Tim Flannery, The Eternal Frontier: An ecological history of North America and its peoples. Melbourne: Text Publishing 2001. 404 pp., illus., ISBN: 1 876485 72 8 (HB), $50.00.
This is another significant addition to the growing canon of ecological history penned by Tim Flannery. His professional interest in mammals covers a 120 million year time span, expressed in publications on the biogeographical distribution of mammals in the Australian and south-west Pacific regions, with more specifically centred monographs concentrating on the ecological history of possums, tree kangaroos and Australasian dwelling-hominids. Those remaining opposed to the intellectual immigration of ideas spawned in 1859 have been known to examine this multi- mammalian approach with suspicion. It is as if the ability to encompass an historical perspective from 65 million years to the present or to switch from observations on one mammal species to another, was indicative of a weakness in intellectual approach, rather than a strength. These readers will remain unimpressed at Flannery’s changed orientation from biology in the Australian-Pacific region, to North America. For the rest of us, the book is a delight.
In The Future Eaters (1994, Reed Books) Flannery concentrated upon the ecological history of the Australian lands and people. He used a three part approach. First, he described Gondwana in the Cretaceous 120 million years ago through to the recent insular and continental biogeographical history of the region. His second section dealt with the arrival of the first human invaders into the region around 60,000 years ago and their effects on the ecology. His third section concerned the arrival of the last, European invaders of the region, around 200 years ago and their (similar) effects upon the ecology. In turning his attention to the North American continent in The Eternal Frontier, Flannery found two significant differences shaping his ecological history. The first was the arrival of an asteroid 65 million years ago to the southern edge of the North American continental plate, and the second was the much shorter time frame, of around only 13,000 years, in which humans have invaded and destroyed North (and South) American biodiversity. Reference to the Future Eaters in this review is more than legitimate, for the book, in its first printing, whilst obviously having the potential for a broad North American readership, is published first of all, for the Australian reader. The constant comparisons to specific events in Australia’s ecological history, the use of our indigenous word (in its broad sense) of ‘goanna’, for what the rest of the world calls ‘monitors’, is a clue to the initial target audience. There is a lot more to Flannery’s argument than just reiterating and demonstrating for North America that megafaunal extinction is a product of human invasion, but it forms a significant element, and no doubt significant purpose behind, the volume’s conception and production.
As a result of this ‘most unfortunate day’ of asteroid arrival 65 million years ago, the whole planet, in terms of marine, fresh-water and terrestrial environments, had its essential biodiversity destroyed. But, as if this were not bad enough for the scenario of local recovery, North America not only lost its biodiversity, but its entire geology and geography was also transformed, as a direct result of the impact. The tidal waves, shock waves, heat and fire experienced world-wide, were concentrated in the North American environment. As Flannery centrally argues, North America had to effectively start again from scratch, establishing the significant role in speciation (and later emigration and cultural transmission) it has maintained to the present day. Flannery’s account consists of the migration of species, largely from Asian generated (rather than Greenland-European) contact, into the newly transformed North America, its eastern and western mountain ranges forming a ‘climatic trumpet’ that amplified short and long-term weather fluctuations. The invasive species’ frequent expansion and further speciation across the continent, particularly in areas of marginal habitat, was often followed by their taking the opportunity to re-invade Asia and Europe from whence their ancestors had originated. North America was an evolutionary powerhouse, initially providing itself, and then the rest of the world with the ancestors of horses, camels, llamas, sheep, pigs, cattle, wolves and marsupials – not just most of the larger herbivorous mammalian species extant today, but most of the significant mammalian species domesticated by our ancestors. The text is enlivened beyond an account of speciation and migration over time, to encompass the delightful by-play in the published research of companion or competing palaeontologists, and the manner in which some scientists strove to stay one-step-ahead of their peers and fellow researchers. Flannery’s turn of phrase is also a constant delight. For instance, his description of cacti as ‘prickly vegetable camels’, and a cheetah (of likely North America origin) as ‘a cat trying to be a dog’, place verbal visual imagery alongside significant biological explanation. It is a great pity, however, that the book itself is so under-illustrated – six plates alone are devoted to the species and environments discussed in the 65 million years before human arrival on the continent.
With commendable patience, Flannery turns to the arrival of humans on the continent, and carefully details the accompanying megafaunal extinctions on continental and insular regions of North America, exposing the flaws (and lack of convincing evidence for) the opposing climatic change argument of megafaunal extinction. Returning to The Future Eaters briefly, remember the apologists argument for Australian megafaunal extinctions; that they represent merely unfortunate correlations with the arrival of humans, when the extinctions themselves were supposedly caused by Australia drying out and getting colder? Well, guess what, the unfortunate correlations between megafaunal extinctions in North America and the arrival of humans, are supposedly caused by North America getting wetter and warmer. As Flannery points out, the last 2.4 million years have seen dramatic climatic changes at least seventeen times, between glacial and inter-glacial maxima. But there is no evidence in North America (or Australia) that these changes, taking place over the last twelve or fifty thousand years have been any more extreme than the fluctuations that preceded them.
Disturbingly to some, Flannery turns his critical attention to seeking confirmation for the popular conception of indigenous Native American as moral and practical conservationists of North American biodiversity, and finds it largely wanting. Unfortunately, here Flannery is guilty of that most basic of intellectual errors, attempting to judge the effects of a religious belief in terms of what it does, rather than what it says. It is also evident that Flannery is less than enamoured with another contemporary, pseudo-religious belief, that of the benefits of free capitalistic enterprise, reflected in an unrestricted ‘frontier’ mentality, whether it be expressed in its devastating effects upon the home lands, population numbers and cultural integrity of indigenous North Americans, or the increasing rate of recent extinctions taking place. The extinction of North American freshwater species achieved in the last 200 years, matches the level of extinction of North American freshwater species experienced with the asteroid impact 65 million years ago!
Flannery views North America, since European invasion, as reflecting the same patterns established on the continent since the asteroid arrived. North America acts as a melting-pot for migrants, and for development in this new environment of different ways of adaptation, through technology or management techniques and the export of these ideas and people to the rest of the world. Importantly, Flannery remains optimistic that aggressive capitalism, reflected in the ‘frontier dreaming of North America’ will be peacefully destroyed by internal, North American forces. May he is right, and for all of us – micro-organism, plant, invertebrate and vertebrate – the sooner the better.
Throughout the book one is constantly teased with fascinating botanical and zoological reflection on the present occurrence and distribution of species in North America. (I lost count of the number of times I turned upon myself in my ignorance to complain, ‘how could I have possibly visited North America, without making a point of seeing …?’) Aside from its ecological history, the book has a potential life also as an exotic biological tour guide to the places and species a visiting natural scientist should seek out in North America. It is a significant and remarkable piece of work at all the different levels at which it is written.
R.N. Paddle,
School of Psychology,
St Patrick’s Campus, Australian Catholic University,
Melbourne.
Courtesy Historical Records of Australian Science 13(4), 2001. http://www.science.org.au/hras/