The Rain‐Forest Ecosystem as a Resource for Hunting and Gathering

Colinvaux, Paul A.; Bush, Mark B.

doi:10.1525/aa.1991.93.1.02a00100

Cited by 45 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…This insight potentially informs competing hypotheses concerning the antiquity of rainforest hunter-gatherer behavior (40,41). Specifically, although many anthropologists envision a long-term history of tropical rainforest hunter-gatherer behavior (42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49), the severe seasonal food limitations of this habitat (50) have led others to question whether full-time human rainforest occupation is even possible without the ability to trade for agricultural food (50)(51)(52)(53). Ancestors of the modern Batwa and Baka might have originally inhabited ecotonal rainforest edge environments that harbor more stable food resources for hunter-gatherers, before being displaced to deeper forest habitats by the farming populations with whom they now trade (50,52).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive, convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype in African rainforest hunter-gatherers

Perry

Foll

Grenier

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

108

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The evolutionary history of the human pygmy phenotype (small body size), a characteristic of African and Southeast Asian rainforest hunter-gatherers, is largely unknown. Here we use a genome-wide admixture mapping analysis to identify 16 genomic regions that are significantly associated with the pygmy phenotype in the Batwa, a rainforest hunter-gatherer population from Uganda (east central Africa). The identified genomic regions have multiple attributes that provide supporting evidence of genuine association with the pygmy phenotype, including enrichments for SNPs previously associated with stature variation in Europeans and for genes with growth hormone receptor and regulation functions. To test adaptive evolutionary hypotheses, we computed the haplotypebased integrated haplotype score (iHS) statistic and the level of population differentiation (F ST ) between the Batwa and their agricultural neighbors, the Bakiga, for each genomic SNP. Both jiHSj and F ST values were significantly higher for SNPs within the Batwa pygmy phenotype-associated regions than the remainder of the genome, a signature of polygenic adaptation. In contrast, when we expanded our analysis to include Baka rainforest hunter-gatherers from Cameroon and Gabon (west central Africa) and Nzebi and Nzime neighboring agriculturalists, we did not observe elevated jiHSj or F ST values in these genomic regions. Together, these results suggest adaptive and at least partially convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype even within Africa, supporting the hypothesis that small body size confers a selective advantage for tropical rainforest hunter-gatherers but raising questions about the antiquity of this behavior.human evolutionary ecology | human hunter-gatherers | population genomics | convergent evolution

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive, convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype in African rainforest hunter-gatherers

Perry

Foll

Grenier

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

108

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“…Indeed, Balee (1989) and Bailey and colleagues (1989) have shown that many contemporary huntergatherers do not so much exploit the fruits of undisturbed nature as harvest the products of abandoned swidden fields and gardens and implicitly or explicitly profit from the cooperation of their agricultural neighbors. Arguing that foragers could not survive without agriculturalists (the "foraging exclusion hypothesis" [Bailey et al 1989]) can imply that the Amazon and other tropical regions were uninhabitable before agriculture-an idea that, although provocative, has been extensively critiqued (Colinvaux and Bush 1991;Piperno and Pearsall 1998). In this chapter, I argue for a variant of this idea: that Amazon foragers depend not so much directly on the past and present fruits of agriculture as on domesticated landscapes.…”

Section: Contemporary Perspectives On Amazonian Peoplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

8. The Domesticated Landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon

Erickson¹

2006

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology

196

139

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IS A comprehensive concept in anthropology referring to the cultural and genetic control of plants and animals and the processes of adopting farming and living in permanent settlements. Native Amazonians domesticated and cultivated a variety of crops (but few animal species) many millennia before the arrival of Europeans. In this chapter, I explore a simple hypothesis: that Amazonian peoples of the past invested more energy in domesticating entire landscapes than in domesticating individual plant and animal species. Through landscape engineering and the use of simple technology such as fire, the past inhabitants "domesticated" the forest, savanna, soil, and water of the Bolivian Amazon, which had profound implications for availability of game animals, economically useful plants, overall biomass, and regional biodiversity. Because the signatures of human activity and engineering are physically embedded in the landscape, archaeology can playa major role in studying these phenomena. The pre-Columbian peoples of the Bolivian Amazon built raised agricultural fields, practiced sophisticated water-management techniques, and lived in large, well-organized communities millennia before European contact. They rearranged soils, altered drainage, constructed earthworks, made marginal lands productive, and in some cases may have increased local biodiversity.Two themes that are now recognized as myths-one of a pristine environment and the other of the ecologically noble savage-have long dominated the popular and scientific literature on Amazonia. The myth of the pristine environment is the belief that the Americas consisted largely of undisturbed nature before the arrival of Europeans, who subsequently destroyed the environment with their agriculture, mining, and city building. The myth of the ecologically noble savage is the idea that past and present indigenous peoples always existed in harmony with this undisturbed nature. In both myths, nature 236 CLARK L. ERICKSON is imagined as being in a state of perpetual equilibrium with old, undisturbed forests as the ideal form.Environments portrayed as being in this pristine state are often those with low populations of native peoples practicing "traditional" lifeways. Most or much ofAmazonia was considered such a place. In the past few decades, however, research has shown that this state was recently created and not the product of timeless harmonies. Indeed, much of what has been viewed as "pristine wilderness" in the Amazon is the indirect result of massive depopulation after the arrival of Europeans. Within a century, Old World diseases, slavery, rnissionization, resettlement, and wars eliminated the great majority of the indigenous inhabitants from these landscapes. As a whole, Amazonia did not return to its sixteenth-century population level until the twentieth century. Historical ecologists have shown that before that depopulation occurred, native peoples directly determined much ofAmazonia's environmental structure and content. Thus, present-day Amazonian landscapes were sha...

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“…The Amazon forest, although classified as a single biome, consists of various types of environments (Colinvaux and Bush 1991), and the use of wildlife by human populations can differ widely among these environments (Valsecchi and Amaral 2009). Therefore, http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss3/art3/ long-term studies that provide a greater understanding of the ecological, social, economic, and cultural dimensions related to hunting are required in this biome (Nasi et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social, biological, and environmental drivers of the hunting and trade of the endangered yellow-footed tortoise in the Amazon

Morcatty¹,

Valsecchi²

2015

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Chelonians constitute an important source of food and income for the inhabitants of tropical forests. We assessed the social, biological, and environmental factors affecting the hunting and trade of the endangered yellow-footed tortoise (Chelonoidis denticulata) in rural and urban areas in the Amazon and estimated the sustainability of tortoise use. We also discuss possible conservation alternatives that are compatible with the needs of local inhabitants. We monitored tortoise hunting and trade for 12 years in 10 traditional communities that exploit different habitat types in the Brazilian Amazon and collected data on the tortoise trade in two urban markets for six years. In upland forests, tortoise hunting mainly occurred during the dry season; in whitewater flooded forests, hunting mainly occurred during the flood season. The tortoise trade was carried out nearly entirely by whitewater flooded forest users and was intimately related to fishing, the main economic activity in these communities. Furthermore, the tortoise trade was encouraged in whitewater flooded forests because this environment yielded significantly heavier tortoises than upland forests, and we observed a strong relationship between trade probability and tortoise size. The tortoise trade was found to primarily supply nearby urban centers, generating high monetary gain. Female tortoises suffered greater hunting pressure and were more valued in the bushmeat market. The productivity of tortoise hunting in the monitored communities severely decreased with time. In addition, the price per kilogram of tortoise greatly increased in the urban market. Given this unsustainable scenario, policies regulating tortoise hunting in the Amazon are needed. These policies must be adapted to the different patterns of tortoise use by rural communities while maintaining the culture and food sovereignty of the local inhabitants.

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The Rain‐Forest Ecosystem as a Resource for Hunting and Gathering

Cited by 45 publications

References 36 publications

Adaptive, convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype in African rainforest hunter-gatherers

Adaptive, convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype in African rainforest hunter-gatherers

8. The Domesticated Landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon

Social, biological, and environmental drivers of the hunting and trade of the endangered yellow-footed tortoise in the Amazon

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