Applying Geography to Interpret the Past:

Environmental History and Global History s John McNeill
Elam—The Forgotten Civilization of the Ancient Near East s Javier Alvarez-Mon
Man, Nature, and the Environment in the Middle Ages s Jarbel Rodriguez

How Physical Systems Interact with Human Systems

Rituals of Embedded Ecologies in India s Vijaya R. Nagarajan
Ideologies of Landscape in China s William Schaefer
The Atlantic World as Environmental Workshop s Alan Karras

Focus on Water—International Case Studies in Environmental Management and Justice

Equity and Rainwater Harvesting in India s Jaquelin Cochran
Lake Baikal in Russia: Eco-Tourism s Ariadna Reida
All-American Canal: Water along the U.S.–Mexico Border s Alex Saragoza

How Human Actions Modify Physical Environment—International Case Studies of Success and Failure in the Modern Era

The Coming Environmental Crisis in the Middle East: A Historical Perspective s Edmund Burke
Oil, Development, and Geopolitics in West Africa s Michael Watts
Environmental Issues in China Today s Rachel Stern

Applying Geography to Interpret the Past and Plan for the Future—Current Research

Meeting Environmental Challenges in Korea s Peter Hayes
Participatory Solutions to Environmental Justice in Vietnam s Dara O’Rourke
Chernobyl s Sonja Schmid

Environmental History and Global History
John McNeill
(Summarized by Bartholomew Watson)

We will begin with the general subject of environmental history before slotting it into global history.

Environmental history has 3 main flavors (though there are obviously combinations):

1. Material environmental history: The forests, flowers, and frogs. This category includes the chemical composition of atmosphere, and all the sorts of things that are real world material changes in the human environment relationship. All of these have traditionally been the province of historical geographers, not really historians. This is the area where Professor McNeill does most of his work.

2. Political and policy environmental policy history: These are the ways that human communities have used the state and the law to regulate and legislate the human-environment relationship. This category has a much shorter history than the material history. Major explicit/conscious efforts in environmental policy go back only 100–120 years, though in an anecdotal way they go back much further. Comprehensive efforts are much more recent

3. A third and an increasingly popular category is cultural and intellectual environmental labor. This includes what people have thought, painted, read, and written about the human-environment relationship. This category goes back a long way. The Epic of Gilgamesh (what is permissible) and Plato (deforestation) both concern the environment. Most of the scholarly work concerns recent thought and writing, though the work goes back much longer.

These categories are not mutually exclusive, and good environmental history combines elements of all three.

As a self-conscious scholarly enterprise environmental history began in the 1970s. Others have been doing a lot that looks like this for a while, but as a unified and coherent field environmental history is relatively new. It began “officially” in 1974, when the first course designated as “environmental history” was taught at UCSB by Roderick Nash. The initial environmental history push drew a lot upon the political commitment of those teaching and writing about it—people who were motivated to change the world and were directly involved in what they were teaching. Since then, the political momentum has gradually diminished as the original cohort has been joined by a more calm/detached scholarly generation. This trend is not unique to environmental history as we see the same phenomenon in other disciplines (women’s history, labor history, etc.). Additionally, it is important to note that this story refers primarily to the US. It applies less globally, though similar patterns can be seen elsewhere. Other hotbeds of environmental history have popped up in Europe (especially Germany and Sweden), India, and Australia. Warmbeds have also emerged in other European countries (Britain, Spain) and Latin America (Mexico, Brazil). Beyond these examples the study of environmental history occurs only sparsely.

What has happened in terms of de-politicization in the US has not taken place in India, Latin America, etc. Abroad, the pattern of environmental history issues has been influenced more by political commitments. The European story, not surprisingly, looks more like the United States. Environmental history is not practiced that much elsewhere (although US and European scholars study other regions). The Middle East and Russia are good examples: in these regions, it is often hard even to get the information to start creating environmental history.

The great majority of environmental history work is local in scope. This is not a bad thing and makes it manageable to study and teach. Additionally, when work is local it can still be brought into a larger context.

Now let’s look at some California Examples:

1. The Gold Rush: A. Isenberg, Mining California

The California gold rush was part of a broader global rush for rare raw materials. Similar rushes occurred all around the Pacific Rim as well as in Africa. Those who got involved in California often turned up later in other gold rushes elsewhere. This book allows students to learn about the erosion of hills, hydraulic mining, the siltation of rivers surrounding and draining into the SF Bay (and filling of parts), and lots of other ancillary experiences that arose around the camps, especially agricultural ones. Camps sprang up around the state and had an enormous impact. In addition, the technique of mercury amalgamation to separate out the gold from the ores introduced toxic chemicals into California’s waterways. Beyond the gold rushes of the late 1800s this work could extend this more broadly to mining in general.

2. Agriculture: S. Stoll, Fruits of Natural Advantage

One of the great environmental moments of agricultural history was the industrialization, chemicalization, and modernization of agriculture. This movement involved powerful advances in crop breeding, plant genetics, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These advances provoked lots of environmental consequences including the draining of wetlands, drops in biodiversity, health consequences and other repercussions of pollution. This particular book is California-focused, but the California story has a lot of present-day corollaries in India and other developing regions—basically anywhere modern agriculture is being introduced.

3. Water & Los Angeles: M. Davis, City of Quartz

City of Quartz describes the dramatic re-plumbing of California in the early 20th century. Reworking California’s waterways caused widespread environmental evolution and consequences. LA is unique in the depth of its commitment to the automobile, and Davis probes the consequences of this for the environment of LA and its surroundings. This is a politically charged story that is very entertaining and well written.

4. San Francisco and its hinterland: G. Brechin, Imperial San Francisco

This is a similar story to that told by Davis, but told about San Francisco. Again, it revolves around the environmental implications of the city of San Francisco and its commerce for the northern and central California regions. San Francisco profits from the natural resource extraction business in this part of the world and has altered the environmental face of this region. This extends beyond agriculture to include timber, mining, etc. The commerce of SF imposes itself on the outlying environmental regions.

With a little bit of legwork these stories can be easily globalized. Lots of other cities have done what San Francisco and Los Angeles have done, especially global port cities.

Next we turn to a potential complaint about environmental history from a teacher’s point of view: Environmental history is too depressing for young people to be exposed to. This is what has recently been termed a “declensionist” critique. The problem is that “things are always in decline” and that we see the same old thing over and over again. Therefore students don’t like it because it is depressing.

Now we will proceed to demolish this critique.

1. There are lots of things that are way more depressing than environmental history: genocide, Middle Eastern politics, etc. You don’t not teach things because they are depressing.

2. Secondly, it doesn’t have to be all that depressing. There are lots of things in environmental history that give positive signs. Examples:

Example #1: 15–20 years ago, people who were environmentally attuned were focused on the dangers of ozone layer and its depletion. This was bad across the board for the web of human life. The release of chlorofluorocarbons caused a thinning of this shield and its depletion became very clear in the 1980s (even to skeptics). However, by 1987, most countries had signed thetreal protocol to reduce chlorofluorocarbon production and emissions to the atmosphere. After initial skepticism, Dupont and other producers quickly found plenty of alternatives. Consequently, the release of substances nose-dived and the ozone shield has begun to reconstitute itself. In 50–70 years barring unforeseen consequences it will be as robust as it was 100 years ago.

Example #2: The coal-burning cities of the Midwest and the East coast in the 1940s were not so fun or healthy. These cities had high levels of coal dust, sulfur dioxide, and pollution everywhere. This has all changed. This cleaning was partly a result of fuel substitutions, but it was also a result of concerted political action and regulation making highly sulfurous coal impractical as a routine fuel, with extremely beneficial consequences for air quality in the Northeast quadrant of the United States.

Example #3: Vehicle emissions. Newly built cars today emit only about 10% of the pollutants that cars routinely spewed out 35 years ago. While there is ample room for further improvements, this is an amazing story, made possible by political pressure and rather inexpensive technological change.

Example #4: Urban sewage history. Urban sewage is something we don’t think about much today. But 100–130 years ago every city in the country had a public health problem related to urban sewage and waste. There were haphazard solutions, but they always endangered somebody. Someone was always drinking bacterially dangerous water. Now, this problem is nearly completely resolved. One specific example is Chicago, where humans and stockyards released awful offal into the Chicago River and into Lake Michigan. Some summers 5–10% of the population died from water-borne infections. At first, city fathers sought out temporary solutions. Next, they began thinking big. First they created a big straw that drew water from further out into the lake. Next, they hit on the idea of reversing the Chicago River. However, lawsuits from reversal of the Chicago River (1899–1900) led to the installation of new sewage-treatment equipment in 1912. During this time period, water purification technologies improved radically. Now, no city has 5–10% of its population die in a summer. This is not yet a global story, though it is a globalizing story.

Useful websites:

Forest History Society Environmental History database:
http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Research/databases.html
(35,000 items; searchable; images)

Europe:
http://eseh.org/resources/bibliography

Latin America (no longer maintained):
http://www.stanford.edu/group/LAEH/

Shawn Miller also has a book on the Environmental History of Latin America coming out soon.
Also coming out soon – William Beinart's big picture environmental history of the British Empire.
There’s also an awesome bibliography available from ORIAS.

Environmental History Journals:

– Environmental History (mainly US)
– Environment and History (Europe, etc.)
– Journal of World History (occasional articles)

The Earth and its Peoples (World history Textbook) has a lot of environmental history.

Why you should bother to teach this (donning of the missionary hat):

Factors of Increase table (in last century):

Population: 4
Urban proportion: 3
Urban population: 13
World Economy: 14
Industrial Output: 40
Energy use: 13
Coal Production: 7
Copper production: 15
CO2 emissions: 17
SO2 emissions: 13
Lead emission: 8
Freshwater use: 9
Marine fish catch: 35
Cattle population: 4
Pig population: 9
Sheep population: 1.8
Goat population: 5
Horse population: 1.1
Blue whale population: 0.0025
Bird, mammal species: 0.99 (may be unreliable)
Cropland: 2
Irrigated area: 5
Pasture area: 1.8
Forest area: 0.8

There are a lot of problems with these numbers. For example, there are lots of methodological questions about deforestation and how it is measured, reforestation (which has been carried out poorly on a global scale) and desertification (also hard to quantify).

But regardless of their imprecision, these numbers convey the right general sense: the last hundred years was a time of enormous environmental turbulence, a matter about which we should educate the young. And we should do it in the context of history courses, because the environmental story is intimately linked with the more conventional stuff of history—the economic, political, social and intellectual evolutions of recent times.

Next we turn to issues for teaching.

This is something that is gradual. This week notwithstanding, phenomena such as climate change are hard to see/feel. Also, a lot of this stuff isn’t locally visible. Deforestation doesn’t happen in your town. The growth of domesticated animals doesn’t happen in urban centers, perhaps even in California. One person would have to pay close attention to the world around them and live hundreds of years before they could experience enough to become attuned to the transformations that are going on around us. Therefore we need environmental history to help us deal with these trends and give us traction on their study.

The chronology of Industrial Revolution happens differently in different places. Consequently, the effects on demand for natural resources can be intense in hotspots (Southern China today) while abating in other regions (Scottish lowlands). Looking globally we start to get a real sense of how these trends work over time.

Side note: There is plenty of work on the relationship between domestic animal numbers and overgrazing => leading to desertification etc.: the Grange Wars, Northern China, West African Sahel.

Ways to teach this:

1. Maps of Time by David Christian. Big history is one of the best ways to put together the environment and human history. Big history nests human history within the biosphere, which is nested within earth history, within the history of the solar system, and within the history of the universe (cosmosphere). This is quite a challenge for any single instructor, although there are people who do it. (Check out the "History of the World in Seven Minutes" video on the History For Us All website: http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/dev/default.htm for one quick way to introduce the big history idea to students.)

2. For a more manageable approach one can use an environmentally themed human history—“From Gilgamesh to Al Gore.” As an historian first this can be difficult. (Professor McNeill would be reluctant to privilege environmental history first, unless students have other avenues to studying world history.)

3. Environmental history as a centerpiece of a certain slice of time. An example is John Richards, The Unending Frontier 1500–1800. This approach would allow teachers to deviate into environmental history during the study of the early modern period.

4. Slice of subject. Cities are a great example of this. Environmental history comes alive by looking at challenges for urban world history in environmental terms. There is some great work of this nature on some cities, such as Mexico City—more on this to come.

Finally, there are environmental history aspects to just about any unit you can think of, so teachers can stick it in where they see fit. But, remember the need to sensitize students to the linked nature of humans and their environment and how these relationships have changed over time.

Three city stories over different time periods:

Tenochtitlan and Mexico City, c. 1500 to 2000: The city that is now Mexico City evolved from an island on a lake separated by causeways (used less for transportation and more for separating the lake environment) to a place where water must be brought from 150 km away. The lake was drained, especially in the 19th century, pollution increased, and population skyrocketed to become, by some accounts, the biggest city in the world (16–20 million people) with acute environmental problems. This is a great story that transcends the pre-Columbian era to the present.

Another story: The effects of 50 years of irrigation on the Aral Sea. Over the past 50 years, the Aral Sea has experienced 80% volume reduction and a more than doubling of salinity. This has caused devastation of fisheries and local climate change. It has also created a range of human health and environmental problems. It was largely Cold War policies that led to strangulation and desiccation of the Aral Sea, combined with the tenets communist ideology that promoted the triumph of man over nature as a way of correcting nature’s flaws.

Five days in the history of London: Over the course of five days in December 1952, England saw the worst episode of London fog, which killed 4000 people in a week. Looking back, scholars can clearly see how levels of smoke and sulfur dioxide spiked and deaths followed.

These are three stories that we see over radically different time frames and that show interesting patterns of humans’ interaction with their environments. Any of these stories could be added to a curriculum in a variety of ways.

Recap: Environmental history has gaps. Well-documented classical situations have accessible info, but there huge gaps in pre-colonial SE Asia, Africa, and the pre-Columbian new world. Modern history is better documented, with the exception of places like Russia and Middle East. That said, there are still plenty of environmental history stories for nearly every unit, with important consequences.

Q and A:

Q:  Are there US examples of the London Fog?
A:  The worst US fog in history is chronicled in the book When Smoke Ran Like Water, by Devra Davis, concerning Donora, a small town outside Pittsburgh. This book also has info on other deadly fogs. While the order of magnitude was smaller (30–40 deaths) it was also a much smaller town.

Q:   Acid Rain?
A:  Acid rain actually hasn’t been that bad from a human health point of view. That said, the food web, especially in the Northeastern United States, is often adversely affected. Scientists also believe that acid deposition may cause problems for forests, especially conifers. This is a bigger problem in Central and Eastern Europe than in the US. Acid Rain also causes corrosion problems for buildings and monuments made of stone.

Q:  What are areas to see effects other than deaths? Need statistics to see relevance to today’s society, etc., as in the Hanford example in chapter handout (Michele Gerber’s On the Home Front is a good study of Hanford). In many ways teaching them to see and look for cause and effect is important for critical thinking.
A:  Deaths are a good stark measuring rod. One can also measure damages in terms of less severe human health effects: days lost to sickness, dollar terms (damages to health and property); onecan also move away from human impacts and look at other species (local extinctions or extinctions) or statistics about climate change, deforestation, etc. Relating it to the living experience of human beings is more difficult. This is where cultural and intellectual Environmental History may be useful and helpful—Barry Lopez for example. Find writing about environment changes in own time and place.

Q:  I want to ask about empire building and the transferring of environmental problems from one place to another. For example in the US today we’re just transferring dirty industries elsewhere. Have other civilizations done this? Second, in terms of education, we’re learning about the US and Europe, but what about in the developing world?
A:  Richard P. Tucker’s Insatiable Appetite deals with the economic imperialism of the United States. It looks at the environmental relationship between US society and economy and the tropics. Have other states and empires done this? Yes. This is a time-honored tradition that has only become more conspicuous in the industrial age. You could see it on the frontiers of the Han Empire or theRoman Empire, and in the British Empire and its coal mining. Costs of running an imperial policy were in part abated by shunting them to the imperial frontier. Second part: It is sometimes claimed that you have to be rich before you can care about the environment. However, look at polling data. The populations who are most anxious are those who live poor and rural lives and rely on their environment for their livelihood. Most concerned citizens are actually in India, Peru, etc., not in Germany or Canada.

Elam — The Forgotten Civilization of the Near East: A Case Study of Environmental Impact
Javier Alvarez-Mon
(Summarized by Bartholomew Watson)

The ancient civilizations of Iran are not heavily studied for several reasons. First, the instability in the region politically makes travel and extended research difficult. Second, since the Iranian revolution the borders have been closed to all but a handful of scholars. Therefore, we are lucky to have the little research we do and the discussion today will feature a lot of new unpublished material.

Our discussion will use two case studies to show how archaeology and anthropology look at the interaction between humans and their environment. These two case studies are the urban and nomadic landscapes of Elam, and we will focus on aspects of adaptation to the natural environment.

Everyone knows about the Fertile Crescent, the Indus valley, and the civilization of ancient China. But nobody really looks at ancient Elam. However, the case of Elam can be highly instructive as it combines the civilization of the plains and that of the mountains, straddling both terrains over a wide swath of what is modern Iran. When people think of Ancient Iran, they normally think of Persepolis and the Persian Empire. People informed on the subject may think of the other capital of the Persian Empire in Susa. But before the Persians, Susa was also the capital of the Elamite Empire. Today we’re going to look at ancient Susa, Tchoga Zanbil, and Izeh/Malamir/Kurangun, the last two of which are in the Zagros Mountains.

Susa is on the Susiana Plain, an extension of the Mesopotamian plain and Northeast of Uruk. It is perhaps the oldest and longest used settlement of all time, as it was an active urban center between ca. 4200 B.C.E. and 1200 C.E.. Susa is located on the Shaur River and the Kharkhe River. In the Bible it is known as the city of Shusam or the city of Ester. The modern day name Susana has been said to mean “the one who comes from Susa.”

More recently the town has disappeared into obscurity. In 1870 there was little in Susa but a mosque known as the Mosque of Daniel, where the Prophet Daniel was supposedly buried. However, the forgotten town also had a mound, a completely artificial hill looming over the valley. Before excavation in the 19th century, the mound was about 35 meters over the surrounding plain—that is, 35 meters of artificial settlement built up over the centuries. The town has been rebuilt up over the past century and now surrounds the mound. There is also a castle, Le Chateau de Suse, built by the French when they went to Susa to dig in the 1800s. The French saw a region occupied by “dangerous Arabian tribes” and they wanted to get as many archaeological items out of the mound as quickly as possible. To help with protection they built a castle to protect the goodies. Due to the Iranian revolution the castle was sealed from 1979 until 2003, when foreign scholars were allowed back in. Today the city is completely unlike the sleepy mosque town of 1870. The urban sprawl has encroached upon and begun to surround the old mound, which creates a huge problem for those who want to protect Susa and its artifacts through UNESCO. Throughout the mound you see remnants from different time periods. In many ways, the mound is like sedimentary rock, each level representing another level of history. The levels go down for centuries.

The civilization of Elam had a unique form of writing and language: Elamite. Elamite is (like Basque) unrelated to any other known language. Elam also had a complex system of seals, commerce, and diplomacy. Culture and the arts flourished and they produced incredible vases with clay of spectacular quality. One example of their art is the Elamite funerary terracotta heads (we see some from CA 1350 B.C.E.). These have not been thoroughly studied, and scholars know little more than that they were placed next to bodies. Whether they represent the dead or friends and relatives is purely speculative. The art also included numerous images from daily life (sexual images are common).

Now we will turn to areas of excavation within Susa, specifically the Ville Royale A. Why look there? The Ville Royale A is a wonderful example of how people lived and how they build their houses. Within the Ville, the Temti Wartash “Rabibi” House stands out. In the house we find a courtyard bordered by a reception hall, two of the most important spaces in any ancient building in a hot dry climate.

In cold climates you want to minimize wind and maximize sun while in hot climates you want the opposite, opting instead to maximize wind and minimize sun. We can see these goals played out in the vernacular architecture of Urban Susa as builders learned over time from lessons of past. Most importantly, urban planning evolved to:

1. Protect against heat by minimizing the sun (or maximizing shadows); and
2. Provide adequate cooling by maximizing natural ventilation to enable heat loss.

Within towns this planning focused on clustering buildings, building narrow streets and minimizing openings in walls. Individual houses builders sought optimal orientation with regard to the sun and the prevailing wind, using courtyards as primary cooling systems (generate ventilations), curved roofs (barrel vaults of domed roofs), and air vents. Susa is set up extremely well to maximize these conditions, a practice we see carried on today in modern towns.

Temti-Wartash was the king’s chamberlain, a rich and powerful man who had commercial links as far away as modern-day Bahrain. This means he had the money to build a house to meet the specifications laid down above. When building a house in ancient Susa, the first thing you needed was a courtyard; next, you needed a reception hall. Everything else in the building was attached to and flowed from these two structures. Positions among the other rooms were not fixed and residents would move within the house during the year according to the weather, putting the bedroom in the coolest place.

Professor Alvarez-Mon has developed a new theory on the courtyard/reception-hall relationship. First, it is important to note the two towers at the end of the reception hall that have vents that create difference in pressure. Constructing a mud-brick vault is not easy. The largest ancient vault (Haft Tappeh, Tepti-Ahar Tomb, ca. 1350 B.C.E. ) was only 4.5 meters across. Vaults had to be built out slowly from a supporting wall; without big vaults, cooling could be difficult. This turns us back to the wind-towers and their role in natural ventilation. These structures use both the Bernoulli principle and the rule of physics that cool air falls and hot air rises. Since air that goes below moves faster than the air on top (a principle made use of in airplane flight), when the wind reaches the floor it has been cooled. This allows a type of natural air-conditioning, constantly bringing faster-moving cool air down into the room.

We still see this style of architecture throughout the Middle East and there are wind-towers from Egypt to Pakistan. Simply put, the basic idea is to have a chimney that opens up to the main prevailing wind. For a long time scholars have struggled to identify how this technology arose and evolved. Seeing similar structures in the reception hall of the Temti-Wartash tells us that this technology dates back at least to the Elamite civilization.

Now we go from the city of Susa to the mountains, to look at the nomads in the Zagros mountains above Susa. It is hard to study the lifestyle of nomads and other nomadic people. They leave little behind and the only historical records we have are from the city dwellers, who are always biased against them (“they come and take our cattle; they don’t bury their dead; they don’t have gods”).

A lot of nomadic civilizations did not survive the cruel twists of history, and scholars have lost sight of them. Some, like the Israelites, survived and settled. Others still remain nomadic groups like those in modern-day Iran—we see a migration of Lurs near Kazerun, who move from summer pastures in the highlands to winter pastures in the lowlands. Actually, Iran still has the largest population of nomadic people in the world.

In Susa there existed a symbiotic relationships between nomads and settlers. They were not simply separate groups; rather, there existed close relationships involving networks and alliances. In ancient Iran, the fully nomadic elements of the population inhabited the Southwest of Iran. Semi-nomadic life was the form of subsistence, and nearly everyone did some. The tribes that were sedentary and settled in places like Susa were the exception.

If nomads are hard to study, how can we bring them into a classroom? One way is to show an incredible movie called Grass, which was made by the people who made King Kong! The movie follows a large nomadic tribe (more than 50,000 people) with millions of sheep and goat, crossing rivers and moving into the mountains looking for summer pastures and grass.

“And the grass dried up. And without grass their flocks and herds must die. And upon these animals depended both the shelter and food of the race—life itself. So seeking grass, this barbarian horde, carrying all its worldly goods, swept up out of the sun-baked plain of Arbistan, swam a broad and icy river.”

Scenes involving crossing rivers are indicative of how tribes work. Elders show others how to cross and where it is safe. They use inflated goatskins to float since they can’t swim. Ingeniously, since the current is strong, they cross at a bend in river and use the current to get taken across.

For more information on the nomads of modern-day Iran you can go to the following websites:

www.Qashqai.net
www.Iranian.com/traveler/2003/january/migration/index.html

Unfortunately for those who admire this beautiful way of life the numbers of nomads are dwindling and elements of the population are beginning to settle, partially to accommodate the elderly. This creates further problems, as the type of knowledge described above may not be passed on as fluidly, reducing future nomadism.

For more clues on the lives of the ancient Elamite nomads we will now look at the mountain valleys were the Qashqai found their grass. These valleys provide clues as to how we can document nomads that don’t build houses. How can we bring them into history? We know they play a big role but need to know what it is.

Why were these people so important? Well, one reason people think the Persians were so successful was their domestication of the horse. They were better at this than anyone else of that time and were able to use the horse for war in new and devastating ways. Why were they so successful? Alfalfa from the mountains is a great horse feed and the nomads in the mountains proved adept at working with horses in new ways. We see a similar effectiveness later when the nomadic Mongol hordes descend upon Europe.

We now turn to the Izeh/Malamir Plain. This was a perfect place to raise horses, to live as a nomadic people. Why? Water collects in the center of the valley when it rains. So how can we find evidence of people in these places?

First we can look for buildings. While nomads didn’t build many permanent structures they did build temples and cemeteries. Cemeteries are especially good to look for as nomads usual bury all their dead in the same place. Second, we can look at images on cliffs or similar reliefs. In order to understand these things, we need not only to see the art in the images, but also to go there and understand the place, the image’s relationship with its place and the people that lived there. Why did they select this location here and not that one there?

We find a lot of these images in caves above the valley. In one we see the Elamite Royal Family. The royal figures are at the entrance positioned so as to look into the cave. Why? That is where water comes out and flows to the lake. This makes it sacred.

Across the valley, near a hunting ground (closely tied to religious rituals involving the hunt) we find more cliff images. These tell story of a king around 1200 B.C.E. and show the kill from the hunt and the sacrifice. After a successful hunt on a particular feast day the Elamite nomads would have a banquet.

Finally, we leave the mountains and turn to Kurangun: the town furthest to the southeast in the Elamite empire. Kurangun was a dual capital with Susa, much like Persepolis was for the Persians. Dual centers of power similar to those of the Persian Empire allowed the Elamites more easily to control all areas of their realm. Kurangun is situated on a hill above an enormous river plain. What do we find there? We find a relief-carved staircase going down to a platform with more reliefs. One section of the images was added 400 years after the first main relief, showing the continued importance of the site. In the images we see a god and a goddess sitting on thrones (the god on a serpent throne—the serpent being a good, benign animal). The god holds a vase from which water comes out to reach the Elamite royalty, who gratefully accept this water of life. Down below the cliff you can see the river and another platform with carved fish. The whole relief can be thought of as a 3D representation of gods passing water down to kings and to the water down below. Also in the area archaeologists have found Elamite seals—images used in transactions. Often these seals depict Elamite kings on their serpent thrones.

In conclusion, examination of these sites starts to reveal how this combination of mountain cities and lowland settlement created the dynamic Elamite civilization.

Q and A:  

Q:  Are the Elamites similar to the Hittites?
A:  The Hittites were around the 2nd millennium, because they collapsed around 1200 B.C.E.. They were in Anatolia. The Elamites were around much longer, from 4500 B.C.E. to 600 B.C.E., when they were crushed by the Persians. Are they the same? No, just one more civilization. What made the Elamite culture distinct was the mountains. That’s what separates them from the Mesopotamians.

The mountain environment may also change the leadership structure. Nomadic leaders are often very powerful because they have knowledge of nature, astronomy, movements of water, tides and currents. Sometimes in teaching history this link is left out. One sad note about the nomads: now that there are bridges and motorcycles, the natural lore traditionally passed down by the elderly is no longer necessary, decreasing their importance and weakening the social structure.

Q:  What’s the latest theory on the Aryans coming into this valley and did they bring horses?
A:  Two big branches of Aryans came from central Asia, one going into Iran and the other into India; but the Elamites were there earlier.

Q:  What is an Elamite? How do you define the term? How many groups were there and how many languages were there?
A:  Elamite is a term from the Mesopotamians, though the word in their language is different, meaning highland people. There were many peoples and languages. The Persians came in 1200 B.C.E. and settled little by little into Elamite territory. Elamites had no way of keeping them out. The dynamics of this are very interesting. Names and how people identify slowly change even if people don’t. With names one can start to see the changes, the dominance of culture.

Some final thoughts to ponder: It is possible that the most powerful movement in history is that of migration. This means we have to think about civilizations in this area in terms of their interaction as opposed to simply their individuality. These groups did interact a lot and it is important to think about that.

Man, Nature and the Environment in the Middle Ages
Jarbel Rodriguez
(Summarized by Bartholomew Watson)

This talk will hopefully serve as an overview of Medieval Europe and its interaction with Environmental History, and we’ll start with the introduction of fairy tales.

Fairy Tales. . . . Now, you might be thinking, “Why start with fairy tales?”

First, most fairy tales have medieval origins. Additionally, many of them contain lessons about how medieval people interacted with their environment. For example:

1. Little Red Riding Hood: Here we see the medieval view of the environment as a scary, dangerous, and unforgiving place. It’s worth noting that in the medieval version, there’s no hunter and is everyone eaten.
2. Hansel and Gretel: Once again nature, symbolized by the forest, is a sign of danger. But here the situation is a little bit different. Hansel and Gretel are in the forest because they are taken there. Once there, they find a house made out of bread. This is a reminder that medieval people struggled with nature for food. A house of bread is a medieval peasant’s fantasy.
3. Snow White: Here we see another somewhat different version of the environment. While the forest is still dangerous (the hunter takes Snow White to the forest to kill her), in this case it ends up shielding her and providing for her. In other versions of this story, the groups that take in Snow White are not dwarves, they’re actually thieves who care for her, something we will come back to later.

Christianity, Ideological Beliefs, and Nature

To understand these stories, we need to first understand how the Bible and Christianity viewed nature. The notion of a transcendent god (not of this earth) relegates nature to the bottom. This means the ordering goes God, man, then nature and her creatures. Medieval preachers warned their flocks not to confuse the creations with the creator. Nature is not god, not divine. Additionally, anything that makes us turn our attention away from god is actually evil! Remember also that the inevitable end-game of Christianity is Armageddon, where nature gets destroyed, so it’s probably best not to get too attached.

Christian attitudes were further hardened in response to how much the pagan religions of Europe loved nature. Early Christianity wanted to adamantly differentiate itself from these religions. For pagans, nature was where the gods lived. Both the Romans and the Germans had hundreds of gods who dwelled in nature and for them and many of pagan practitioners gods were represented in and tied to nature.

An example was the sacred spring of Odin on an island in Northern Holland. Believers couldn’t even make noise around the spring for fear of offending the god. Thor had a sacred oak tree as well. The Romans had eleven gods involved with the process of harvesting corn (pointed out by the Christians sarcastically), but in this example we see a group well attuned to nature and its processes.

Unfortunately for nature, the logical step for many Christian missionaries was conversion through conflict with nature. Some time in early the 8th century missionaries set foot on island containing the Sacred Spring of Odin. Not only did they swim in the spring, they slaughtered the sacred cattle who lived nearby. Similarly in 723, St. Boniface cut down Thor’s oak tree, using the wood to make an altar in a new church. (Side note: It is possible that this is the origin of the Christmas tree. Some scholars believe that there was a small fir tree in the shade of the oak tree that Boniface used to represent the trinity to the pagans.)

Therefore, in order for Christianity to have a chance, nature in its most majestic form had to be destroyed. However, this doesn’t mean the Christianity is anti-environment. Nature was a frequent casualty in the centuries-long conflict with paganism, but the Bible suggests that man should be a steward of nature, not a dominator. We see this throughout the Bible. Noah saves the animals. God is pleased with nature (in Genesis). Additionally, early Christians often had a very “green” view of nature. In Ireland and Britain (perhaps drawing on older Celtic traditions) missionaries used nature to demonstrate laws and commune with nature (St. Patrick used the shamrock to represent the Trinity).

The Christian love of nature culminates in St. Francis of Assisi. Francis tried to pull mankind from its perceived dominance over creatures and create a democracy with nature. He is frequently depicted preaching to birds. St. Francis clearly didn’t feel dominance over nature, but saw himself as a part of nature. This is perhaps the best counter-example to the idea that ancient Christianity was anti-environment. In sum, we see the emergence of a nuanced and complicated relationship between Christianity and Nature.

Folklore also contributes to our understanding of medieval ideas about nature. In Beowulf, Grendel and his mother live in an impenetrable forest. In the Wild Hunt the forest is a scary place. In the 12th and 13th centuries, heretics were thought to live in forests. Again in the witch craze of the 15th century witches were concentrated in the forests. Finally, thieves and outlaws also lived in forests (cf. Snow White or Robin Hood).

One reason forests were considered so dangerous was that they were nature out of control. Nature in control and within boundaries was very different story. This sheds some light on the medieval fascination with gardens. First, think of the Garden of Eden. In medieval representations, the garden is actually bounded. In Dante, heaven is a fruitful plain, well manicured and beautiful. Gardens were places of joy and festivities, places for lovers and for trysts. The idea here was to appreciate nature, but only when it’s under the strict domination of man. This is why you never have a garden without a wall: you have to keep bad things out.

The Medieval Interaction with Nature

Now let us take a closer look at how man interacted with nature in the Middle Ages. Early medieval governments were weak and poorly organized. This limited their power and influence over nature. These weak kingdoms between 500 and 800 C.E. could never gain enough power to follow the path of colonization or expansion. Populations stayed low and constant conflict kept countries in balance.

This all changed with Charlemagne and the Carolingians. This period of prosperity began a cycle of more advanced agriculture and other advances in society’s control of nature. One example lay in more advanced field rotation. Before, farmers had kept two fields, one planted and one fallow, meaning that 50% of arable land was not in use at any given point. Around the early 700’s we see the innovation of the three-field system. Now farmers planted two fields, leaving only one fallow. This instantly meant that 66% of land could be used. More land use meant more food which meant larger populations.

A second type of innovation was a new type of horse collar. The classical horse collar sits around the horse’s neck, limiting how hard the horse can pull. The new horse collar lowered the pulling point to the chest. Horses could pull more weight, allowing the use of the heavy plow. Before this innovation, farmers could use the Roman plow, which works well in light soil, but couldn’t work in the black earth of northern central Europe. The heavy plow made it possible to cultivate new lands, planting virgin areas. The plow attacked the land with such violence that it completely altered the relationship of man with nature. This was a time when the population of Europe was exploding. In a short time, the population of Europe doubled and you can begin to imagine what a doubling of the population did to the environment.

Another item that was introduced for the first time in Western Europe was the water wheel. This innovation, which allowed medieval society to harness the power of streams and rivers, ushered in the first era of European mechanization. The invention also allowed them to process more natural resources and led to other alterations. Dams and other complementary devices changed the face of the land. The water wheel also spearheaded a bigger appetite for mechanization. One example of this was the paper mill, which went from non-existent to mechanized in a remarkably short time. Water wheels were ubiquitous by 11th century.

All of these innovations led to enormous environmental degradation. The medieval demand for lumber led to huge deforestation. By the medieval period, England was down to 15% of its original forests; Sherwood Forest, the famed haunt of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, covered only a quarter of its original size. Around 1300, France had 32 million acres of forest. Today, that number is actually higher, at 34 million acres.

Germany’s population was also exploding. The famous Black Forest and others like it were pushed to the edge of extinction. But it was not just dams and paper mills that were destroying forests; other industries were also using resources. One example was furnaces for iron. An iron furnace can destroy all the wood within a kilometer of the furnace in forty days. Considering the incredible number of furnaces burning incessantly day and night, satisfying their insatiable appetite required an amazing amount of wood. Wood was also a victim to the medieval building explosion. The average medieval cottage took twelve oak trees to build while it took 3944 oak trees to build Windsor Castle. A large gothic Cathedral could consume 1000 oak trees while even smaller cathedrals required around 500. Anyone who has traveled to Europe and seen the plethora of gothic-era churches can quickly sense the amazing implications for deforestation.

Finally, the negative popular attitudes toward the forests meant that little if any environment protection was done. There is a famous story of a shoemaker who cuts down twooak trees for a pair of shoes, a story of amazing waste that was probably celebrated at the time.

In addition to deforestation, medieval lungs and bodies also had to battle high levels of air pollution and other forms of pollution, both industrial and organic. Animal husbandry and its associated waste found its way into water sources. Air pollution from carpentry and furnaces clogged lungs. We can read accounts from as early as 1288 in London concercing the “corruption of the city’s air.” Smithies also caused noise pollution. Noise-addled neighbors left significant evidence of their activities in complaining prose and poetry.

The rivers and waterways also experienced lots of water pollution from slaughtering and tanneries. What do you do with a carcass after butchering? The medieval solution was to throw it in the river! This meant in Paris alone about 250,000 heads of animals slaughtered each year found their way into the Seine, causing a horrible crisis. Similar problems occurred along the Thames, making it the poor part of town. Numerous city decrees were issued to move butchers downstream, but that simply moves the problem. Tanners were even worse. After finishing their work they simply dumped chemicals (such as lime) into water downstream. In 1425 the ale-brewers in Essex accused the tanners of corrupting water for beer (and you do not want to mess with a city’s supply of beer).

Nature Strikes Back

Not surprisingly, nature struck back. Medieval practices were simply not sustainable. By 1300, some have argued that medieval Europe was reaching a Malthusian limit, where a society is outstripping its resources faster than they can be replenished. When such a limit is reached, nature reacts and does so by bringing the population down. It responds with famine, war (the competition for scarce resources), and disease. After a 13th century of environmental destruction, the 14th century was a nightmare of human misery.

First, a larger population meant people were cultivating poorer lands, bringing crop yields down. During the time, crop yields often measured 3:1. For comparison, modern farmers often get crop yields of 200–300:1. Even early accounts of the fertile crescent describe crop yields of 15–20:1. As the population grew, more and more land came under cultivation, including marginal lands. Farmers also began to plant on land previously used for animals, while the animals were slaughtered when farmers were unable to feed them. At first this means an ample supply of meat. However, in the long run it meant less dairy and less manure for fertilizer. Consequently, by the early 14th century, society was in a precarious balance. Then the tip happened.

What people didn’t realize was that they had actually been living in a fertile time, a time of plenty, spurred by a global warming trend of around 2 degrees. This warming trend was followed by the Little Ice Age (very unlikely that either of these was caused by humans). It didn’t take long before the natural disasters begin adding up. From 1315 to 1322 Europe saw wrecked harvests and massive famine. The art of the time depicted Death riding a lion, as famine points to her hungry mouth. By the time it abated about 10% of the population of Northern Europe (3 million people) had died. The legacy lasted for years in stories (Hansel and Gretel) and in the weakened bodies of those who lived through it (especially children). Those who don’t get enough food in their childhood have a compromised immune system all their lives. This group would have been the backbone of European society in the 1340s.

Such a weakened society was in no way ready for the onslaught of the Black Death.

The Black Death was the single greatest natural disaster in history of Eurasia. In 2 years, 1/3 to 1/2 of population was killed. Similar death tolls were recorded across Asia. The disease moved along trade-routes and coupled with the Mongol incursion the disease was connected by roads with different environmental regions. The toll certainly ran higher due to environmental reasons: immune problems, industrial pollution, sanitary conditions of urban centers. Contemporaries described the spread of the disease in terms of wells and streams being poisoned and noxious air. This is not at all surprising given the horrible environmental conditions at the time. Fumes and noxious odors from furnaces would have exacerbated pneumonic forms of disease—and the disease was attacking an already weakened population.

(Side note: Scholars today question whether the Black Death was plague or another disease. Reasons for this include that there was no discernible rat die-off, that the plague first hit in a bad month for fleas, and that while modern plague doesn’t grant immunity, the Black Death did.)

Ironically, the disasters that befell Europe in the 14th century may have had positive long-term effects. Resources were allowed to recover and the Europe that recovered was healthier and hopefully wiser. Population growth was checked in the short run and people were forced to rethink society. You see a flowering in post–Black Death society that included the renaissance, humanism, and a questioning of the Church in the reformation. Europe became efficient. Automation increased and serfdom was abolished. However, when we see what is happening today, perhaps the lessons haven’t been learned as fully as they should have been.

Rituals of Embedded Ecologies in India
Vijaya R. Nagarajan
(Summarized by Bartholomew Watson)

After college, Professor Nagarajan worked for a non-profit involved in cleaning up the Ganges. This project led to her ask a lot of questions about culture, religion, and ecology. Over the last twenty years, this multitude of questions has led to a tighter research focus: how does one understand ecological knowledge that is embedded in non-ecological forms, including imaginative, cultural, and literary? How do we look for indigenous concepts and categories without assuming an imposed Western view on ecology?

Today, were going to look at this question through a particular ritual carried out by women every morning to wake up the sun. In Southern India, this is called the kolam. Forms of this have been carried out all over the world. Outside of India we see similar rituals in Navajo sand paintings, Tibetan sand paintings, in Ancient Britain and Wales (kaum), in Angola (lusona) and in rituals still performed by the Pennsylvania Dutch.

The main area of focus for this presentation is Tamil Nadu in Southern India. Tamil Nadu means “Land of the Tamils.” Tamil Nadu is a place where this form of the kolam is carried out on a daily basis, differentiating it from elsewhere in India, where it is usually performed only in conjunction with specific festivals, rather than on a daily basis.

In order to understand this ritual in its context we will first want to trace how culture and ecology began in South Asia and try to trace them up to today.

Looking at artifacts of the region we commonly find seals depicting the seven virgin goddesses; there is also the example of Kamadhenu (a divine cow who was believed to be the mother of all cows and could grant wishes). Kamadhenu was half human and half cow, a mixing of species that is typical of Hindu mythology. Another image shown by Professor Nagarajan is that of a goddess inside a tree who is being prayed to. We see how gods were truly viewed as a part of the natural environment.

This artifact being shown was from Mohenjo-daro, built during the Indus Valley Civilization. This civilization had one of the first water-disposal and water-treatment systems in the world. Today you can still see an 8th-century Buddhist stupa. This region was at the forefront of water technology. Excavations have revealed a great bath in the center of the site. Bathing was very important as were getting rid of waste and water flow. Baths were communal. Innumerable water tanks from centuries past are still used today as bathing places in Southern India.

Sites like Mohenjo-daro had what were essentially bathrooms. They included drains that helped sewage flow in a path out of the city. Amazingly, this ancient sites were in many ways ahead of many Indian households today.

Another artifact shown was a clay pot covered with birds. This raises interesting questions about nature in art. What are the different motifs of species? Are some endangered or are they extinct? Tracing the naming of birds has never really been done but could reveal interesting findings about societal perceptions of nature and its role in cultural practice.

Next we see a 6th-century C.E. shore temple. This is an interesting piece in the history of Indian architecture, since the earliest temples were actually on the insides of mountains. This is the first evidence of the temples themselves emerging from the caves and having its own structure. This temple is in South India.

(Side note: In this area there has recently occurred a huge transformation of the fishing ecology. Deforestation has limited the number of trees available forcing residents to switch from traditional catamarans to plastic boats.)

These water sites all raise interesting questions surrounding the notion of the commons. How do we hold common property, space, property, resources, and sites in a society? How do we hold them together as a community, without going through a legal structure? What were the “customary practices/structures” that ran parallel to legal structures? For example, in many Indian villages there are sites (such as fields) that would defer to marginal groups (like widows) during certain periods of the year. What’s happened now with ritual bath structures, as structures get withdrawn and private options emerge, is that public spaces get de-patronized. It used to be that every such space had a role and towns threw festivals around these spaces. Unfortunately there is not a lot of research on the symbolism, management, and ritual management of these common water structures.

In doing such research, it is imperative to think about how to study these issues without conflicting with the rigidities of the past. Many of these topics are volatile with residents and you don’t want to be blind to the sensitive politics of these issues.

Another narrative tying together society and the environment concerns Bhudevi (or Bhuma-devi?), the earth goddess. Every time Vishnu takes on one of his incarnations as a human, it is because the earth goddess has cried out for help. The cries may come for a variety of reasons relating to the evil of the earth, but they are often tied to man’s over-consumption of resources, overpopulation, famine, or other society-driven depletions of nature. The ostensible rationale is often that a king has gotten too arrogant, but more often it is really a political economy of natural resources question. Clearly, the redistribution of resources has long been tied to the spirituality of India. The incarnations of Vishnu are not always kingly, and involve a variety of castes, including Vishnu milking the cow.

The Kolam

The kolam consists of wet rice-flour drawings in front of a shrine. It symbolizes the creation of sacred space and the idea is that it is temporary. This creates a sense of intermittent sacrality utilizing a space that is made for temporary inhabitation of the divinity but also functions in other ways. For example the kolam is done in front of the house, but then two hours later it disappears as it is walked over.

Another female ritual is done when there is a crisis, and ritualizes the suffering that one or more women is going through. This particular ritual takes a lot of women and resources and happens only at bad times (crises of health or family). Men are excluded, which is a complicated issue. In talking about the ritual roles of men and women some people don’t see or feel an imbalance, but rather see women’s life as separate and full from a structural level. From this point of view it would be absurd to copy the male ritual life and do a female version. Do we privilege the male ritual life when we want to copy it? In the West we’ve gotten a very slanted view of these questions, primarily because research into these questions is based on men talking to men.

During a certain harvest festival, the pongal, the kolam becomes central as a public performative art form, in which the whole town participates. This festival simulates the bounty of the harvest “boiling over” and there are pots in front of everyone’s house, with pots literally boiling over, acting out the fullness that everyone has. This is an agricultural festival in which cows and bulls are decorated and paraded around. There is a recent book entitled Rice as Self, a concept that is nowhere more true than in Southern India. Rice is a reminder of the self and the community, and we can look at this festival to see how rice is enacted and performed.

There are hundreds of reasons why the kolam is done, but one is that the first goal of the household is to feed a thousand souls, and when you can’t feed 1000 women’s souls, animals can work in there place. This means that during this festival, animals appear from everywhere (birds, worms, insects, rats) to consume the rice flour. So the kolam is edible art, meant to be consumed. For something that takes so long to build, the consumption happens fairly quickly.

Women’s desires are also embedded within the drawings. The kolam is also meant to be stepped on, part of the community. Many kolams incorporate the lotus flower, which is symbolic of the goddess Lakshmi. Often the kolam entails a competition to see who has done it best. There are millions upon millions of designs, yet every patterning has a symbolic order. Women have their own kolam notebooks in which they practice for the next morning. Most women carry one around with them and will copy ones they see on the street that they haven’t seen or that they like. The kolam has traditionally been a totally oral knowledge, though this is beginning to change. In the past, it took 6–12 years (like a Ph.D.) for girls working 3–4 hours a day to acquire this knowledge. However, the intensity of globalization right now has challenged this a bit of late.

From the Tamil lexicon we find lots of definitions of the kolam. Play and sport is the last one, which is interesting as we don’t often think of ecological knowledge in this way. Recently, kolam making has become a competition or a race (one of which is sponsored by the Gandhi foundation and the Colgate Corporation. When you think kolam, think morning teeth, and Colgate whiteness!).

There has been a lot of research on metaphors of kingdom and the temple as a palace. In this sense, the king is the household of the kingdom; in another, the woman of the kingdom, fulfilling a sacred role for all his subjects.

Places such as the seashore can also be sites of sacrality. Families often take pilgrimages to these places in the way we take family vacations. These not only serve as spiritual journeys, they also serve to bring extended families together.

We also see nature in the role of animals in urban life. For example, farmers let cows let loose to forage in urban neighborhoods, leaving them and then going home. These animals are not pets and are not trapped in the house. While you can live in tunnels of modernity without seeing the rest, things like cows in the streets still bring back old ways in many places. There is equal graying of the rural landscapes. Indians have such a desire to swim in the heights of globalized modernity and while all of the country’s is energy going to that, the rest is getting forgotten for the moment. Often we find the old and very young left behind in villages; villages that used to be self-functioning with their own center of residence/balance, but now the balance is out of whack as people rush to the cities. Additionally, there exist numerous efforts to bring high tech into rural areas. That doesn’t mean that people can’t be creative on how to mix tradition and modernity. The presence of animals as semi-autonomous beings is one way.

Animals also play a prominent role in the spiritual life of India temples. Many temples of medium or large scale have temple elephants (which they’ll rent out to smaller temples). Mahouts bathe these elephants with river stones for hours and after they are bathed, the forehead is decorated. Interestingly there is a lot of similarity between these forehead marks and the kolam.

Three important goddesses:

Lakshmi
Bhudevi
Mudevi: As part of the kolam, you want to banish this goddess (the goddess of laziness) in the morning. However, a balance is created at night when alertness is no longer needed and Mudevi is welcomed back.

Once in a while the kolam goes on the wall. The kolam is not, however, something that people feel a need to hold on to. Kolams in front of houses are erased by walking, bikes, animals, etc. People don’t feel any need to hold onto even special kolams as they can remake them tomorrow.

Dot kolams, a particular kind of kolam, involve one continuous line. This particular geometric pattern has interested mathematicians, and the kolam is used to represent certain principles in some math texts. The lines can be bounded or unbounded.

Square kolams are another type of kolam that often represent water tanks, earning them the alternative name of “water tank kolams.” We see a particular image that expands into the lotus flower. This can conjure up the idea of the infinite. A kolam can be seen as threads of imagination from one spot and one time, though there’s always one throughout eternity. Hence a kolam is layered much of like a lotus flower, but with infinite folds. Finally, many kolams have brother/kinship kolams so they are not lonely.

All the parts of the harvest are tied into the kolam.

One can often tell how many daughters are in the house by how many kolams are in front of the house. These designs can take anywhere from three minutes to five hours.

In one non-electrified village Professor Nagarajan visited, the women started working on their kolams at midnight, using kerosene lamps. The creation of the kolam amounts to something almost like a dance. In this way the kolam can be viewed as the leftover traces from choreographed movements through space. In the opposite direction, the kolam has been incorporated into dance as well. In representing the elaboration of different forms of women the kolam is worked into female dances as a part of the choreography.

Temples often have semi-permanent kolams created by many women working for many hours.

Modernity has definitely altered patterns of kolam creation, as one woman who was working on her kolam late in the morning confessed she got up late because she had been watching HBO movies late into the night.

Also, recently Kolam competitions have sprung up. These competitions have divisions by age groups and with lots of judgment criteria they serve to formalize the informal competition that has existed for ages.

Kolams serve to express emotions. One maker of some of the most beautiful kolams encountered by Professor Nagarajan was incredibly sad. Creating beauty to relieve hardship is a practice far more universal than the kolam.

Kolams may also be directed toward particular gods and goddess, a dot kolam to the smallpox goddess for instance.

One of the big themes of the kolam is fertility. If 10% of a population suffers from infertility, 100 million in India people suffer from this. Cradles hung as leftovers of prayer vows are left for married couples who want to start families. Snakes are auspicious and thought of in conjunction of trees (also sacred) and fertility.

Professor Nagarajan is now looking at trees a lot to search for more answers to the questions raised in this discussion. Specifically, what is the relation between conservation and the sacred? Just because nature is embedded in an artform doesn’t mean it’s going to be protected, and we also need to look at indigenous outlooks and categories toward nature to understand our own. Think back to the original tree goddess seen in the 6000-year-old seals and contrast that with the deforestation that happens throughout India.

There are environmental movements in India. The Chipko movement is a radical political movement started by Himalayan dwellers to save their forests.

Q and A:  

Q:  Colors?
A:  Traditionally the kolam was created with stone powders, earth etc. Now artificial colors provide more options.

Q:  Boys/Men?
A:  Sometimes they do it do, showing us that we shouldn’t over-rigidify. Hemaphrodites often do it on mornings they feel female. Another example was a man who felt he needed one and his wife was on vacation.

Q:  When there are no women in a household?
A:  Other women in the area will often do the kolam for the household. Before the telephone, the kolam was a way of communicating house news. Women wouldn’t do it when there was a death in the family, when a woman was menstruating. A lack of a kolam was therefore a sign of needing help. Muslim boys often do these for aesthetic artistic reasons. Today they often go to kolam competitions, which are becoming a secular space.

Q:  Time?
A:  Depends on the family, the day, etc. Long (5 hour) ones for festival days—like a Christmas tree. Though often they can be made quickly (5 minutes).

Q:  Tools?
A:  There are lots of pre-made designs tools. Mostly by hand, but people definitely use tools. Also, today there are plastic stick of kolams that can be bought.

Q:  How has globalization caused a diminishment of the kolam as a cultural icon and the loss of substance?
A:   It’s important not to essentialize tradition with a capital T. There has always been change in tradition, migrations, changes in importance, etc. Obviously things are changing in India today. But ecology itself also has to be de-essentialized. There are always multiple things going on. The more we can complicate issues, the easier it is for students to deal with the world as the way it is. Rhetoric of recovery of traditional forms is important—must be aware of who is doing the recovery.

Ideologies of Landscape in China:  Nature, Culture, Displacement, and Disappearance
William Schaefer
(Summarized by Bartholomew Watson)

Professor William Schaefer injected politics and culture back into the discussion of the environment. He started by pointing out the inseparability of culture and politics, a necessary disclaimer for his discussion about the cultural politics of landscape.

There are certain questions one might ask about landscapes when looking at a certain landscapes. The most important of these refer to the particular context in which the landscape takes place. But before turning to these questions, we must first answer a root question, “Why landscape?Why should we talk about landscape at all?”

To answer, a rough and ready definition may be helpful: A landscape is a cultural site (or sight) of human encounter and interaction with nature. Both how we situate a landscape and how we look at it are both important in our relationship in nature. The term “landscape” can be used in many ways. It can refer both to places (Yosemite, the SF bay, southern China) and to the representation of these places—such as landscape paintings, poetry, photography, or even music. What we want to think about is the relationship between landscape as an actual place and its representation in many forms.

Landscape may be a natural place, but it is a natural place invested with cultural meaning. While cultural meanings may not be obvious, they are always there. Think of the American “West”: immediately you think beyond the simple geographic features of the plains, the mountains, or the deserts. The term “West” also comes loaded with an ideology of the place—the Wild West, sparsely inhabited, contested among peoples. Here we see a natural place invested with cultural meaning. Any place has this, whether or not we acknowledge it. And the question of whether or not we do acknowledge it is important. Landscapes appear natural, but are often intensely cultural. The way we often think about nature serves to hide the culture that is actually there.

Thinking about landscape is in many ways thinking about the relationship between landscape and culture. In a natural landscape, culture is always at work. Because of this, landscape is a particularly strong idea, with resonance and meaning. People are willing to struggle, fight, and die over landscapes. This is not because they are purely natural, but because they help naturalize cultural notions.

Thus, we want to work not just with the notion of place, but also with the notion of displacement (think again of the American west and the displacement of Native Americans). In order to think about landscape, we often have to deal with the accompanying displacements since landscapes are often associated with political struggles and displacements. Currently, one of the most massive human migrations is the massive movement of Chinese displaced from the countryside (for a variety of reasons—the Three Rivers Gorge project is one example). Accordingly, there exists an accompanying nostalgia movement in China for the countryside, which is represented in landscapes.

Places themselves can also be displaced. Because of our various cultures and ideas, we may possess notions of a place/landscape and carry these to new places. For example, in 18th-century England, people possessed particular notions of what China looked liked, and represented these in Chinese landscape gardens. We may also try to reshape new landscapes using notions of other places. This involves displacing one landscape for another.

Another concept central to any discussion of landscape is disappearance. It is important to call attention to the way landscape involves disappearance as much as physical appearance. This can involve the disappearance of peoples who were initially there, the landscape’s “natural” appearance before people arrived, or any other alterations that involve removal.

Next we come to ideology. By ideology, we do not mean mere propaganda, but something more complex. Often we think of ideologies as “somebody else’s beliefs.” However, everyone has their own ideologies. Thise is not necessarily a good or a bad thing, but simply a set of ideas that appear so obvious that they go without saying. Ideologies are the ideas that guide our thinking without us ever having to think about them. For that reason they are so much more powerful and subtle than propaganda. Again, this is not necessarily a good or a bad thing.

One prevalent ideology in the 19th century that still exists today is an ideology of “progress.” Progress is not a good or bad idea on itself, but ideology may spur good or bad outcomes (progress often involves the removal of people that do not fit in its implicit scheme of things). But progress is not a notion that we have always had—progress appears recently in human history. Therefore, it is imperative to recognize that ideologies have a history. They can appear at certain times, change, emerge and disappear, all the while appearing “natural.” This leads us to suggest that ideologies and landscape share a peculiar similarity. They make what is historical, cultural and what is somewhat arbitrary to appear “natural.”

Finally we have arrived at the notion that landscape is not just a thing, but that it is something done to a place (for more on this see Landscape and Power, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell). Landscape is not just what it is, but what it is doing. It is not just what we bring to it, but what it brings to us.

Excerpt from Landscape and Power:

“Landscape and Power aims to… [propose a] comprehensive model that would ask not just what landscape ‘is’ or ‘means’ but what it does, how it works as a cultural practice. Landscape, we suggest, doesn’t merely signify or symbolize power relations; it is an instrument of cultural power, perhaps even n agent of power that is (or frequently represents itself as) independent of human intentions. Landscape as a cultural medium thus has a double role with respect to something like ideology: it naturalizes a cultural and social construction, representing an artificial world as if it were simply given and inevitable, and it also makes that representation operational by interpellating its beholder in some more or less determinate relation to its givenness as sight and site. Thus landscape (whether as urban or rural, artificial or natural) always greets us as space, as environment, as that within which ‘we’ (figured as ‘the figures’ in the landscape) find—or lose—ourselves.”

Mitchell goes on in his book to look primarily at English landscape (in painting and poetry). He proposes the notion that landscape is very important during periods of empire. During the period when Holland defines itself as an empire, landscape painting rises to prominence. There are similar corresponding movements in China and England.

The majority of our examples will refer to the landscape of China. China has a very long tradition (if not the longest) of representations of landscape in both poetry and painting. Given our discussion, it is not surprising then that this tradition has been an integral part of its cultural politics. Today this emerges prominently as a site for the struggle between urban and rural interests.

Before turning to examples, it is important to emphasize and consider three points:

1. Landscape as a verb, something that does something;
2. Landscape as something portable, displaceable, something that can travel; and
3. Landscape as something that incorporates not only the appearance of things, but the disappearance of things as well.

Examples

We start with a picture from Mitchell’s essay. It is an early 19th-century painting produced in New Zealand during the period of colonialism. It shows the Maori people within the landscape of New Zealand. There are a number of interesting things that immediately jump out. Most importantly, the painting is supposed to represent New Zealand. But, apart from people, it looks like a European landscape painting. There is a waterway that leads you back into the landscape, following a serpentine path (taken from European understanding of Chinese landscape painting). In general, European notions shape the entire landscape.

Next, we will cover texts from 809 to 812 written in China. These are known as youji (travel records) and they are short records of travels. (They’re not always short: one of the most beloved Chinese novels is in this style, Journey to the West, which has also been translated as Monkey). What is interesting about these is that they are not really about travel, but about the encounters with people and places during travel, pilgrimages, exiles, trade, etc. The one we will focus on begins primarily because of exile, specifically when Liu Zongyuan was exiled to Southern China, a place seen as wild and barbarian at the time.

Before continuing, it is important to note that the idea of this discussion is not to denigrate nature, as the journals obviously lovingly describe beautiful places, but to go beyond this simple physical description to look at the three points indicated above.

My first excursion to West Mountain:

This story begins with displacement and fear. The first thing Liu Zongyuan must do is find a specific place in this place he has been sent to. He wanders aimlessly, following springs back to their source, and gets happily drunk. After a time he believes he has been everywhere in this land, before realizing that he has not been to West Mountain. He realizes this by seeing it (notice how sight is very important to the story). As he works his way up the mountain, he doesn’t just wander through; rather he burns the brush, transforming his environment. The landscape of West Mountain resists being seen, is blocked, and he has to struggle to get there, struggle to see, and struggle to unblock this place before he can get there.

When he reaches the top, another important notion is introduced: that of a prospect. A prospect is most simply a place where you can see the lay of the land. The prospect plays an important role in the idea of power vis-à-vis the landscape. It is a place from which all the sites can be seen. Additionally, it has a dual meaning: what are the prospects of developing this place? It is after reaching this point he believes he understands the mountain. “Thus I understood the prominence of this mountain that distinguishes itself from mere hills.” Only once nature has been beaten, slashed, and burned can he bond with nature in the classical Chinese way.

In another story one Liu Zongyuan buys lands from someone who can no longer afford it (someone dispossessed). He then proceeds to change everything about the land so he can see better (transformation of land–gentrification of place), making it fitting for viewing the moon for the mid-autumn festival. Once again he is adapting this place to his own peculiar cultural practices (the festival is not one widely practiced in the region he is in). This transformation makes him glad to dwell where he does.

As we move through similar stories, we always find an embedded sense that within the landscape is the ideal landscape, but it is blocked, and needs to be revealed. You are perfect, but I have to change you. If only the hill were moved to a good place it would be so much better/more valuable. Descriptions of places are therefore inextricable from notions of power, culture, and place.

Next we turn to a Chinese garden located outside London. Chinese gardens are not meant just to be seen, but to be experienced from many different views as you walk through. William Chambers (British garden designer, 1723–96) has interesting views on this and designed Chinese-style gardens in England. Once again we must recognize historical notions of power and culture. Chambers created his gardens at the same time as the Enclosure Act. Only through the displacement of peasants from the British countryside were many of these gardens possible. Today, this melancholy pagoda outside London is a reminder of those times.

Next we have three photographs:

The first is a photograph by John Thompson from Illustrations of China and its People. Thompson was interested in showing China in a way that would provide the information needed for those who would want to “develop it.” This brings us back to this notion of prospects again and again. Additionally, one should note that at this point, landscape photography was still drawing heavily from notions of painting; hence, Thompson tries to match his photographs with his notions of Chinese painting.

Second we see a picture with Mount Fuji imposed over the City of Shanghai. This is a photomontage of a place that doesn’t exist but that is highly revealing. It was created at a time when Japan was menacing China and tries to show the disjunctions of the time.

Third, we see a photo by Lang Jingshan. Jingshan tried to use camera technology to produce pictures that looked like a Chinese painting. He superimposed images from different places in an effort to capturing idyllic notions. However, these photographs were produced in Shanghai, making them in a sense “urban images.” Jingshan’s goal was to hide the history that is going on and try to conceal rather than depict modernity.

Last we see a series of oil paintings by Liu Xiaodong in a style that might be called “documentary painting.” They show the displacement of people in the Three Gorges area. There really is something of a struggle here, both in the transformation of the landscape and the powerful interests involved. He both wants to provide a panoramic landscape in conjunction with the people who are being made invisible in that landscape. (A later comment points out the surreal sense these paintings take on—trying to distance themselves in a way).

Q and A:  

Q:  What about the religious Buddhist notion that landscape art as a tool for meditation, need to get rid of blockages. Same with landscape?
A:  Look at stories of religious sites in China and the interaction between Taoists (very localized in their spirituality) and Buddhists (more universal). One frequent motif is how Buddhists absorb emptied out places. This is the same theme as in Journey to the West. A battle with evil (normally Taoist) spirits, followed by a conversion, after which the Buddhists go forward.

Q:  Do you define “garden” and “landscape” differently; if so, why and how?
A:  Gardens have no pretension of being a wild and natural place. They are more circumscribed. Gardens are fascinating because what goes on with landscape becomes so self-conscious there. Landscape sense that it is “unspoiled” even as it is.

Q:  Comment: The talk has a lot of similarities with the conflict between the vernacular landscape and progressive landscape in US regions, where blacks and whites come into conflict.
A:  It is important to recognize that the ideas in this discussion are not relegated simply to the natural world, but can easily be applied to cityscapes as well. It’s interesting in these discussions to bring up the notion of what is lost. Since landscape involves ideas of power struggles and ideology often creates the idea of evil opposition, we must balance these ideas with notions of displacement and dispossession. This in many ways resembles Nietzsche’s famous question “How does one attack idols?” He says that instead of smashing them, you should strike them with a tuning fork. You must understand what they mean by hearing them, and through that control them.

The Atlantic World as Environmental Workshop
Alan Karras
(Summarized by Bartholomew Watson)

Before we begin our main discussion, a few miscellaneous facts from current events. Right now is 100 degrees in London, which is warmer than Spain. This is especially unpleasant since many London institutions, including the Tube, are not air-conditioned. The Wall Street Journal has an article about the demise of the traditional English garden due to lack of water. People are starting to plant cacti in its place. Against these facts, Senator James Inhofe from Oklahoma says that global warming is a hoax, and made a comparison to the Nazis.

Today we’re going to talk about the Atlantic world and its utility in looking at environmental issues throughout history. The concept of the “Atlantic World” was originally a world history concept, and this should be kept distinct from the term as co-opted by Americanists who see it as primarily about ties between the East Coast and Western Europe, such as NATO.

As a world history concept we can think about the Atlantic world as a place in which environmental processes happen as well as using this world to create models that we can test in other times and places.

Our major focus today will be on what happens environmentally in the Atlantic world during the Columbian Exchange, or what happens after 1492. The Columbian Exchange concerns the exchange of plants, animals, diseases, foods, and other environmental factors between the “Old World,” which includes Europe and Africa, and the “New World” of the Americas. The term "Columbian Exchange" was first introduced by the author Alfred Crosby (in a book of the same name), who also wrote a book called Ecological Imperialism. The second book takes the idea of the Columbian Exchange and transplants it to other parts of the world as Europeans go around colonizing it.

The most familiar story in this genre is Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. While Diamond’s work proved a popular success, much of its theoretical inspiration can be found in the work of Crosby. In any case, the Atlantic World is a wonderful space to look at the exchange of ecological factors and derive lessons that we can apply elsewhere.

But the big question still remains: How do we teach this stuff?

Professor Karras proposes a reference back to ancient world: Early understandings of the world thought of the earth as four elements that created and formed everything—air, earth, fire, and water. He proposes that these four factors provide a wonderful starting point for talking about the Columbian Exchange in the context of the Atlantic World. So, how can we apply these to the Atlantic world and use them to teach students what they need at an early age as well as applying it forward? How can they be put into Environmental History?

We begin with Air

Think first of the earliest childhood drawings that represent air. What do these include? The big three are clouds, birds, and airplanes. But there are other things in the air that are important. Germs. Mosquitoes. Both of these bring us to thinking about disease. So we can think about disease when we think of air, or any airborne factors of transmission. Airplanes can be a modern conveyor. This is one way in which SARS was transmitted across continents. Therefore, these can be a modern example of the historical Columbian Exchange. Now we have malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile Virus, diseases that were all transmitted across the Atlantic World. How can you get kids to understand the historical significance of yellow fever without talking about transmission?

Methodological side note to keep in mind: For Professor Karras, environmental history involves human beings, which isn’t always the case with other studies of the environment. For example, McNeill doesn’t see people as a part of environmental history.

So what else can we say about air? The vector of disease transmission is different in different places. Historically, if you read travelers’ accounts or natural histories, you find a comparison in almost every one: the air in Europe was different from the air in Africa or the air in America. For the Europeans, the air was bad in Africa. Why? Europeans in Africa were getting sick. Since they didn’t understand the science of disease, air became the culprit. The air was also “bad” in the Caribbean, in the same way that it was bad in Africa, which created a perverse logic. If Africans could live in Africa with its bad air, that meant that people in Africa were also better suited for the Caribbean environment. This logic leads to a social process of history and becomes a justification for slavery. The observations were based in climate, but the conjectures were only loosely based in climatic knowledge.

Did the ancients think this way? Did they explain anything about the quality of the air? You can also say something about New England in this way. For settlers, the air in New England was viewed to be closer to the air in Europe than other places. In this way, Europeans were able to explain their longevity in this region. While this may be a rudimentary scientific explanation it shows how air becomes a way to think about how humans and animals interact. You can think about air in a lot of scientific and historical ways. Taking this to present you can think about the ways in which modern observers sense the air. We still talk about the air changes and sometimes you can see different colors in the air or feel its qualities.

Earth

In the Atlantic world, there were geographic comparisons. There were observations about the terrain and about the nature of the vegetation. There were observations about the animals that lived in particular places. This again should lead us to think about different earthly or geographic features that shaped society and our understanding of human society. We could start by going back to the ancients to think about societal characteristics developed from geographic features. In the new world, why does Mesoamerican society look the way it does and why are societies within the region different? How do societies develop on islands? Why do they? How do they get there? The answers involve technology and migration using resources from the earth. Karras’s own work concerns the Caribbean islands. Let us turn briefly to this example for a sense of how these societies got started.

Archaeologists believe that there was a slow movement down Mesoamerica. When these societies settled near water, they developed water technology to fish and to survive. Their populations grew as they mastered their earthly environment, creating a need to disperse. Many people deforested and built boasts, initially moving to Trinidad. This began a slow upward migration as the islanders slowly drained resources at each stop. Does that happen in all islands? How do people get form one island to another? Sometimes it is accidental (like Columbus!) but sometimes there are clear environmental pushes. How do we figure out how they got there? How do we know what happened before people arrived? One way is archaeology. Looking at artifacts, such as boats, what is the wood, where does it grow? How did it get there?

Going back to the elements, we see that this is often a combination between earth and water (part of geography—hard to talk about earth without water). The idea is that human geography and environmental history does imply water as well as the nature of exploration, settlement, colonization, and social development. These are all ecological and environmental processes.

When we talk about these things, we’re also talking about certain types of crops. Soil conditions, humidity, and location are all important in figuring out what types of crops can thrive. English gardens are just one example played out over a month. The Columbian Exchange was a much bigger deal. The list of crops in our diet taken from the New World is substantial—corn, potatoes, beans, tomatoes, and cacao, to name a few. Some of these leave larger marks on history, for exampl