People in the Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 480

CHAPTER TEN
People in the Mountains
JAMES S. GARDNER, ROBERT E. RHOADES, and
CHRISTOPH STADEL
Many people have traveled to and through, settled in, moved from, and used mountain
areas for a very long period of time. They may have been driven to the mountains seeking
refuge from persecution elsewhere and, in the process, founded rich agriculturally based
societies. They may have been pulled to the mountains in search of food and other re-
sources, or they may have been attracted for spiritual purposes, as discussed in Chapter
9. They may have explored for ways through the mountains in search of more land and
better livelihoods. They may have been driven to or from the mountains by shifts in
weather and climate. The discovery of the “Iceman” (Fowler 2001) in a patch of melting
ice high on the mountain border between Austria and Italy in 1990 raised speculation as
to why he was there, and how he came to be buried by snow and ice approximately 5,000
years ago. Despite the longstanding connections between mountain areas and the wider
world, we do know that groups with distinctive cultural and economic characteristics,
and people with adaptations to altitude, cold, and steep slopes have occupied mountain
areas for millennia. Current changes have pulled traditional mountain people into a glob-
alized world (Cook and Butz 2011), where sharp distinctions between lowland and high-
land cultures and economies are increasingly blurred.
This chapter is the first of three that provide an overview of mountains and people,
past and present, with emphasis on the status of mountain people and change in the early
twenty-first century. This chapter focuses on people living in mountain areas. Chapter 11
considers land uses in mountain areas, particularly those relating to agriculture, which
remains a primary source of livelihood for most of the world's mountain people. Chapter
12 addresses sustainable mountain development, which involves both mountain people
and others living outside mountain areas; the chapter therefore stresses interactions
between mountain and other regions.
Although mountains in the past have provided a refuge and a degree of isolation for
their permanent inhabitants, the present era is a time when the tentacles of globaliza-
tion reach to the most distant and marginal parts of the Earth, including mountain areas.
New technologies, especially those related to mass transport and rapid communications,
are increasingly facilitating the movement of people, goods, services, and information
between the mountains and the lowlands, strengthening linkages and dependencies and
driving changes in all aspects of life (Conover 2010; Stadel 1993; Fig. 10.1). Persistence
and change among people in the mountains are a central focus of this chapter. With the