Anthropology professor Lisa Lucero is a co-author of the American Anthropological Association’s recent report, “Changing the Atmosphere: Anthropology and Climate Change,” which focuses in large part on the role of humans in contributing to, mitigating and adapting to climate change. Lucero spoke to News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about the importance of understanding how past civilizations responded to climate change.
What can anthropologists contribute to the climate change discussion?
We can provide case studies of previous episodes of climate change and how those episodes affected humans. We can describe local solutions that have been implemented, especially in non-Western societies or in small-scale groups within our own society. We can tell stories of what people have done in the past in response to climate change that we can replicate – or avoid so that history will not repeat itself. We also can point out the types of mitigation that have worked in the past.
Anthropologists and other social scientists and humanities professionals are often left out of the climate change equation. The failure to consider the human perspective often is reflected in the way scientists talk about climate change. After all, it’s not just about carbon dioxide, which you can’t see or smell; or glaciers, which most of us only see photos of; or the possible extinction of polar bears. Those concerns can feel so distant from everyday human concerns. Anthropology provides a means to bring it home to people.
How did people deal with climate change – or devastating weather patterns like prolonged drought – in the past?
In Maya history, which I study, El Mirador was a huge, pre-classic Maya center that was abandoned by A.D. 150. El Mirador had massive reservoir systems and buildings, including one of the largest buildings in the New World at that time. They built plaster floors that were at least 6 inches thick. Now, plaster is made from limestone, which you have to burn to create calcium oxide, or lime. The floors were 6 inches thick everywhere – that means they burned lots and lots of trees. So they denuded the landscape, and there’s evidence of silting, from erosion as well as drought.
Then you see the emergence of Tikal and other famous Classic Maya period sites. And the people in Tikal and these other sites seem to have learned from the El Mirador experience. There’s evidence they managed their forests. They kept their reservoirs pristine by creating their own wetland biosphere – a mix of surface and subsurface plants and fish that kept the water clean.
Tikal and other Maya sites were not immune to changes in climate, however. There’s increasing evidence from limestone cave formations, known as speleothems, that there were, within a hundred-year period, from 800 to 900 A.D., several multiyear droughts, each lasting from 3 to 18 years. This set in motion events that resulted in the abandonment of hundreds of Maya centers in the southern Maya lowlands (in Guatemala, Belize and southeast Mexico), including Tikal.
So, despite being more thoughtful and sustainable, the settlements at Tikal also failed in the face of drought?
People often focus on the Classic Maya collapse, as do I. But it is important to keep in mind that Tikal and other Maya centers lasted for 1,000 years.
One of the things history shows, archaeology shows, is that political systems come and go. So, the Classic Maya kings disappeared, but the people persevered. Seven million Maya live today.
Are there other lessons to be learned from the Maya?
The Maya have been practicing similar agricultural strategies for thousands of years – without using massive amounts of pesticides and chemicals and mono-cropping. They have learned from their forebears to diversify crops, to diversify their strategies. They have some managed forest landscapes, some agricultural plots and also their house gardens.
If you go to a Maya village today, their garden will look disorganized to our Western notions. They have a large house lot with trees and all kinds of spices and smaller fruit. And then they have their milpa, their crop. And traditionally they plant several kinds of varieties of maize, beans and squash, as well as pineapple and tomato and tobacco. Sometimes it’s mono-cropping, to take to the market, because they have a few fields and they’re separated, so if a blight hits one, they have the others. They diversify not only in terms of where they plant but what they plant. So if something fails, they have something else. So they have a very diverse grocery store in their milpa – versus just all maize. And every plant has a role – medicinal, food, spices, flowers for offerings, and fruit trees.
What lessons do you draw from this?
It’s sort of like what financial advisers tell us to do: Diversify your portfolio, because if one thing crashes you have something else – or many other things – you can rely on.
Another example is the Moche, a pre-Inka civilization in Peru. They had an elaborate, irrigation-based agricultural system – less diverse, in other words. There is evidence that in the mid-to-late 500s, climate changes caused a massive El Niño event and basically just destroyed crops for years. Eventually, the rulers in Moche lost power.
A descendant group, the Chimu, learned from this; they diversified their strategies. They relied not only on irrigation but also were rainfall-dependent and marine-based. So if one approach failed, they had something else. They eventually were incorporated into the Inka Empire.
The more flexible and more diverse they were, the more resilient they were. Resilience is like a rubber band – how far can you stretch it before it breaks? If it’s too rigid, it’s going to break at the first sign of stress. But if it’s flexible, it can adjust. And if you rely on diverse strategies, then if one strategy fails, you have another strategy you can rely on until you can rebuild that diversity again. You have time, because you had diversity to begin with.