponry and competition for dwindling resources became the cause of wars. Beginning at some point, cave paintings record not only hunting scenes but also moments of battles. Alas, the carrying capacity of the hunting grounds could not maintain the number of people they had reached while undermining their resources. Throughout the oecumene, local \"apocalypses\" occurred. In many cultures, the descendants of the forefathers who came to game-rich lands reduced their numbers, suffering from hunger, and told each other legends about a lost golden age.\n\nNew technologies that allowed people to multiply their numbers many times over were invented in the Middle East. These technologies, the mastering of which is called the Neolithic revolution, included food production, not merely the appropriation of resources from natural ecosystems. This refers to plant cultivation and livestock breeding.\n\nIt is difficult for us to understand how profound a change the Neolithic revolution was. A cub obtained on the hunt and grain gathered in the steppe were not used for food but were set aside for the future. To increase the number of game, it had to be kept and fed, and to increase the number of grains, they had to first be thrown into the ground and then tended! In the behavior of people who brought about this turning point, a sharp increase in the planning horizon was reflected (a change in the urgency of behavior, according to A.I. Protopopov). And it was precisely those Middle Eastern cultures that made such a transition that belonged to the future.\n\nThe world in which hunter-gatherers lived did not disappear completely. Many isolated tribes and even the population of an entire continent — Australia — remained at this level. In other cultures oriented toward food production, hunting and gathering retained their role in the overall subsistence. Coastal tribes existing due to fishing and gathering the gifts of the sea survived the Neolithic revolution with the least changes. But on the whole, the world became different.\n\nI will not be able to describe in detail the emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry. I will only note that after a relatively short period of the emergence of new technologies, they began to spread throughout the world. Apparently, this spread was connected both with the resettlement of peoples who mastered the new way of life and with the adoption of new technologies by other peoples. New ways of life were also unstable and repeatedly led to ecological catastrophes. Both the first farmers and the first pastoralists left behind destroyed ecosystems. The deserts of the Middle East and Central Asia developed in regions where irrigated agriculture led to soil salinization and desertification. The Sahara desert formed on territories destroyed by overgrazing.\n\nIn any case, in the course of the Neolithic revolution, humanity mastered several new ecological niches. To two types of extractive economy (hunting-gathering and fishing) were added four (apparently four...) types of productive economy: slash-and-shift agriculture, irrigation agriculture, nomadic pastoralism, and mountain agriculture and livestock breeding. Let me explain, and before that I will emphasize the conditional nature of these types. Of course, they are not absolutely isolated, of course, they are not homogeneous, of course, they can be combined to one degree or another in different representatives of a single human population... And nevertheless, I believe that comparison of these types can be useful.\n\nWhen speaking of plowmen, I mean farmers who plow and exploit certain plots of land and then leave them and move to new plots (possibly returning after the exhausted soil restores its fertility). There are many variants of such agriculture: plowmen may use slash-and-burn, forest-field, fallow, or ley farming. But in all these variants, the efforts of the community are required to develop new fields. Such a community cannot be large, but within it tight connections will necessarily be established.\n\nIrrigation (watered) agriculture turns out to be fundamentally different. The same field can be used for quite a long time, often — for many generations. Of course, over time the soil will become saline — and people will stop living in this locality. That is exactly how the deserts of Central Asia formed... But before that happened, the most powerful societies lived there. The canal system required long-term and constant efforts of many people applied to the same point on the earth's surface. The settlements of irrigators were quite extensive, and developed bureaucracy was required to manage them. Those who could control the flow of water through the main channels acquired exceptional power over the lives of all others. It was there, according to Marx, that Asian despotisms developed.\n\nAuthorities state that nomadic pastoralism is younger than agriculture. Nomads are able to move across wide expanses with their herds, choosing those areas where their livestock will get the best nutrition at a given time of year. Unlike farmers, pastoralists lack a tight attachment to a particular plot of land. Pastoralist tribes are dynamic, and political relations between them are truly complex.\n\nCompletely special conditions for both agriculture and livestock breeding exist in mountains. The main limiting resource there is land. Each clan essentially possesses an extremely meager set of plots of land. To abandon it to fate when it loses fertility is unthinkable madness. If from generation to generation the land and pastures decline even slightly — the clan is doomed. Under these conditions, people are a less valuable resource than land. An excess of children in a clan can and must be spent on retaining and increasing the land...\n\nWhat is important to me now is this. Each of the main ways of life generates its own population structure of people. The features of the basic units of human societies depend strongly on how these societies obtain their subsistence. I will now try to choose different words to denote typical groups of people connected with the six niches I have listed. Alas, clear delimitation of semantic fields here is unattainable: how many different meanings the words \"village\" or \"settlement\" have! Nevertheless, I think one can speak of:\n— a horde of hunter-gatherers;\n— a fishing village;\n— a community of plowmen;\n— a tribe of nomads;\n— a clan of highlanders;\n— a settlement of irrigated farmers.\n\nAnd here I have come to the point of expressing my main idea. The difference in those ecological and social worlds in which these groups of people exist is not exhausted by any terminology. These are different (let us say interacting) universes, with their own, incompatible internal laws. When thinking about them, we often associate ourselves with one culture that seems to us \"our own,\" correct. For example, it can be assumed that for most readers of this column, the \"own\" culture will be the settled culture of plowmen. Its interaction with the culture of nomads is perceived as a struggle with strangers, \"incorrect\" people. But nomads seem incorrect only to those who have associated themselves with another culture.\n\nIs culture fully determined by ecological niche? No. Other factors also play an important role, but still all of them rest upon the foundation that determines from where and how people obtain their daily bread (milk, meat, honey, etc.).\n\nCan one understand the history of humanity without taking into account the ecological conditioning of cultures and societies? No. And, conversely, taking these circumstances into account allows one to see the patterns permeating our common history.\n\nIs modern humanity limited to these types? No. What was characteristic of these six types of societies was that all their representatives engaged in roughly the same thing. Current differentiated societies have given rise to a new spectrum of ecological niches and social worlds. But modern differentiated societies grew out of these six types of ecological niches of the Paleolithic and Neolithic, and their cultures — from the six social worlds formed by these niches.\n\nLet us try to look at our history from this angle?"}

{"author":"Dmytro Shabanov","title":"Culturally Adapting Opportunists, or On the Diversity of Ecological Niches of Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758","subtitle":"Six Traditional Ecological Niches and Six Social Worlds of Traditional Human Cultures","additional_title":"The Predestined Fate of the Forest-Steppe, or the Hidden Springs of History","sections":[{"type":"metadata","columns":[{"number":"#116"},{"number":"#117"},{"number":"#118"}],"journal":"Column for Kompyuterra"}],"content":"Everything I wanted to tell about the differences between traditional societies simply won't fit into this column. I will proceed as follows. I will explain the causes of the Paleolithic crisis that led to the emergence of new human lifestyles in the Neolithic. Then I will briefly enumerate the types of traditional cultures that arose during the Neolithic revolution and explain why I consider them different social worlds. I will simply not have time to discuss much in this column. And I will have to postpone until a more suitable occasion both the comparison of the picture drawn here with the views of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov and the discussion of how the patterns I have described were reflected in the course of history.\n\nI concluded the previous column by stating that the invasion of people who practiced the original hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our species led to ecological crises. Of course, this statement raises many questions. Why do other predator species coexist with their prey species for evolutionarily long periods of time, while humans needed only centuries or millennia to undermine the basis of their own existence?\n\nThe culture we are discussing is called Paleolithic (\"ancient stone\"). Archaic stone tools were sufficient for hunting large animals. The level of adaptation that Paleolithic humans achieved was sufficient to make them a super-successful predator.\n\nHere it is explained why humans could destroy mammoths. A predator will not exterminate its prey if a decrease in prey numbers is followed by a decrease in the number of predators. In the case of humans, the operation of this mechanism was not reliable: the diversity of food-seeking strategies of our species was so great that for some time mammoth hunters could survive without mammoths. The reproductive rate of predators is usually lower than that of their prey — but humans reproduced faster than mammoths. Predators usually do not hunt rare prey, but this mechanism could not protect the desirable and valuable catch for ancient people.\n\n\"At the Paleolithic human site of Predmost (Czechoslovakia), remains of a thousand mammoths were found. Mass finds of mammoth bones (more than 2,000 individuals) are known from the Volchya Griva site near Novosibirsk, dating to 12,000 years ago. <...> At the Solutré site (middle Upper Paleolithic) in France, remains of about ten thousand wild horses — tarpans — were found. At the Ambrosievka site in Ukraine, remains of thousands of wisents were found\" (N.N. Vorontsov).\n\nIn some places, the introduction of people was accompanied by outright ecocide. Thus, Australian aborigens burned the landscape, fundamentally changing the nature of the ecosystems they colonized. In other cases, the change in ecosystems had more complex reasons. The disappearance of a particular biome (regional type of ecosystem) — the mammoth steppe — in Eurasia was very likely connected with the destruction of large herbivorous animals that maintained the corresponding plant communities.\n\nWith the arrival of humans, mammoths, rhinoceroses, tarpans (ancient horses), aurochs (ancient bulls), cave bears (huge, predominantly herbivorous relatives of brown bears), giant deer, and other animals disappeared or sharply declined in numbers. Specialized predators that fed on this megafauna (like cave lions) passed into oblivion, unable to withstand competition with humans. In some cases, the character of vegetation changed irreversibly. The former lifestyle of the people who caused these changes turned out to be impossible.\n\nActually, I have simplified. Not all humanity consisted of hunter-gatherers. Quite early among them, coastal gatherers and fishermen distinguished themselves. At first they fed on the gifts of the waters that could be gathered along the shores, and then step by step perfected fishing technologies. It seems that representatives of such groups of people almost never managed to undermine the resources in their habitat, and therefore they did not have to experience such overpopulation crises as typical \"land\" hunters. However, those fishermen who transitioned to hunting large and scarce prey could also exterminate it without remainder. Thus, in particular, it happened with sea cows — the largest representatives of the siren family. They were hunted almost everywhere; sea cows survived only on the Commander Islands, where they were finished off (in just 27 years!) by navigators of the 18th century.\n\nThe number of Paleolithic hunters was declining. The necessity of mastering new prey species dictated new hunting technologies. The Mesolithic, which began about 15 thousand years ago, is characterized by the use of domesticated dogs, bows and arrows. Not only the number of prey species increased. Effective weaponry and competition for dwindling resources became the cause of wars. Beginning at some point, cave paintings record not only hunting scenes but also moments of battles. Alas, the carrying capacity of the hunting grounds could not maintain the number of people they had reached while undermining their resources. Throughout the oecumene, local \"apocalypses\" occurred. In many cultures, the descendants of the forefathers who came to game-rich lands reduced their numbers, suffering from hunger, and told each other legends about a lost golden age.\n\nNew technologies that allowed people to multiply their numbers many times over were invented in the Middle East. These technologies, the mastering of which is called the Neolithic revolution, included food production, not merely the appropriation of resources from natural ecosystems. This refers to plant cultivation and livestock breeding.\n\nIt is difficult for us to understand how profound a change the Neolithic revolution was. A cub obtained on the hunt and grain gathered in the steppe were not used for food but were set aside for the future. To increase the number of game, it had to be kept and fed, and to increase the number of grains, they had to first be thrown into the ground and then tended! In the behavior of people who brought about this turning point, a sharp increase in the planning horizon was reflected (a change in the urgency of behavior, according to A.I. Protopopov). And it was precisely those Middle Eastern cultures that made such a transition that belonged to the future.\n\nThe world in which hunter-gatherers lived did not disappear completely. Many isolated tribes and even the population of an entire continent — Australia — remained at this level. In other cultures oriented toward food production, hunting and gathering retained their role in the overall subsistence. Coastal tribes existing due to fishing and gathering the gifts of the sea survived the Neolithic revolution with the least changes. But on the whole, the world became different.\n\nI will not be able to describe in detail the emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry. I will only note that after a relatively short period of the emergence of new technologies, they began to spread throughout the world. Apparently, this spread was connected both with the resettlement of peoples who mastered the new way of life and with the adoption of new technologies by other peoples. New ways of life were also unstable and repeatedly led to ecological catastrophes. Both the first farmers and the first pastoralists left behind destroyed ecosystems. The deserts of the Middle East and Central Asia developed in regions where irrigated agriculture led to soil salinization and desertification. The Sahara desert formed on territories destroyed by overgrazing.\n\nIn any case, in the course of the Neolithic revolution, humanity mastered several new ecological niches. To two types of extractive economy (hunting-gathering and fishing) were added four (apparently four...) types of productive economy: slash-and-shift agriculture, irrigation agriculture, nomadic pastoralism, and mountain agriculture and livestock breeding. Let me explain, and before that I will emphasize the conditional nature of these types. Of course, they are not absolutely isolated, of course, they are not homogeneous, of course, they can be combined to one degree or another in different representatives of a single human population... And nevertheless, I believe that comparison of these types can be useful.\n\nWhen speaking of plowmen, I mean farmers who plow and exploit certain plots of land and then leave them and move to new plots (possibly returning after the exhausted soil restores its fertility). There are many variants of such agriculture: plowmen may use slash-and-burn, forest-field, fallow, or ley farming. But in all these variants, the efforts of the community are required to develop new fields. Such a community cannot be large, but within it tight connections will necessarily be established.\n\nIrrigation (watered) agriculture turns out to be fundamentally different. The same field can be used for quite a long time, often — for many generations. Of course, over time the soil will become saline — and people will stop living in this locality. That is exactly how the deserts of Central Asia formed... But before that happened, the most powerful societies lived there. The canal system required long-term and constant efforts of many people applied to the same point on the earth's surface. The settlements of irrigators were quite extensive, and developed bureaucracy was required to manage them. Those who could control the flow of water through the main channels acquired exceptional power over the lives of all others. It was there, according to Marx, that Asian despotisms developed.\n\nAuthorities state that nomadic pastoralism is younger than agriculture. Nomads are able to move across wide expanses with their herds, choosing those areas where their livestock will get the best nutrition at a given time of year. Unlike farmers, pastoralists lack a tight attachment to a particular plot of land. Pastoralist tribes are dynamic, and political relations between them are truly complex.\n\nCompletely special conditions for both agriculture and livestock breeding exist in mountains. The main limiting resource there is land. Each clan essentially possesses an extremely meager set of plots of land. To abandon it to fate when it loses fertility is unthinkable madness. If from generation to generation the land and pastures decline even slightly — the clan is doomed. Under these conditions, people are a less valuable resource than land. An excess of children in a clan can and must be spent on retaining and increasing the land...\n\nWhat is important to me now is this. Each of the main ways of life generates its own population structure of people. The features of the basic units of human societies depend strongly on how these societies obtain their subsistence. I will now try to choose different words to denote typical groups of people connected with the six niches I have listed. Alas, clear delimitation of semantic fields here is unattainable: how many different meanings the words \"village\" or \"settlement\" have! Nevertheless, I think one can speak of:\n— a horde of hunter-gatherers;\n— a fishing village;\n— a community of plowmen;\n— a tribe of nomads;\n— a clan of highlanders;\n— a settlement of irrigated farmers.\n\nAnd here I have come to the point of expressing my main idea. The difference in those ecological and social worlds in which these groups of people exist is not exhausted by any terminology. These are different (let us say interacting) universes, with their own, incompatible internal laws. When thinking about them, we often associate ourselves with one culture that seems to us \"our own,\" correct. For example, it can be assumed that for most readers of this column, the \"own\" culture will be the settled culture of plowmen. Its interaction with the culture of nomads is perceived as a struggle with strangers, \"incorrect\" people. But nomads seem incorrect only to those who have associated themselves with another culture.\n\nIs culture fully determined by ecological niche? No. Other factors also play an important role, but still all of them rest upon the foundation that determines from where and how people obtain their daily bread (milk, meat, honey, etc.).\n\nCan one understand the history of humanity without taking into account the ecological conditioning of cultures and societies? No. And, conversely, taking these circumstances into account allows one to see the patterns permeating our common history.\n\nIs modern humanity limited to these types? No. What was characteristic of these six types of societies was that all their representatives engaged in roughly the same thing. Current differentiated societies have given rise to a new spectrum of ecological niches and social worlds. But modern differentiated societies grew out of these six types of ecological niches of the Paleolithic and Neolithic, and their cultures — from the six social worlds formed by these niches.\n\nLet us try to look at our history from this angle?"}

Everything I wanted to say about the differences between traditional societies doesn't quite fit into this column. I'll do this. I will explain the reasons for the Paleolithic crisis, which led to the emergence of new human lifestyles in the Neolithic. Then I will briefly list the types of traditional cultures that emerged during the Neolithic revolution and explain why I consider them different social worlds. I will simply not have time to discuss much in this column. I will have to postpone the comparison of the picture presented here with the views of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev, and the discussion of how the patterns I described were reflected in the course of history, to a more suitable occasion. I concluded the previous column with the statement that the invasion of people who led the primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle for our species led to ecological crises. Of course, this statement raises many questions. Why do other predator species coexist with their prey over a long evolutionary period, while humans only needed centuries or millennia to undermine the basis of their existence? The culture we are talking about is called Paleolithic ("ancient stone"). Archaic stone tools were sufficient for hunting large animals. The level of adaptation achieved by Paleolithic humans was sufficient to make them an over-successful predator. This section argues why humans could exterminate mammoths. A predator will not exterminate its prey if, as the prey population decreases, the predator population also decreases. In the case of humans, this mechanism was unreliable: the diversity of our species' food strategies turned out to be so great that for a certain time, mammoth hunters could survive even without mammoths. The reproduction rate of predators is usually lower than that of their prey – but humans reproduced faster than mammoths. Predators usually do not hunt rare prey, but even this mechanism could not protect the desired and valuable prey for ancient humans. "At the Prazhedmost'e site of Paleolithic man (Czechoslovakia), the remains of a thousand mammoths were found. Mass finds of mammoth bones (over 2 thousand individuals) are known at the Vovcha Griva site near Novosibirsk, dating back 12 thousand years. <...> At the Solutré site (Middle Upper Paleolithic) in France, the remains of about ten thousand wild horses – tarpan – were found. At the Amvrosievka site in Ukraine, the remains of thousands of aurochs were found" (N. N. Vorontsov). In some places, human introduction was accompanied by almost ecocide. For example, Australian aborigines burned the landscape, radically changing the nature of the ecosystems they settled. In other cases, ecosystem changes had more complex causes. The disappearance of a specific biome (regional type of ecosystem) – the mammoth steppe – in Eurasia was likely due to the extermination of large herbivores that maintained the corresponding plant communities. With the arrival of humans, mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, tarpans (ancient horses), aurochs (ancient bulls), cave bears (huge, predominantly herbivorous relatives of brown bears), giant deer, and other animals disappeared or sharply reduced their numbers. Specialized predators that fed on this megafauna (like cave lions) went extinct, unable to withstand competition with humans. In several cases, the nature of the vegetation changed irreversibly. The previous lifestyle of the people who caused these changes became impossible. In reality, I have simplified. Not all humanity consisted of hunter-gatherers. Quite early, coastal gatherers and fishermen emerged among them. Initially, they fed on the gifts of the waters that could be collected along the shores, and then, step by step, they improved their fishing techniques. It seems that representatives of such groups of people almost never managed to deplete the resources in their habitat, and therefore they did not have to experience such overpopulation crises as typical, "terrestrial" hunters. However, those fishermen who switched to hunting large and scarce prey could also exterminate it completely. This is what happened, for example, with sea cows – the largest representatives of the siren family. They were exterminated almost everywhere; sea cows survived only on the Commander Islands, where they were exterminated (in just 27 years!) by sailors of the 18th century. The number of Paleolithic hunters decreased. The need to master new types of prey dictated new hunting technologies. The Mesolithic, which began about 15 thousand years ago, is characterized by the use of trained dogs, bows and arrows. Not only the number of hunted prey species increased. Effective weapons and competition for scarce resources led to wars. From a certain point on, rock art depicts not only hunting scenes but also moments of battles. Unfortunately, the carrying capacity of the lands could not support the number of people they reached by depleting their resources. Local "apocalypses" occurred throughout the oikoumene. In many cultures, the descendants of the ancestors who arrived in game-rich lands reduced their numbers, suffering from hunger, and told each other legends about a lost golden age. New technologies that allowed humans to multiply their numbers many times over were invented in the Middle East. These technologies, the mastery of which is called the Neolithic revolution, included food production, not just appropriation of natural ecosystem resources. We are talking about crop cultivation and animal husbandry. It is difficult for us to understand how profound a change the Neolithic revolution was. Game obtained by hunting and grain collected in the steppe were not used for food but saved for the future. To increase game, it had to be kept and fed, and to increase grain, it had to be sown in the ground first and then cared for! The behavior of the people who ensured this breakthrough reflected a sharp increase in the planning horizon (change in the urgency of behavior, according to A. I. Protopopov). And it was these Middle Eastern cultures, which made such a breakthrough, that held the future. The world in which hunter-gatherers lived did not disappear completely. Many isolated tribes and even the population of an entire continent – Australia – remained at this level. In other food-producing cultures, hunting and gathering also played a role in the overall diet. Coastal tribes, which existed thanks to fishing and gathering gifts of the sea, survived the Neolithic revolution with the least changes. But overall, the world became different. I will not be able to describe the development of agriculture and animal husbandry in detail. I will only point out that after a relatively short period of emergence of new technologies, they began to spread throughout the world. It seems that this spread was associated both with the resettlement of peoples who adopted the new way of life and with the borrowing of new technologies by other peoples. New ways of life were also unstable and repeatedly led to ecological disasters. Both the first farmers and the first herders left behind destroyed ecosystems. The deserts of the Middle East and Central Asia developed in regions where irrigated agriculture led to soil salinization and desertification. The Sahara Desert was formed in areas destroyed by overgrazing. In one way or another, during the Neolithic revolution, humanity mastered several new ecological niches. To the two types of gathering economy (hunter-gatherer and fishing) were added four (it seems, four...) types of productive economy: arable farming with shifting cultivation, irrigation farming, nomadic pastoralism, and mountain agriculture and pastoralism. I will explain, and before that, I will emphasize the conventionality of these types. Of course, they are not absolutely isolated, of course, they are not homogeneous, of course, they can be combined to varying degrees in different representatives of the same human population... And yet, I believe that comparing these types can be useful. By "plowmen," I mean farmers who cultivate and exploit certain plots of land, and then leave them and move to new plots (possibly returning after the soil has regenerated its fertility). There are many variations of such farming: plowmen can use slash-and-burn, forest-felling, fallow, or dependent farming. But in all these variants, the assimilation of new fields requires community effort. Such a community cannot be large, but within it, close ties will inevitably be established. Irrigation (reclamation) farming turns out to be fundamentally different. The same field can be used for a very long time, often for many generations. Of course, over time the soil will become salinized – and people will stop living in that area. This is how the deserts of Central Asia were formed... But before that happened, powerful societies lived there. The canal system required long and constant efforts of many people applied to the same point on the Earth's surface. Settlements of irrigators were quite extensive, and their management required a developed bureaucracy. Those who could control the flow of water through the main canals gained exclusive power over the lives of all others. It was there, according to Marx, that Asian despotisms developed. Authorities claim that nomadic pastoralism is younger than agriculture. Nomads can move over vast areas with their herds, choosing those areas where their livestock receives the best nutrition at a given time of year. Unlike farmers, herders are not tied to a specific plot of land. Herding tribes are dynamic, and political relations between them are truly complex. Quite special conditions arise for both agriculture and animal husbandry in the mountains. The main limiting resource there is land. Each clan essentially has an extremely scarce set of land plots. To leave it to chance when it loses fertility is an unthinkable blasphemy. If the land plots and pastures decrease even slightly from generation to generation – the clan is doomed. In these conditions, people are a less valuable resource than land. An excessive number of children in a clan can and should be spent on maintaining and increasing land plots... What is important for me now is the following. Each of the main ways of life generates its own population structure of people. The characteristics of the basic units of human societies strongly depend on how these societies obtain their sustenance. I will now try to find different words to denote the typical groups of people associated with the six niches I have listed. Unfortunately, a clear demarcation of semantic fields is unattainable here: how many different meanings do the words "village" or "settlement" have! Nevertheless, I think we can talk about: — a horde of hunter-gatherers; — a fishing village; — a community of plowmen; — a nomadic tribe; — a clan of highlanders; — a settlement of irrigating farmers. And here I come to express my main idea. The difference in the ecological and social worlds in which these groups of people exist is not limited by any terminology. These are different (though interacting) universes, with their own, incompatible internal laws. Thinking about them, we often associate ourselves with one culture that seems "ours," correct. For example, one can assume that for most readers of this column, "our" culture will be the settled culture of plowmen. Its interaction with the culture of nomads is perceived as a struggle with strangers, "incorrect" people. But nomads seem incorrect only to those who associate themselves with another culture. Is culture entirely determined by ecological niche? No. Other factors play an important role, but they all rely on the foundation that determines where and how people get their daily bread (milk, meat, honey, etc.). Can the history of humanity be understood without considering the ecological conditionality of cultures and societies? No. And, conversely, taking these circumstances into account allows us to see the patterns that permeate our common history. Is modern humanity limited to these types? No. These six types of societies are characterized by the fact that all their representatives did approximately the same thing. Modern differentiated societies have generated a new spectrum of ecological niches and social worlds. But modern differentiated societies grow out of these six types of Paleolithic and Neolithic ecological niches, and their cultures – from the six social worlds formed by these niches. Shall we try to look at our history from this perspective?

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Dmytro Shabanov
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{"author":"Dmytro Shabanov","title":"Culturally Adapting Opportunists, or On the Diversity of Ecological Niches of Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758","subtitle":"Six Traditional Ecological Niches and Six Social Worlds of Traditional Human Cultures","additional_title":"The Predestined Fate of the Forest-Steppe, or the Hidden Springs of History","sections":[{"type":"metadata","columns":[{"number":"#116"},{"number":"#117"},{"number":"#118"}],"journal":"Column for Kompyuterra"}],"content":"Everything I wanted to tell about the differences between traditional societies simply won't fit into this column. I will proceed as follows. I will explain the causes of the Paleolithic crisis that led to the emergence of new human lifestyles in the Neolithic. Then I will briefly enumerate the types of traditional cultures that arose during the Neolithic revolution and explain why I consider them different social worlds. I will simply not have time to discuss much in this column. And I will have to postpone until a more suitable occasion both the comparison of the picture drawn here with the views of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov and the discussion of how the patterns I have described were reflected in the course of history.\n\nI concluded the previous column by stating that the invasion of people who practiced the original hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our species led to ecological crises. Of course, this statement raises many questions. Why do other predator species coexist with their prey species for evolutionarily long periods of time, while humans needed only centuries or millennia to undermine the basis of their own existence?\n\nThe culture we are discussing is called Paleolithic (\"ancient stone\"). Archaic stone tools were sufficient for hunting large animals. The level of adaptation that Paleolithic humans achieved was sufficient to make them a super-successful predator.\n\nHere it is explained why humans could destroy mammoths. A predator will not exterminate its prey if a decrease in prey numbers is followed by a decrease in the number of predators. In the case of humans, the operation of this mechanism was not reliable: the diversity of food-seeking strategies of our species was so great that for some time mammoth hunters could survive without mammoths. The reproductive rate of predators is usually lower than that of their prey — but humans reproduced faster than mammoths. Predators usually do not hunt rare prey, but this mechanism could not protect the desirable and valuable catch for ancient people.\n\n\"At the Paleolithic human site of Predmost (Czechoslovakia), remains of a thousand mammoths were found. Mass finds of mammoth bones (more than 2,000 individuals) are known from the Volchya Griva site near Novosibirsk, dating to 12,000 years ago. <...> At the Solutré site (middle Upper Paleolithic) in France, remains of about ten thousand wild horses — tarpans — were found. At the Ambrosievka site in Ukraine, remains of thousands of wisents were found\" (N.N. Vorontsov).\n\nIn some places, the introduction of people was accompanied by outright ecocide. Thus, Australian aborigens burned the landscape, fundamentally changing the nature of the ecosystems they colonized. In other cases, the change in ecosystems had more complex reasons. The disappearance of a particular biome (regional type of ecosystem) — the mammoth steppe — in Eurasia was very likely connected with the destruction of large herbivorous animals that maintained the corresponding plant communities.\n\nWith the arrival of humans, mammoths, rhinoceroses, tarpans (ancient horses), aurochs (ancient bulls), cave bears (huge, predominantly herbivorous relatives of brown bears), giant deer, and other animals disappeared or sharply declined in numbers. Specialized predators that fed on this megafauna (like cave lions) passed into oblivion, unable to withstand competition with humans. In some cases, the character of vegetation changed irreversibly. The former lifestyle of the people who caused these changes turned out to be impossible.\n\nActually, I have simplified. Not all humanity consisted of hunter-gatherers. Quite early among them, coastal gatherers and fishermen distinguished themselves. At first they fed on the gifts of the waters that could be gathered along the shores, and then step by step perfected fishing technologies. It seems that representatives of such groups of people almost never managed to undermine the resources in their habitat, and therefore they did not have to experience such overpopulation crises as typical \"land\" hunters. However, those fishermen who transitioned to hunting large and scarce prey could also exterminate it without remainder. Thus, in particular, it happened with sea cows — the largest representatives of the siren family. They were hunted almost everywhere; sea cows survived only on the Commander Islands, where they were finished off (in just 27 years!) by navigators of the 18th century.\n\nThe number of Paleolithic hunters was declining. The necessity of mastering new prey species dictated new hunting technologies. The Mesolithic, which began about 15 thousand years ago, is characterized by the use of domesticated dogs, bows and arrows. Not only the number of prey species increased. Effective weaponry and competition for dwindling resources became the cause of wars. Beginning at some point, cave paintings record not only hunting scenes but also moments of battles. Alas, the carrying capacity of the hunting grounds could not maintain the number of people they had reached while undermining their resources. Throughout the oecumene, local \"apocalypses\" occurred. In many cultures, the descendants of the forefathers who came to game-rich lands reduced their numbers, suffering from hunger, and told each other legends about a lost golden age.\n\nNew technologies that allowed people to multiply their numbers many times over were invented in the Middle East. These technologies, the mastering of which is called the Neolithic revolution, included food production, not merely the appropriation of resources from natural ecosystems. This refers to plant cultivation and livestock breeding.\n\nIt is difficult for us to understand how profound a change the Neolithic revolution was. A cub obtained on the hunt and grain gathered in the steppe were not used for food but were set aside for the future. To increase the number of game, it had to be kept and fed, and to increase the number of grains, they had to first be thrown into the ground and then tended! In the behavior of people who brought about this turning point, a sharp increase in the planning horizon was reflected (a change in the urgency of behavior, according to A.I. Protopopov). And it was precisely those Middle Eastern cultures that made such a transition that belonged to the future.\n\nThe world in which hunter-gatherers lived did not disappear completely. Many isolated tribes and even the population of an entire continent — Australia — remained at this level. In other cultures oriented toward food production, hunting and gathering retained their role in the overall subsistence. Coastal tribes existing due to fishing and gathering the gifts of the sea survived the Neolithic revolution with the least changes. But on the whole, the world became different.\n\nI will not be able to describe in detail the emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry. I will only note that after a relatively short period of the emergence of new technologies, they began to spread throughout the world. Apparently, this spread was connected both with the resettlement of peoples who mastered the new way of life and with the adoption of new technologies by other peoples. New ways of life were also unstable and repeatedly led to ecological catastrophes. Both the first farmers and the first pastoralists left behind destroyed ecosystems. The deserts of the Middle East and Central Asia developed in regions where irrigated agriculture led to soil salinization and desertification. The Sahara desert formed on territories destroyed by overgrazing.\n\nIn any case, in the course of the Neolithic revolution, humanity mastered several new ecological niches. To two types of extractive economy (hunting-gathering and fishing) were added four (apparently four...) types of productive economy: slash-and-shift agriculture, irrigation agriculture, nomadic pastoralism, and mountain agriculture and livestock breeding. Let me explain, and before that I will emphasize the conditional nature of these types. Of course, they are not absolutely isolated, of course, they are not homogeneous, of course, they can be combined to one degree or another in different representatives of a single human population... And nevertheless, I believe that comparison of these types can be useful.\n\nWhen speaking of plowmen, I mean farmers who plow and exploit certain plots of land and then leave them and move to new plots (possibly returning after the exhausted soil restores its fertility). There are many variants of such agriculture: plowmen may use slash-and-burn, forest-field, fallow, or ley farming. But in all these variants, the efforts of the community are required to develop new fields. Such a community cannot be large, but within it tight connections will necessarily be established.\n\nIrrigation (watered) agriculture turns out to be fundamentally different. The same field can be used for quite a long time, often — for many generations. Of course, over time the soil will become saline — and people will stop living in this locality. That is exactly how the deserts of Central Asia formed... But before that happened, the most powerful societies lived there. The canal system required long-term and constant efforts of many people applied to the same point on the earth's surface. The settlements of irrigators were quite extensive, and developed bureaucracy was required to manage them. Those who could control the flow of water through the main channels acquired exceptional power over the lives of all others. It was there, according to Marx, that Asian despotisms developed.\n\nAuthorities state that nomadic pastoralism is younger than agriculture. Nomads are able to move across wide expanses with their herds, choosing those areas where their livestock will get the best nutrition at a given time of year. Unlike farmers, pastoralists lack a tight attachment to a particular plot of land. Pastoralist tribes are dynamic, and political relations between them are truly complex.\n\nCompletely special conditions for both agriculture and livestock breeding exist in mountains. The main limiting resource there is land. Each clan essentially possesses an extremely meager set of plots of land. To abandon it to fate when it loses fertility is unthinkable madness. If from generation to generation the land and pastures decline even slightly — the clan is doomed. Under these conditions, people are a less valuable resource than land. An excess of children in a clan can and must be spent on retaining and increasing the land...\n\nWhat is important to me now is this. Each of the main ways of life generates its own population structure of people. The features of the basic units of human societies depend strongly on how these societies obtain their subsistence. I will now try to choose different words to denote typical groups of people connected with the six niches I have listed. Alas, clear delimitation of semantic fields here is unattainable: how many different meanings the words \"village\" or \"settlement\" have! Nevertheless, I think one can speak of:\n— a horde of hunter-gatherers;\n— a fishing village;\n— a community of plowmen;\n— a tribe of nomads;\n— a clan of highlanders;\n— a settlement of irrigated farmers.\n\nAnd here I have come to the point of expressing my main idea. The difference in those ecological and social worlds in which these groups of people exist is not exhausted by any terminology. These are different (let us say interacting) universes, with their own, incompatible internal laws. When thinking about them, we often associate ourselves with one culture that seems to us \"our own,\" correct. For example, it can be assumed that for most readers of this column, the \"own\" culture will be the settled culture of plowmen. Its interaction with the culture of nomads is perceived as a struggle with strangers, \"incorrect\" people. But nomads seem incorrect only to those who have associated themselves with another culture.\n\nIs culture fully determined by ecological niche? No. Other factors also play an important role, but still all of them rest upon the foundation that determines from where and how people obtain their daily bread (milk, meat, honey, etc.).\n\nCan one understand the history of humanity without taking into account the ecological conditioning of cultures and societies? No. And, conversely, taking these circumstances into account allows one to see the patterns permeating our common history.\n\nIs modern humanity limited to these types? No. What was characteristic of these six types of societies was that all their representatives engaged in roughly the same thing. Current differentiated societies have given rise to a new spectrum of ecological niches and social worlds. But modern differentiated societies grew out of these six types of ecological niches of the Paleolithic and Neolithic, and their cultures — from the six social worlds formed by these niches.\n\nLet us try to look at our history from this angle?"}