Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Landscapes Strongly Shaped by Humans
The most striking difference between the Mediterranean Basin and the other MTC
regions is its substantially longer history of intensive and widespread land use.
Humans first appeared in the African savanna, but they soon spread downstream
along the Nile River to the Mediterranean Basin (Stringer & McKie
1996
). They
have been present in this region longer than in any other MTC region or anywhere
else in Europe (Carbonell
et al.
1995
,
2008
). It is thought that Paleolithic people
(
2.5 Ma-10 000 BP) already burned deliberately for hunting and food gathering
(Stewart
1956
; Goren-Inbar
et al.
2004
), although the earliest evidences of land
and fire management in the Mediterranean Basin are related to the spread of
agriculture and domestic grazing during the Neolithic (
10 000-4500 BP) (Naveh
1975
). Several cave settlements from
400 000 BP provide the earliest evidence of
at least limited use of fire. Fire use continued to increase, and during the Bronze
Age (
4500 B
P
) it was a general practice widely applied for purposes of deforest-
ation and pasture improvement and occasionally as a war strategy (Thirgood
1981
; Pons & Thinon
1987
; Grove & Rackham
2001
; Kaniewski
et al.
2008
). By
the late Bronze Age terraces and irrigation work were being carried out and a large
part of the region already presented a “humanized” landscape dominated by crops
of winter wheat, barley, vines and olives, and livestock of cattle, sheep, goats and
pigs (Huston
1964
). Romans and Muslims improved terracing and irrigation and
introduced new crops; additional crops were introduced after the Spanish con-
quest of America.
The Mediterranean Basin has been the theater for the birth, blooming and
collapse of many cultures and civilizations (e.g. Sumerian and Mesopotamian,
Ancient Egyptian, Phoenician, Jewish, Ancient Greek, Persian, Arab, Roman,
Ottoman, among others), and for many political conflicts (wars, changes in land
ownership, population movements) that resulted in numerous socio-economic and
land use changes. The dominance of each of these cultures was mainly based on
the increased commercial and military power provided by having a larger fleet of
ships than the previous culture. Thus, the shipping industry together with
increased agricultural land are the most important causes of mediterranean
deforestation. As an example, the fleet of Arab war galleys that unsuccessfully
laid siege to Constantinople in 717 is estimated to have been composed of 1800
ships, all made from local wood. All these facts imply millenia of severe pressure
on the land, resulting in clearing, terracing, and cultivating all arable areas and
burning, cutting and grazing non-arable areas. From very early times (and espe-
cially under the Roman Empire), mediterranean landscapes have been heavily
terraced for cultivation, implying the clearing, including uprooting and soil move-
ments, of most of the landscape (
Fig. 4.2
).
The concomitant increase in human populations and Holocene drying has
raised the debate as to whether major modifications to mediterranean vegetation
in the last 6000-7000 yrs are more the result of human activities than they are of
