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Seashore Foraging & Fishing Study

Paraculture

1 - Wild Yam Paraculture By Forest Pygmies

Edmond Dounias is one of the world's leading experts on forest peoples. 

With that encomium, I hope he will forgive my plundering his copyright, and quoting directly from his paper:

The Management Of Wild Yam Tubers By The Baka Pygmies In Southern Cameroon African Study Monographs, Suppl.26: 135-156, March 2001 

Quotations from  his paper are in blue - my rude interjections are black. 

Wild Yams

Thomas Headland's observations of haphazard wild yam collection among the Agta of Luzon convinced him, and a generation of palaeoanthropologists influenced by his and Bailey's papers that humans could never have lived in forests without help. The wild yam resources of the Sierra Madre mountains of Luzon are pitiful compared to those of the Central African rainforest, so it is not surprising that he may have been misled.

Edmond Dounias says: 

The maintenance of wild-yam tuber heads in soil, or their reburial after harvesting of the fleshy parts, are fairly common practices among hunter-gatherers
-          Kubu, Sumatra (Dounias, 1989; submitted)
-          Orang Asli, Malaysia (Rambo, 1979)
-          Batek De’,Malaysia (Endicott & Bellwood, 1991)
-          Batak, Philippines (Eder, 1988)
-          Tasaday, Philippines (Yen, 1976)
-          Papua New Guinea (Yen, 1989}
-          Hoabinhian Thailand (Yen, 1977)
-          Chenchu, Krishna River, India (Furer-Haimendorf, 1943)
-          Australian Aborigines - Various locations and ethnic groups in Australia (Grey, 1841; Jones, 1975;
           Jones & Meehan, 1989; Yen, 1989; Hallam, 1989)
-          Hadza, Tanzania (Vincent, 1985)
-          Baka, Cameroon and Congo Brazzaville (Dounias, 1996; Sato, see below)
-          Aka,Central African Republic (Mouton & Sillans, 1954; Bahuchet, 1985)
 

In several societies, harvesting of tubers of wild yams is regulated by religious prohibitions. Such cases are reported in Western Africa (Coursey & Coursey, 1971), among the Kirdi people of the mountains of northern Cameroon (Seignobos, 1992) and in the Andaman Islands (Burkill, 1953; Radcliffe-Brown, 1964; Coursey, 1972).

This maintenance of plants in the forest is the key difference between paracultivation and protocultivation

Harvesting patterns are specifically adapted to the paracultivated resource. Several social rules may codify access to the resource: exclusive rights of ownership with possible inheritance of managed plants, ritual protection, and the specific treatment the resource receives as food (prestige dishes, components of bridewealth). Although such social treatment of wild resources has been little noted by anthropologists working on so-called “egalitarian” societies, I suspect that “paracultivation” may exist or have existed for a wide range of forest resources.

So do I. I more than strongly suspect that coconuts, bananas, and taro (see also sago, below) have been paracultivated by humans for at least 50,000 years.

Yams (the pan tropical genus Dioscorea, of the monocotyledonous family Dioscoreaceae) are vines which store starchy reserves in aerial or underground tubers. Geophytes, such as forest species of Dioscorea are very uncommon life forms in tropical forest (Richards 1996). The starchy reserves of yams are a primordial source of carbohydrates for hunter-gatherers.

These vines are extremely difficult to observe in the forest undergrowth: tubers are generally deeply buried underground, and the sexual parts are hidden high in the canopy.

So you have to look very hard to find them.

The Baka have also a dynamic understanding of the plant’s growth cycle, and are perfectly aware of the double capacity of yams to reproduce sexually as well as vegetatively. As food resources, wild yams occupy an intermediate position between wild resources (with a dominant sexual reproduction) and crops (most starchy plants grown in forest shifting cultivation are clonally propagated).

The Baka accurately distinguish and name the 14 taxa found in their area. (Headland's Agta had about 2 species). They classify distinctively inedible species, which all grow in forest gaps and edges, from edible species, which all persist in closed forest. There is a strong congruence between scientific nomenclature and Baka classification.

Ethnolinguistic data have revealed the unique status of yams in Baka plant nomenclature, because Baka terms applied to yam morphology are drawn from terms referring to human anatomy (Dounias, 1993; 1996). The Baka also have a wide set of terms to name the different kinds and parts of tubers, as well as their consistency and taste (Dounias, submitted).

See also my Bisayan Coconut Words at Coco Loco    It is thought that plant and animal terms are the only remaining vestiges of the original Baka pygmy language, now subsumed and swamped by the languages of the dominant Bantu.

Only 3 among the 14 yam species are concerned by paracultivation: D.semperflorens, D.praehensilis and D.mangenotiana. In view of Baka classification based on tuber morphology, paracultivation concerns species which produce the largest starchy biomass, independently of plant cycle and propagation strategy.

The Baka have implemented a specific technical process for harvesting the vertical elongate tubers of paracultivated D.praehensilis and D.semperflorens. Earth bordering the tuber, and starchy parts of the tuber freed by excavation, are removed using a special tool, a sort of auger which enables them to excavate a cylinder of earth. The hole is excavated in such a way that the head of the tuber is not affected. The gatherer takes care to preserve a portion of starch with the head, and to leave the terminal part of the tuber.  

The pit is backfilled with a mixture of earth and humus. The backfill is enriched with organic matter and is less compacted than the original soil, so that the renewed tuber encounters less mechanical resistance during its growth and development. Furthermore, a second stem resprouts from the tip of the tuber, which is voluntarily not completely extracted, and a second tuber develops from this part. Consequently, paracultivation duplicates tubers within each yam pit (Dounias, 1993; 1996).
 

Harvesting of tubers of D.mangenotiana tuber proceeds differently. The Baka use a wooden stake as a lever to uproot the heavy and large woody head. Once the fleshy parts have been harvested, the tuber is set back in its original position.

Frequently, a colony of aggressive ants will opportunistically nest in the cavity thus formed beneath the woody head, discouraging mammalian predators of tubers. For all paracultivated species, I noticed that repeated harvesting induces the production by the plant of a crown of adventitious thorny roots covering the top of the head. This crown of roots is totally absent on yams that have not yet been harvested, and seems to have two functions: stabilization of the head in less compacted soils (due to repeated harvesting), and mechanical protection of tuber head against herbivores.

Paracultivation thus seems to provoke production of a supplementary mechanical protection by the plant, and has the effect of reducing competition with humans from other tuber consumers such as bush pigs and rodents.

There is a seasonal complementarity of tuber maturation between species with perennial tubers and those with annual tuber, thus enabling continuous procurement of wild starch-rich food for forest dwellers throughout the year. However, the dependence on wild source of starch changes with season and is function of hunter-gatherers activities and task groups. The period for gathering paracultivated D.semperflorens and D.praehensilis coincides with intensive hunting and gathering activities from forest camps, where families merge into large-size bands. This period is convenient for honey gathering, and for hunting conducted with crossbows and spears. Among the Aka (Central African Republic) and the Mbuti (Congo Kinshasa), it is also the most suitable period for collective hunting conducted in large groups using nets (Bahuchet, 1992). 

It was this aspect of Pygmy hunting that got me into trouble with the professional palaeoanthropologist. I wondered why forest Pygmies were using coastal fishing methods to catch animals in the forest. The Aquatic Ape Theory is a definite no-no among 'respectable' academics, and I was banned from using the Yahoo newsgroup Paleoanthro. 

See: Nets Used Elsewhere

The availability of yam tubers during this period is crucial. In contrast, during the period of production of “ndondo” yams, men and women form separated task groups. Men leave the village for expeditions centred on hunting with spears and honey harvesting, while women are occasionally occupied by dam fishing. During the short dry season, small nuclear families disperse in the forest for the gathering of Irvingia gabonensis kernels, and the oil-rich seeds of Baillonella toxisperma, and later on for caterpillars. 

Expeditions in the forest are of short duration, and contacts are permanently maintained with the village, where forest products are exchanged for starchy crops. 

Yes, such permanent contacts exist now, but what did the Pygmies do before the Bantu farmers came along and grew crops at the forest edges ?

Although Dounias seems to agree with Headland’s proposition that hunter-gatherers could not survive in the forest without the help of local farming villagers, another paper in this series:

(Hiroaki Sato - suggests that they are very much a staple food.

Abstract: Wild edible tuberous plants were assessed as a potentially reliable staple food resource for the Baka forest foragers independent of agriculture in South Cameroon. Using a belt-transect method, the density and biomass of wild yam and yam-like plants were surveyed in the semi-deciduous forest. Seven plant species with edible tubers grew throughout the forest surveyed, while more densely in the parts disturbed by human activity - the influence of paraculture?

The total biomass of wild edible tubers in a forest remote from the villages was estimated at more than 5 kg/ha, exceeding the value estimated in previous studies conducted in similar forest environments. The ubiquity, the considerably large biomass and the Baka gatherers’ knowledge and technology for collecting wild tubers point to wild yam-like plants as one major staple food resource to support foragers independent of agriculture. 

The Potential Of Edible Wild Yams And Yam-Like Plants As A Staple Food Resource In The African Tropical Rain Forest) African Study Monographs, Suppl.26: 123-134, March 2001

I'll let Edmond Dounias have the final words:

Through the ages, forest dwellers of Amazonia (Balee, 1989), South-East Asia (Rambo, 1979; Hutterer, 1982) and Central Africa (Laden, 1992; Ichikawa, 1999) have certainly affected and even managed the spatial as well as temporal distribution of resources in the forests. 

Full domestication was certainly not the final goal of these attempts at resource control. 

Paracultivation - not only for yams but probably for a wide set of resources - encourages us to reconsider some preconceived stereotypes about foraging peoples, who are generally seen as opportunists and parasites of their environment. 

Foraging Peoples Were, & Are Not Opportunists And Parasites.

It needs to be said again:

Paracultivation - not only for yams but probably for a wide set of resources - encourages us to reconsider some preconceived stereotypes about foraging peoples, who are generally seen as opportunists and parasites of their environment.

It certainly does - foraging peoples (our grandfathers and grandmothers) were, and are not opportunists and parasites.

They did not:

Over-breed - taboos and common practice ensured maternal nursing for periods long enough to have a walking child before they had to bear & carry another one around. There wasn't a Pope around in those days, to ban anti-over-breeding methods.

Over-exploit - Semi-nomadic groups could leave a place to lie fallow while they moved on, come back later, and probably find that their efforts had increased the food yield of the place they left. Note Dounias' observation that 'disturbed' yams seem almost to 'cooperate', gathering vicious ants to help protect themselves, growing tougher roots, and propagating more fruitfully.

Humans Could Not Have Lived in Forests - Could They?

The hypothesis proposed by Headland (1987) and Bailey et al. (1989), that human beings could never have led a life independent of agriculture in tropical rain forests has had a pernicious and persistent effect on academic thinking about the lifestyles of our ancestors. 

My interest in this subject was kindled when I was told, very authoritatively, by a professional palaeoanthropologist, that African pygmies could have only existed in the rainforest for about 4000 years, that is, after Bantus came to farm, for exactly this reason. 

As my only library resource is the internet, and I haven’t been able to find either of Headland and Bailey et al’s papers on the web, I cannot comment directly, but: 

Thomas Headland spent more than a quarter of a century among the Agta Negritos of the Sierra Madre, the Eastern mountains of Luzon island of the Philippines, translating their language for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, with the ultimate objective of blessing those benighted people with the religious practices of an obscure tribe in the Levant, in the form of the Holy Bible. He has done sterling work on the gradual disappearance of the Agta languages, but has not displayed as much regret about the disappearance of the customs and lifestyle of the Agta people.

The Agta, nowadays, are a sad relict of the original colonizers of the Philippines, pushed by successive waves of other peoples into the high mountain forests, where they attempt to continue a hunting and gathering way of life that was very successful in the lowlands or, more probably, at the coast for perhaps 30,000 years or more. Much as the Batak in Palawan do still.

If Headland, Bailey et al, were right, then how did they do so? 

True, nowadays, and probably for a few thousand years, the Agta have been in contact, and traded, with farming villagers, just as the African Pygmies described by Dounias and Sato have done, and do now. Foraging or stealing from local incoming farmers, who don’t know the forest, or are intimidated by it, or trading bushmeat for starchy staples, may be seen by these otherwise independent peoples as just more rich resources for exploitation. 

Now, after the destruction of their Western, Mt. Pinatubu, homeland, by aggressive volcanic action, many Agta/Aeta can be found begging in the streets of Angeles, the brothel town established for US forces at Clark Airbase and Subic Bay. That way of life may also be considered by them as another form of foraging. I regularly meet groups of Mamanwa, a similar relict tribe from the Diwata Mountains of Surigao Del Norte, in the streets of Surigao City.

The Agta's relatives, the Dumagat, live on the seashore of Luzon - with infinitely richer resouces. It's more than probable that the Agta, a relict group scattered among the dwindling remaining forested areas of the Philippines - the mountains - were once more widespread along the coasts, and later in the lowland forests, where they wouldn't have had such difficulties obtaining food. 

Are the African Pygmies an Ethnographic Fiction ?

Roger Blench challenges everyone's sentimental idea (and mine) that Pygmies are the aboriginal hunter-gatherers of the African forests:
'Challenging Elusiveness - Central African Hunter-Gatherers in a Multidisciplinary Perspective' 
 - pdf file from the Internet - Search - pygmies - ethnographic - fiction

No distinctive Pygmy language, or real traces of any surviving words derived from it.

I haven't yet been able to find any references to pre-Austronesian languages in the Philippines, either, nor has anyone (it seems) tried to look for them. The Aeta don't seem to have a distinct language now. But many of the particular words of my local Visayan dialect, Surigaonon, come from the Mamanwa, the local 'Aeta' group, also called the Konking, in the local dialect.

Many of the local Surigaonon words for animals and plants, in particular, are quite different to those used by 'mainstream' Visayan speakers. The same occurs with Pygmy words for animals and birds. Thus both groups, although they've lost their own full languages, in the interests of communicating with their stronger, and more numerous 'conquerors', still maintain these names as relicts.

In the case of Surigaonon, the 'conquerors' themselves have adopted words from the Mamanwa, and another early-arriving, but Austronesian group, the Manobo.

Although Modern Humans have been present in parts of Central Africa for about 200,000 years - Lupemban and Sangoan cultures - no human remains have been found that show how big they were.

The Central African Forest is remarkably efficient at recycling resources, including dead humans.

He doesn't agree with Cavalli-Sforza that genetics show a distinctness between Pygmies (as a whole) from other sub-Saharan Africans.

But then he doesn't agree very much at all with using genetic studies to interpret human history.

Pygmification just happens in forests, and has happened to elephants, hippos, chimpanzees and buffalo. It could happen quite quickly.

It happens on islands, too - see 'Homo Floresensis'

Pygmies do not use stone tools at all, and nor do they have 'their own' hunting technology and practices, that are not widespread outside the forest.

Perhaps outcrops of suitable stone are not frequent - the same seems to have happened in SE Asia (the Movius Line) - only a single classical handaxe site has been found in the whole of the Philippines, for example. 

Music - not all Pygmy groups share the same types of music, especially the polyphonic yodelling, although the Khoi San do something similar, but with a separate basic structure.

Although I am prepared to pontificate on anything at all (sometimes even with reasoned thought behind it) I am crassly ignorant about music.

Roger Blench proposes instead: 

Pygmies originated 4-5000 years ago as a huntering/gathering sub-caste of  incoming Adamawa-Ubangian and Bantu speaking speaking peoples who pushed the ancestors of the Khoi San to Southern Africa and small remnants of the rest.

Just like my professional archaeologist friend said.  

But Pharaoh Nefrikare's general, Herkouf, reported their presence some 4500 years ago, singing and dancing as they still do. The Pharaoh asked him to bring some back - as pets.
Colin Turnbull - The World of the Forest  (1961)

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Richard Parker  - Siargao Island - November 2004  (Last updated Monday, May 08, 2006)  

 

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