3.3 Nucleation and Nature
Modern anthropologists prefer analogies from within our own Order (Primates)
when determining similarities and differences between sociality and landscape on
the one hand, and the impacts on these by different species. In terms of understanding nucleation—and by that I mean how people aggregate in permanent or semipermanent residential clustering, such as hamlets, villages, towns, cities, megacities—
and from a taxonomic point of view, humans are the most social of the primates,
which are already a social order. No other primate lives in such large nucleations as
do members of the human species. Chimpanzees in Africa leave nest scars and other
debris that indicate the equivalent of archaeological sites; other primates have
likewise impacted the landscape, especially earlier hominins such as Homo erectus,
Homo habilis, and dead-end evolutionary trajectories of hominins, such as Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, and others having familiarity with weaponry, including
fire. Arguably, sociality requires intelligence; one of the factors that contributes to
human cumulative culture—brain size relative to body mass, and brain organization
in the most complex of all primates—is related to group size and the potential group
size that human nucleations can reach (Dunbar 2003).
No other living primate except the bipedal one known as a human, in other words,
forms urban residential clustering of its own kind. Human population already totals
billions of more individuals than any other primate species on the globe, and in the
course of human evolution has perhaps had only a few regional setbacks and
bottlenecks (the most recent being perhaps in Europe during the Black Death; in
the Americas during the epidemics that followed 1492; in the epidemics and wars of
the twentieth century; and the COVID-19 pandemic).
In light of the numbers, and the evolutionary evidence to date, it is perhaps not so
astounding to perceive our species living in megacities. In other words, megacities
could even be a natural outcome of human sociality, in a literal sense. If so, however,
they cannot be explained solely by reference to human evolution or any univariate
theory of causation because numerous other aggregations are possible, as are types
of human-mediated impacts on landscapes. Cities exhibit both primary and secondary landscape transformation, which are processes attendant on human-mediated
disturbance having distinctive and measurable impacts on diversity. Megacities—
and cities more generally—are sustainable in the extent to which they interrelate
these two major kinds of processes, as well as certain types of them.
3.4 Select Mechanisms of Historical Ecology
Historical ecology is in the first place a research program that deals with effects of
interactions between humans and the environment (Balée 2006, 2018). Some of
these effects are initiated by disturbance. Disturbance in this sense impacts what
Philippe Descola (1994) refers to as “domestic” ecology. “Ecology” references
3 Historical Ecology of Societal Nucleation and Collapse
37
Modern anthropologists prefer analogies from within our own Order (Primates)
when determining similarities and differences between sociality and landscape on
the one hand, and the impacts on these by different species. In terms of understanding nucleation—and by that I mean how people aggregate in permanent or semipermanent residential clustering, such as hamlets, villages, towns, cities, megacities—
and from a taxonomic point of view, humans are the most social of the primates,
which are already a social order. No other primate lives in such large nucleations as
do members of the human species. Chimpanzees in Africa leave nest scars and other
debris that indicate the equivalent of archaeological sites; other primates have
likewise impacted the landscape, especially earlier hominins such as Homo erectus,
Homo habilis, and dead-end evolutionary trajectories of hominins, such as Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, and others having familiarity with weaponry, including
fire. Arguably, sociality requires intelligence; one of the factors that contributes to
human cumulative culture—brain size relative to body mass, and brain organization
in the most complex of all primates—is related to group size and the potential group
size that human nucleations can reach (Dunbar 2003).
No other living primate except the bipedal one known as a human, in other words,
forms urban residential clustering of its own kind. Human population already totals
billions of more individuals than any other primate species on the globe, and in the
course of human evolution has perhaps had only a few regional setbacks and
bottlenecks (the most recent being perhaps in Europe during the Black Death; in
the Americas during the epidemics that followed 1492; in the epidemics and wars of
the twentieth century; and the COVID-19 pandemic).
In light of the numbers, and the evolutionary evidence to date, it is perhaps not so
astounding to perceive our species living in megacities. In other words, megacities
could even be a natural outcome of human sociality, in a literal sense. If so, however,
they cannot be explained solely by reference to human evolution or any univariate
theory of causation because numerous other aggregations are possible, as are types
of human-mediated impacts on landscapes. Cities exhibit both primary and secondary landscape transformation, which are processes attendant on human-mediated
disturbance having distinctive and measurable impacts on diversity. Megacities—
and cities more generally—are sustainable in the extent to which they interrelate
these two major kinds of processes, as well as certain types of them.
3.4 Select Mechanisms of Historical Ecology
Historical ecology is in the first place a research program that deals with effects of
interactions between humans and the environment (Balée 2006, 2018). Some of
these effects are initiated by disturbance. Disturbance in this sense impacts what
Philippe Descola (1994) refers to as “domestic” ecology. “Ecology” references
3 Historical Ecology of Societal Nucleation and Collapse
37