J. Donald Hughes

Deforestation, Erosion, and Forest Management in Ancient Greece and Rome

T here is a close interconnection between ruined cities and ruined land. The fact that the broken statues and scattered column drums of the centers of ancient civilization have deforested and eroded landscapes as their settings does not seem to be an accident. The general impression of synchronicity, the contemporaneous ruin of ancient societies and ancient environments, has been inescapable. Forests provided the major material for construction and almost the only fuel source of the classical world, and depletion of this source precipitated a number of crises. As forests retreated with land clearance, wood decreased in availability and increased in price, contributing to the ruinous inflation that plagued late antiquity. Competition for forest resources ignited military conflicts, which themselves created demands for timber. Erosion weakened the economic base of the predominantly agrarian societies, contributing to a population decline that made it ever more difficult for Greco-Roman civilization to resist the incursions of barbarians from beyond the frontiers. In the more arid regions, forests that formerly moderated the climate and equalized the water supply were stripped away, permitting the desert to advance. The image of the ruined cities of North Africa, from which olive oil and timber were exported in ancient times but which later were buried beneath the desert sand, epitomizes the environmental factor in the decline of civilization, as do the swamps along the northern Mediterranean mar-

Ancient Deforestation Revisited

The image of the classical Mediterranean environment of the Greeks and Romans had a formative influence on the art, literature, and historical perception of modern Europe and America. How closely does is this image congruent with the ancient environment as it in reality existed? In particular, how forested was the ancient Mediterranean world, was there deforestation, and if so, what were its effects? The consensus of historians, geographers, and other scholars from the mid-nineteenth century through the first three quarters of the twentieth century was that human activities had depleted the forests to a major extent and caused severe erosion. My research confirmed this general picture. Since then, revisionist historians have questioned these conclusions, maintaining instead that little environmental damage was done to forests and soils in ancient Greco-Roman times. In a reconsideration of the question, this paper looks at recent scientific work providing proxy evidence for the condition of forests at various times in ancient history. I look at three scientific methodologies, namely anthracology, palynology, and computer modeling. Each of these avenues of research offers support for the concept of forest change, both in abundance and species composition, and episodes of deforestation and erosion, and confirms my earlier work.

Ecology in ancient Greece

This article investigates the characteristic attitudes of the Greeks toward nature, which formed the perceptual framework for their ecological thinking. Two major attitudes are discerned. One regarded nature as the theatre of the gods, whose interplay produced observed phenomena, but whose localization gave them particular, restricted roles. The other attitude viewed nature as the theatre of reason, and made the beginnings of ecological thought possible. The contributions of several Greek forerunners in the field of ecology are characterized. The most consistent, balanced ecological writer in ancient Greece was Theophrastus, but his conception of an autonomous nature, interacting with man, was overshadowed in the history of ancient and medieval thought by the anthropocentric teleology of Aristotle.

Three Dimensions of Environmental History

Historians are sometimes accused of being light on theory, and environmental historians have not escaped this criticism, sometimes deserved. This essay main tains that environmental historians should increasingly investigate theoretical aspects of their subject, and encourages more prevalent reasoned discourse be tween multiple viewpoints. The essay does not set forth a theoretical structure, but explores three dimensions that may help to plan such a structure. The first dimension, concerning the subject of the field, is the culture-nature continuum. The second dimension is concerned with method, and lies along the continuum between history and science. The third dimension is one of scale and considers time and space as coordinates of definition. There are obviously other dimensions to explore. These reflections are offered tentatively, in hopes that this piece may serve as an opening to an interesting discussion among colleagues.

Climate Change: A History of Environmental Knowledge

J. Donald Hughes A huge body of evidence is available for studies of climate change. When I entered the storage facility of the US National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL), at the foot of the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, I experienced the coldest temperature I had ever felt: minus -36°C (-33°F). There, on shelves filling a large but increasingly inadequate space of 1,540 cu m (55,000 cu ft), lay thousands of silvered cylindrical sleeves containing sections of cores of ice taken from the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, and from mountain glaciers: an archive of the history of the Earths climate and atmosphere. Many cores were drilled from ice surface to bedrock, some approaching 4 km (2.5 mi) in length, so that one core is represented by thousands of cylindrical ice segments on the shelves. Looking at one of them removed from its sleeve, I could see layers one above the other, each representing the annual snowfall of a year many centuries in the past. These layers can be dated exactly, using electrical conductivity, visual counting, and stable isotope analysis—more accurately than a method such as radiocarbon allows, and they represent unbroken records stretching back farther than 450,000 years in Antarctica. 2 I was amazed to see a disk of ice from Greenland that had not melted for a quarter of a million years. Glaciers are fast melting all over the Earth, so an archive like this one is very precious. 3 In the future, it might become impossible to collect such a library of ice.

Global Environmental History: The Long View

Abstract Looking ahead to the remaining decades of the twenty-first century, this essay considers four themes that seem certain to characterize the course of world environmental history in the long run. These are: (1) population growth; (2) local vs. global determination of policy; (3) threats to biodiversity; and (4) the supply of and demand for energy and materials. The conclusion, noting that each of these themes presents a challenge and that together they constitute a crisis of survival, asks what kinds of changes might constitute a positive response.

Responses to Natural Disasters in the Greek and Roman World

Ancient Greek and Roman records contain many references to natural disasters. Analyzing the immediate reactions to the events, as well as the ensuing responses, is only possible where there is dependable evidence. Two case studies offer eyewitness accounts of disaster, as well as archaeological and scientific studies. These are the plague that struck Athens in 430 BCE during the Peloponnesian War, described by Thucydides who witnessed and suffered from it, and the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, recorded in letters by Pliny the Younger, who saw it and fled from it during its height. The victims of these disasters were plunged into confusion and uncertainty about what to do to survive. In many cases, social cohesion dissolved, and individuals broke norms and traditions. Some sought help from the gods, and others felt there were no gods. In the aftermath, leaders responded with measures intended to help people, restore the body politic, and rebuild. Although frustrated by physical and social barriers, they achieved a degree of success.

Palau: A parable for the twenty-first century

In the old days in Palau, an old woman named Dirrabkau lived on an island called Ngibtal. She had a hard life because she lived alone in her house, and the fishermen of the island never offered to share their catch with her, so she had to live on the fruit of the breadfruit tree that grew in her yard. One day, her son who lived afar came to visit her, and when she complained that she had no fish to eat, he chopped off part of a limb of the breadfruit tree. The tree was hollow, and the surges of the sea came up through its trunk and out through the branch, bringing fish with them. All Dirrabkau needed to do was to catch the fish in a basket. The fishermen became very jealous, since while they had to labor all day to catch fish, all the old woman had to do was to sit under her tree. “Let’s cut down her tree,” one of them said, “and then so many fish will come up that we’ll all have all we want.” So they cut down the breadfruit tree. But then the sea poured up through the trunk of the tree and brought not only fish, but also a huge flood that caused the whole island of Ngibtal to sink beneath the waves. Today when you take a boat into that part of the lagoon on a calm day, you can look down into the water and see Ngibtal with its houses and the stump of the breadfruit tree.

Artemis: Goddess of Conservation

The ancient Greeks represented the spirit of conservation in the shape of a formidable protectress of animals and plants, the goddess Artemis. In the Louvre one can view a striking statue of Artemis (or as the Romans called her, Diana) in a running pose, known as the Diana of Versailles, a Roman copy of a Greek originali This work of art displays two facets of the goddess, as huntress and protectress: though she is armed with bow and arrows, her hand rests cherishingly on the antler of the stag that runs beside her. The Diana of Versailles is only one of an innumerable series of images in art, literature, and popular culture that reveal facets of this complex deity. Artemis would be an important figure in intellectual history even if these images were only matters of artistic symbolism. But Artemis was more than an artistic symbol. The worship of this goddess involved customs affecting the treatment of living organisms, both as species and in communities, and the use of certain categories of land. For example, sanctuaries of Artemis and other gods often consisted of tracts of forest where hunting of deer and other animals was forbidden.2 Thus the study of her cult is essential for understanding ancient Greek attitudes and practices relating to wildlife, forests, and the wilderness. w

New Orleans: An Environmental History of Disaster

If Egypt is the gift of the Nile, similarly New Orleans and all southern Louisiana are the gifts of the Mississippi River. Without human interference, the river would continue to add to its vast, flat delta, flooding and shifting from one channel to another. The wetlands, along with grassy marshes, and the barrier islands formed further out on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, formed insulation against hurricanes. New Orleans, a city that is largely below sea level, has been hit by a major hurricane every few decades, but the earlier ones tended to do less damage due to the protection they offered. Healthy ecosystems served as natural defenses. They were like speed bumps against storm surges. But much has disappeared and the rest is endangered, and the reason why can be explained by the environmental history of the region. Natural protection has been stripped away in large part by human projects.