Searching for Clues in the Lagoon: Is Marine Gathering a Reflection of Our Evolutionary Past? Thomas Malm1
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10 SPC Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin #20 – November 2009 Searching for clues in the lagoon: Is marine gathering a reflection of our evolutionary past? Thomas Malm1 Introduction did in the water, paddling canoes, fishing, and div- ing. That the women also participated significantly “I had never before seen children growing up in in exploiting marine resources was not generally a state of nature and I made full use of the oppor- recognised until towards the end of the 20th century tunity,” wrote James Norman Hall about his visit (e.g. see Malm 1999; Matthews 1995). to one of the Tuamotu (or Paumotu) Islands 90 years ago. Nowadays, many researchers and most fisheries departments in Oceania are well aware of the fact In the afternoons we went swimming that women’s marine gathering is of importance in the lagoon. There I saw them at their in local communities and involves expertise well best and happiest, in an element as neces- worth studying. The overall aim usually stated in sary and familiar to them as it is to their such studies, as in my own (Malm 1999, 2007a-b, parents. It is always a pleasure to watch 2009), has been to challenge the prejudiced view children at play in the water, but those of “picking shellfish” being something uninterest- Paumotuan youngsters with their natural ing or culturally insignificant. We can, for example, grace at swimming and diving put one gain insights about the use of artefacts found by under an enchantment. Many of the boys archaeologists or conditions for sustainable devel- had water glasses and small spears of opment, and of course information for discussing their own and went far from shore, catch- gender issues in the past and present. ing fish. They lay face down on the sur- face of the water, swimming easily, with In this article I wish to add a new dimension by a great economy of motion, turning their suggesting that such studies can also be valuable heads now and then for breath of air; and for the debate about whether our ancestors, during when they saw their prey they dived after one period in the biological evolution of our spe- it as skilfully as their fathers do and with cies, spent a considerable part of their time in an nearly as much success. Seen against the aquatic environment. Some of the speculation made bright floor of the lagoon, with swarms of by proponents of the so-called “aquatic ape hypoth- brilliantly colored fish scattering before esis” could benefit from observations of what is still them, they seemed doubtfully human, being done in Oceania’s coastal waters. Of course, the children of some forsaken merman no people can be regarded as some kind of “living rather than creatures who have need for fossil”, but it could be argued that certain aspects air to breathe and solid earth to stand on of Oceanian lifestyle provide us with a mirror of (Hall, in Hall and Nordhoff 1921:31–32). what a semi-aquatic lifestyle might have meant in the remote evolutionary past of our species. If there Hall wrote this at a time when life in the atolls is doubt about whether organisms that were gath- almost entirely depended on the traditional use of ered in the nearshore marine environment were a local resources and when the men of the Tuamotu significant resource (as food and raw-material), Islands had become legendary for their ability to or whether our bodies are well suited for aquatic dive for pearl oysters. He was not a researcher, activities, then the best thing we can do is to study but his delightful depiction is nevertheless a valu- people who spend a considerable amount of time able piece of documentation of a life-style, which in the water searching for food. Due to its warm already at that time was in a process of change — climate, reef-sheltered lagoons, high marine bio- nowadays, all pearl oysters and their pearls are diversity, and often markedly sea-oriented lifestyle, cultivated. Like so many other travel writers of his the islands of Oceania would be among the best era, Hall was fascinated by what the boys and men places for beginning such a quest. 1. Human Ecology Division, Lund University, Sölvegatan 12, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden. Email: [email protected]; website: http://www.hek.lu.se SPC Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin #20 – November 2009 11 The gathering hypothesis their own offspring). As we shall see, however, it is possible that a lot of the early gathering took place Rather than trapping, hunting or fishing with in aquatic environments. implements, gathering was the most ancient type of subsistence activity. Whereas gathering combined Aquatic foraging in hominids behavioural elements that must have existed in our non-human ancestors, the technique of bringing the Hominid, or pre-human, fossils of the genus Austra- obtained food from where it was found to another lopithecus as well as early species of our own genus, place where it was to be consumed and shared was a Homo, have been found in places that once were departure from the ape’s way of picking and eating the sites of rivers or lakes. For example, “Lucy,” the food on the spot with each weaned animal foraging most well known fossilised remains of an Austra- for itself. Hunting, therefore, rather than a leading lopithecus afarensis, were found among crab claws force, probably emerged later in human evolution as well as crocodile and turtle eggs in former near- from a technological and social base in gathering shore deposits (Verhaegen 1991:75). Of course, the (Zihlman 1981:93–95; cf. Ardrey 1976). hominids could have gone there for some reason other than gathering, and then drowned or were In her “gathering hypothesis”, Tanner (1987, 1994) attacked by predators, finally to become fossilised argues that the implication of female chimpanzees in the sediments, but they might also have been for- using tools far more often than males do is that only aging while wading or swimming. those early hominids that were most nutritionally stressed — such as females who were pregnant, It has been suggested that a number of modern nursing or sharing with offspring — had need for humans’ characteristics evolved in an evolutionary gathering technology. According to her, females past where wading and swimming were important were very likely the first to use modified organic (for recent summaries of the evidence, see Gräslund tools and unmodified stone tools for obtaining, 2005; Morgan 2008). Some examples are upright carrying and opening plant materials, whereas the stance, reduced fur, the layer of subcutaneous fat males either were engaged in plant foraging or (adipose tissue), fine hand-grasping ability (which small-animal predation without tools. She writes: could have been an adaptation for finding shells in muddy water), sheltered nostrils, voluntary breath Early gathering — characterized by control, the morphology of our kidneys, the number invention of tools, development of skills, of erythrocytes per blood volume, and the diving cognitive mapping of where to find reflex (described below). Such features may indi- desired plants and in what seasons, an cate that we are descendants of a primate that spent understanding of which skill and tool a considerable amount of its time searching for food was useful for obtaining which type of in aquatic environments, perhaps even diving for it, plant (for example, a fruit or nut high in during one phase in our evolution. a tree required different efforts and tools than an underground root), together with Exactly when or where this happened is a mat- transmission of this knowledge to the ter of debate. Some have suggested around 6 mil- next generation — helps us to compre- lion years ago, when climatic changes in east hend how a series of incremental changes Africa caused forests to retreat and savannahs and could forge the beginning of larger brains deserts to expand, a period from which we do not than among apes. Most significant, it yet have (with absolute certainty) any fossils of a helps us to understand how learning and permanently bipedal hominid. Ellis (1991) writes cultural transmission came to be cen- that the African Rift Valley, including the Red Sea, tral to the way in which the human line might have provided a suitable combination of sea developed (Tanner 1994:132). level and habitat changes for a group of apes to become geographically isolated in marine wetlands This would have meant that males as well as long enough to become more aquatically adapted females learned about gathering while being car- through evolution, and that their adaptations later ried around by their mothers as they were search- on might have been functional in allowing early ing for food. Zihlman (1981:96–97) suggests that a hominids to enter the savannah ecosystem and out- primary ingredient of the early hominid’s success compete other primates there. Thus, coastal areas in the savannah environment was the complemen- and the savannah would both have their place in tary nurturing roles of both sexes, a flexibility of human evolution. behaviour of both males and females for oppor- tunistically utilizing the full range of food sources Others believe that this part of our evolution so that the males also contributed to the gene pool occurred 2 million years ago, or even later (and long by bringing food for nurturing the young, thereby after permanent bipedal walking had evolved), investing in their kin (although not necessarily when sea levels were lower and Homo populations 12 SPC Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin #20 – November 2009 had left Africa and spread along South Asian coasts Evidence from studies on diving (later to return to Africa).