One of my current projects is a look into humanity’s histories along the edge of the sea. Much of my recent work has been about contemporary coastal issues, but I’m also interested in the coastal question from a longer-term perspective. Which is why it’s been nice to be working with some of my colleagues in archaeology lately. I just got back from a short research trip to the Cape Region of Baja California Sur for a coastal archaeology and anthropology project there—more on that soon.
Regarding the long-term coastal question, these days it’s a lot more common—and acceptable—to think about coasts and shorelines as important dimensions of early human migrations and dispersals. But that wasn’t always the case.
Early anthropologists tended to assume that the global dispersal of humanity was a terrestrial thing (Erlandson and Braje 2015). This kind of thinking tended to dominate until relatively recently. The American geographer Carl Sauer was one person who suggested otherwise.
“The seashore,” Sauer wrote, “offered the best route of dispersal from continent to continent” (Sauer 1962: 47). Here’s his rationale:
The dispersal of early man took place most readily by following along the seashore. The coasts ahead presented familiar foods and habitats. The life of sea and strand is least dependent on local climate … Coastwise there was scarcely a barrier to the spread of early man through tropical and subtropical latitudes, nor was he much affected by the secular changes of climate and biota inland. Even when the zone of winter cold was reached, the supply of food was less altered or seasonally restricted than was that of the land [1962: 47].
This is an early precursor to the argument that Jon Erlandson and others have made with the ‘kelp highway’ hypothesis (e.g. Erlandson et al. 2007). The basic idea here is that the coastline provided a relatively stable ecology and set of conditions that humans followed into the Americas. In the last 20 years or so, such ideas have become much more widely accepted.
So, Sauer was onto something for sure. His argument in that 1962 paper, however, also had some fairly wonky elements. I guess this is to be expected—we can’t get everything right. In one part, he makes the argument that life along the sea would lead to a kind of social utopia:
There was a choice of good living sites by the sea, where all things needful were at hand and were to be had throughout the year. There was no need to move because of seasonal shortage or depletion. Sedentary living was possible, with leisure. Families could cluster about an attractive site in mutual assistance and continuing communication. Human sociality could begin here by common interest, not by the dominance of an aggressive leader. A pacific basis of human society is inferred rather than one by organization and exercise of power [46-47].
This is the kind of simplistic analysis of social structure that Graeber and Wengrow take to task quite effectively in their recent book. There’s no reason to assume that life along the edge of the sea—abundant resources or not—would automatically result in less hierarchical and more egalitarian society. Nope. Again, check out Graeber and Wengrow on this point—they have a good comparison of California and the Northwest coast that speaks directly to this kind of problematic thinking. To recap: Living by the sea does not automatically result in a pacific basis for human society.
Unfortunately, Sauer wasn’t quite done with some of the wonky ideas. He also mentioned the Pericú people, the indigenous people of the Cape Region in Baja California Sur. They came up during his discussion about the seashore as ‘optimum habitat,’ which I think has some merit…even if he takes it in some not-so-great directions. He talks about the ‘richly rewarding’ ecology and resources of the coast. So far, so good. Here’s what he wrote next:
The inhabitants of the seashore thus had their attention directed along the strand, back onto the land, but also out into the sea. However primitive the people who live by warm or temperate water, they are generally excellent swimmers and divers [46].
Speaking in terms of people who are primitive versus complex was, at the time, fairly standard stuff at the time. I’m not sure what point it adds to the argument, but again this kind of thing was common back then. His point here is that the shoreline and coast have lots of resources, people paid attention to them, and people who lived in such environments tended to be adept in the water. But then he decided, for some reason, to double-down on the whole ‘primitive’ argument, this time mentioning native people of the Baja California peninsula and the Mexican mainland:
The natives who lived about the Gulf of California were among the most primitive inhabitants of North America; they included the Seri of the mainland and, on the peninsula of Lower California, the Pericu, Guaicura, and Cochimi. All were very adept at swimming and diving. Some came to be thus employed by the Spandiards to dive for Gulf pearl oysters (of the genus Pinctada), in diving for which they weighted themselves with stones. The Pericu also were able to spear fish while diving. Large and deep middens of unknown age stretch along the Gulf of California and contain in quantity numerous shells of species that could be secured only by diving.
Sauer doesn’t tell us what—or what metrics he’s using—but he explains that these people were supposedly among the most “primitive” inhabitants of North America. Does he mean they were less intelligent? Is he talking about people who use particular subsistence technologies? What does it even mean to say that such peoples were among the most primitive on an entire continent? He doesn’t explain, but that was par for the course for a lot of mid century analysis of the time. What’s funny to me is that after telling us how supposedly primitive these people were, Sauer then mentions how skilled and knowledgeable they were in their coastal environments. They were primitive, sure, but the Spanish sure were glad to take benefit from that knowledge, experience, and skill. Something to think about there.
References
Erlandson, J.M., Graham, M.H., Bourque, B.J., Corbett, D., Estes, J.A. and Steneck, R.S., 2007. The kelp highway hypothesis: marine ecology, the coastal migration theory, and the peopling of the Americas. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2(2), pp.161-174.
Sauer, C.O., 1962. Seashore-primitive home of man?. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106(1), pp.41-47.