Book reviews

Human Ecology, VoL 6, No. 2, 1978

BOOK REVIEWS

War in Ecological Perspective: Persistence, Change, and Adaptive Processes in Three Oceanian Societies. By Andrew P. Vayda. Plenum Press, New York, 1976, xiv + 129 pp., maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index, $14.95 (cloth).

This book is mainly a compilation and elaboration of material which Vayda has presented elsewhere, structured around his ecological/processual model of warfare (Vayda, 1967, 1974). Evidence to illustrate this model is drawn from his ethnographic studies among the Marings of New Guinea and from ethnohistoric information concerning the Maoris of New Zealand and the Iban of Borneo.

Vayda characterizes warfare as a systematic process consisting of a number of distinct though graded and related phases. Such a process may begin with very simple confrontations, escalate through a series of more serious and possibly lethal phases, and eventually culminate in all-out warfare resulting in demographic restructuring of the cultural landscape. Such escalation is not inevitable; it may be short-circuited on any level, and alternative solutions to the stresses which generated conflict may emerge. Vayda maintains that, while the ultimate phases of the warfare process may result in demographic shifts, the lower-level phases serve many functions. In particular they test for dis- parity in military potential (measured by such factors as demographic strength, military skills and resolve, and the ability to attract and hold allies). His basic point is that the various phases of warfare generate information in sociocultural systems concerning the efficacy of warfare as a response to stress or opportunity or the advisability of pursuing other courses of action.

Although Vayda's particular concern is with the ecological implications of this model, especially its relationship to population pressure and scarce agricultural resources, he makes a number of disclaimers. For instance, he cautions that the ecological functions of warfare are not universal and that many societies have functional equivalents, although he does not discuss them in detail or attempt to explain this cultural variation in theoretical terms. He also denies the existence of any sort of "prime mover" in the warfare process, ex-

215 0300-7839 /78 /0600-0215505 .00 /0 �9 1978 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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plaining that his own focus on ecological and demographic variables stems from his own particular research interests and experience.

Vayda's warfare model has much to recommend it. Assuming that it is widely applicable, one finds it a plausible framework within which to view the bewildering variety of ethnographic observations of primitive warfare. We can also understand why this variety has confused generations of anthropologists. The basic problems are that ethnographers have seldom geared their fieldwork to the study of war and have directly observed only bits and pieces of the overall process in essentially synchronic perspectives. In Vayda's scheme, revenge- killing, overtly "sporting" or "ritualistic" confrontations, and outright massacre and territorial conquest are all functionally related. Within the limits of his own argument, moreover, the warfare process has definite adaptive implications for human populations in terms of the universal evolutionary mechanism of com- petition, especially when carried to its most lethal extremes.

A major deficiency is that, despite its title, the book contains very little systematic consideration of ecological factors that relate to demographic structuring and stress and, supposedly, lead to various phases of the warfare process. This is most surprising with regard to the New Guinea material, much of which Vayda collected himself. The reader is given no detailed information concerning the nature and diversity of the productive environment, cultigens or cultivation strategies, the organization and expenditure of subsistence labor, measures of agricultural efficiency, or population density, distribution, and rates of growth - all of which are essential to an understanding of the relationship between warfare and demography in ecological terms. Vayda does not indicate the extent to which his own field research was structured to acquire such information. Certainly the efforts of a number of other anthropologists and cultural geographers in New Guinea have produced relevant data which could have been used to support his arguments.

Vayda's model seems most appropriate to what Otterbein (1970) has called internal war (war between culturally similar and perhaps genetically related political communities), in which the information processing and the predictable structuring of the various phases of warfare are facilitated by a high degree of mutual understanding and adherence to shared conventions. Within the context of internal war Vayda's model is primarily one of local equilibrium maintenance rather than one with evolutionary implications, although a concern with culture change is apparent in Vayda's ethnohistoric examples. Unfortunately, very little reference is made to the abundant comparative material available on New Guinea warfare, which could possibly provide interesting similarities and contrasts with the Maring data. For example, Sorenson (1972) has related population growth and pressure to warfare among the Fore, but he has maintained for a variety of reasons that phases of warfare are largely absent.

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Perhaps the most serious difficulty in Vayda's model is that while it is eminently plausible, it seems inherently untestable (assuming that one holds testability to be an important virtue of model-building). Neither Vayda's own field observations nor the two ethnohistoric examples he discusses unequivocal- ly capture the full range of behavior characteristic of the proposed warfare process, and he does not allude to any other body of ethnographic information which does so. In particular, ethnographers have found it difficult to observe directly or document the infrequent but all-important final phases of escalation which may involve significant demographic restructuring. For example, Heider (1970) saw the low-level, ritualistic phases of Dani warfare in New Guinea, but he found it difficult to observe directly the most intense, destructive phases which occurred only every 10-20 years; moreover, past conflicts of major proportions were difficult to document through the use of informants.

As an archaeologist concerned with the evolutionary effects of warfare, I am struck by the irony that archaeology faces the reverse of the ethnographers' problem. We are most likely to observe, in prehistoric contexts, the effects of these final phases of the process while missing the lower-level ones. Thus a traditional avenue of testability of diachronic ethnographic processes is likely to be unproductive. It may be that only various sorts of simulation models could evaluate the utility of Vayda's assertions.

In summary, I fred the general model presented by Vayda attractive and plausible in logical terms, although I think its exposition is weak. ! hope that ecologically oriented ethnographers and archaeologists can, through future research, present more compelling arguments in its support.

REFERENCES

Heider, K. (1970). The Dugum DanL Viking Fund Publication in Anthropology, No. 49, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Inc., New York.

Otterbein, K. (1970). The Evolution of War: A Cross-Cultural Study. Human Relations Area Files Press, New Haven, Conn.

Sorensen, E. R. (1972). Socio-ecological change among the Fore of New Guinea. Current Anthropology 13: 349-384.

Vayda, A. P. (1967). Hypotheses about the functions of war. In War: the Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression, Fried, M., Harris, M., and Murphy, R. (eds.), Natural History Press, Garden City, N.Y.

Vayda, A. P. (1974). War in ecological perspective. Annual Review of Ecology and Sys. tematics 5: 183-193.

David Webster Department o f A n thropology

The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania

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Acts of God, Acts of Man. By Wesley Marx. Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, Inc., New York, 1977, 276 pp., photographs, tables, bibliography, $8.95 (cloth).

Modern man is often like a child building sand castles by the seashore. The elaborate structures, tunnels, and fortifications eventually succumb to the incoming tide. Indeed, some structures fall more often than others. In his latest of a series of popular environmental books, Wesley Marx shows that while we have attempted to control the natural event, we have ignored the "people problems" that are inseparable from the hazard situation. "We have been at- tempting to control the wrong agent of disaster. Nature creates hazards; man, particularly urban man, creates disasters" (p. 233). Even the well-informed scholar, public official, or citizen has much to gain from this collection of new and old case histories which vividly describe man's futile attempts to live in hazard zones. For those with limited knowledge about natural hazards, Acts of God, Acts of Man provides a comprehensive account of the human tendency to take permanent risks in hazardous places. This volume moreover emphasizes planning and land-use regulations to reduce our exposure to floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.

Marx instructs the reader that the word hazard stems from the Arabic name for a game of chance (az-zahr). Those who live in areas with high risks are the "high rollers" who are taking chances with the hope that nature's "rent" in the form of deaths, damages, and losses will not be collected during their lifetimes. After discussing the natural character of extreme geophysical events, Marx sets forth an indictment against the environmental recklessness of public policies and engineering strategies. Manifestations of human ignorance, greed, and stupidity not only often make hazard situations more severe (as in the case of a breached dam) but are also exported as part of foreign aid packages to less developed nations. The author's method is to present case histories that emphasize these human successes and failures from our past and present adjustments to extreme natural events and to examine the implications of these accounts for future planning. His emphasis upon tighter land-use regulation of hazard zones does not provide a blueprint for future security, but it does offer partial solutions for these complex and deep-seated problems.

The acknowledgments indicate that Marx's 21 chapters are more than the compilation of original and secondary source materials. Nearly every scenario also presents the product of Marx's field investigations and extensive interviews with public officials and occupants of risk zones in such far-ranging places as Boston and Bangladesh. These personal experiences contribute much to the volume's appeal, but other assets are also noteworthy. First, the theme of man's careless rendezvous with nature is carefully woven throughout the book. The emphasis on "people problems" extends into the planning applications and

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alternative solutions. Marx offers nonstructural perspectives in place of the "technological fix" or structural modifications so common in Western strategies.

The scope of the book is enhanced by discussions describing hazard settings in a historical context and at various scales ranging from urban watersheds, to nation-states, to international settings (the latter exemplified by the Sahelian drought and global weather modification). The chapters also provide encourage- ment because of Marx's ability to show human successes as well as failures and suggest lessons learned from these experiences. His contrast between the Four Mile Run dilemma in suburban Washington, D.C. and the successes of the District's own Rock Creek Valley is especially revealing.

Another asset is Marx's orientation toward the beneficial aspects of reform. Basically, he is striving for the preservation of hazard zones as natural areas and points to model cities such as Hilo, Hawaii, where the aftermath of a seismic wave resulted in a redevelopment of a protected downtown and the creation of open spaces. Rather than perpetuate tire "Messiah complex" in disaster relief, Marx also advocates self-help programs from the local to the international level. Institutional changes, therefore, at all scales are recognized as urgent needs. How to expedite these changes with fairness and sensitivity to local cultural groups and to the satisfaction of the majority, however, is a perplexing problem to which Marx and others can offer only piecemeal suggestions.

Added bonuses of Acts of God, Acts of Man are its timely illustrations and supplementary materials. An inner section of 21 black-and-white photographs illustrates the accounts in each chapter and the long-range futility of structural adjustments in certain hazard zones. Tables in the appendix show the costs of natural disasters in terms of human and dollar losses and outline the effects of various controversial environmental modification techniques. Marx's primary references are included in a useful chapter-by-chapter listing after the appendix.

One of the few reservations that I have about this book is that it attempts to be too comprehensive. Mere glimpses of each hazard dilemma are usually presented. For example, Marx indicates that several American cities are especially vulnerable to single or multiple hazards. Readers wishing to probe deeply into this issue are provided with ample references, but a survey approach such as this often omits important details.

On the other hand, one also could argue that Acts of God, Acts of Man overemphasizes the tiazards of Southern California. Case histories from Orange County, Huntington Beach, and Long Beach highlight Marx's pa- rade of scenarios. Greater perspective is provided in these accounts perhaps because Marx lives in Orange County and teaches at the University of Cali- fornia-Irvine. Whereas these examples are applicable to other urban settings, some readers might not be interested in such accounts as a conversation between a Huntington Beach civil defense coordinator and a prospective home buyer (p. 130).

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Marx suggests that one of his purposes was "to explore whether such a strategic retreat from disaster, whether in Huntington Beach or Bangladesh, can become the rule of civic policy rather than the exception" (p. 24). Perhaps it is too early for Marx or anyone else to address this question, but I find no answer in this book. While Marx's urban planning reforms to reduce our exposure to natural hazards are intriguing and theoretically possible, they are impractical for widespread applications or enforcement in the United States: "Controlling our patterns of development in hazardous l ands . . . [offends] the sacrosanct image of local home rule" (p. 43). Future civic policies that restrict settlement probably face battles even more challenging than those Marx en- visions.

As a reflection of current thinking over a wide-ranging series of problems, Acts of God, Acts of Man is an eye-opening document of problems that are rarely anticipated until disaster strikes. Just as "hazard planning may help us better recognize the universal nature of the human condition" (p. 241), we should study these events and our responses to them in the context of our overall adjustment to the world around us. Greater understanding of these adapta- tions may lead us to develop alternatives to sand castles that are safe, beautiful, and perhaps more profitable in the long run.

Kenard E. Smith Department of Geography

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, Virginia

The Conservation of Cities. St Martin's Press, New York, and The Unesco Press, Paris, 1975, 186 pp., notes, photographs, appendixes, $16.95 (cloth).

Urban conservation is an activity that came naturally to cities in times past, particularly because the production and transport of the materials from which the city fabric was shaped were so exhausting. Any prosperous city could fairly easily overtax the localized supplies - whether of timber, bricks, or stone - and the labor in constructing buildings was such that the shepherding of the existing stock was quite natural. Society cooperated by maintaining its practices with little change over a number of generations, and the economy tended toward preservation both of traditional practices and of intercity assignments of productive proportions. Once built, a city became a resource that maintained its value, both bodily and in the minute functioning cells that comprised that collective morphology. With the onset of capitalism in the 16th and 17th centuries, matters began to change; mercantile capitalism disrupted geographical proportioning, and land capitalism banished the stability of land use and land rents that had characterized Western society for 500 years. The industrial capitalism of the

Book Reviews 221

19th century merely made more rapid and more certain the effort to transform the functions of cities both as economic places and in their several parts. In our time the radical functionalists of modern architecture have widely but unwisely adopted the false doctrine that form follows function: It seldom has for more than an historical instant.

Functionalism in architecture became the great engine of change in cities, justifying the architect, planner, and builder in his seeking to practice his art on a vacant canvas. Urban destruction became the first stage in urban change, and rather quickly in the years after 1918 the past was ripped from the ground, leaving a jagged hole to be filled by functional absolutism. By the close of the Second World War, with its massive destruction of European cities, loss was com- bined with functionalism to destroy the past to such an extent that even the quiet ordinary citizens began to reject redevelopment proposals. In an uncon- scious revanche urban conservation was "rediscovered," and it has now been taken up by the same sort of esthete who a generation earlier manned the tiller of the ark of functionalism. Fortunately there is much that is durable and be- yond the design fad in this; urban conservation is as well propelled by the oars of the lesser beings who simply live in and use cities, but we must be careful not to be carried toward a senseless antiquarianism.

In a slender volume UNESCO has provided a forum for the discussion of urban conservation to allow "[1]eading environmental experts from eight count r ies . . , to analyse the central dilemma facing moderrf society, of whether to preserve or to rebuild" in cities. Unfortunately the "experts" represent only one side of the question; they are without exception concerned with preservation, museology, or environmental psychology. Much as I, and I suspect most readers, abhor urban redevelopment as it has been practiced, as a reviewer I must make clear that this book is a polemic, and the fact that you and I agree with its argument does not change matters one whit. The trouble is that without a truly open question there is little of conceptual value, certainly nothing of intellectual excitement, in this book. It is an account, all too fulsomely bureau- cratic in the first four chapters, of what has been done, and that mostly in the foremat of legislative and administrative actions. In the chapters on specific countries - the United States, Japan, Tunisia, Iran, and Italy - there is the re- counting of facts, as opposed to the in-group information that so often con- stitutes the contribution of those interested in public policy (as in the first four chapters), that can help us to supply our own concepts. The UNESCO volume, however, gives us no basis really for analyzing "the central dilemma facing modern society," if it be such in fact: "whether to preserve or to rebuild." We are simply told mostly about public actions based on foregone conclusions.

Among these unexamined assumptions are several that deserve, within an intellectual community, more than simple acceptance. Throughout there is a tendency to take with nodded head the validity of the belief that automobiles have destroyed traditional cities (p. 10), overlooking the fact that given the vast in-

222 Book Reviews

crease in the numbers of city people in most societies the automobile may well have preserved the oldest fabric of the city (at its heart) from being swept away, as were late 19th-century Denver, pre-1945 downtown Houston and Phoenix, and most of medieval Milan. Similarly the "horror" of suburbs is widely asserted with such flabby analysis as that contained in the statement "the suburbs and outskirts of cities tend to be particularly uninspiring. Younger people have little opportunity to make contact with others, and a lack of experience fosters either a certain narrow-mindness [sic] or a spirit of revolt - or perhaps both simulta- neously" (p. 59). In a shameless environmental determinism two Viennese psy- chologists seek to show that the ,principle of durability of domicile merits fore- most consideration" and that "the dwelling h o u s e . . , is of capital psychological importance" (pp. 43-44). Presentingno control data, they boldly assert that "The scale of values applied in restoration is one that aims at producing human architecture.. Without sacrificing the benefits of modern civilization, it respects old laws of symmetry and proportion, the unique character of works of art, and makes a contribution towards the restoration of an environment in which men can be mentally as well as physically healthy" (p. 56).

The Conservation of Cities must finally be considered a publication in homiletics. There will be few urban scholars who would not agree that urban conservation is a wise undertaking. But here no effort is made to examine such things as the past experience with this conservation, as I have tried to do in set- ting the context for reviewing this work, or in looking into the question of actual utilization of retrieved buildings, so necessary if we are to understand first why abandonment came and, secondly, what can be done to overcome it on a long- term basis. Few societies can conserve cities aimlessly, and no society can conserve everything that has been put into the urban fabric in times past. For that reason this rather haphazard collection of law and experience does little actually to advance the tree purpose of retrieving and maintaining this inheritance that is in cultural and morphological terms so essential to making the city more human. In the absence of generalization and conceptual conclusion what we have are some useful facts but a considerable disappointment of any expectation that through this work we can actually reverse the process of functional abandonment, which literally destroys the past. Only when the matter of functional absolutism is dealt with directly for the senseless rigidity it is, will the conservation of cities become natural and likely.

James E. Vance, Jr. Department of Geography

University of California Berkeley, California

Book Reviews 223

The Native Population of the Americas in 1492. Edited by William M. Denevan. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1976, xxii + 353 pp., tables, maps, graphs, glossary, bibliography, index, $15.00 (cloth).

The debate concerning the size, distribution, and structure of the native population of the Americas prior to and immediately following the European conquest is well known because 6f its heated and lengthy character. Scholars from a number of disciplines have participated in the inquiry, and, due largely to wide-ranging interpretations of documentary evidence together with various methodological differences in the treatment of the archaeological record, a variety of estimates for different areas has resulted. Although disagreement over the size of former Indian populations continues to be strong, attention seems to be shift- ing away from the absolute figures or estimates themselves and toward the development of improved methods of ecological analysis and the reinterpretation of archival evidence.

Such a trend is reflected in this volume of eight essays. A very useful introductory section by Denevan carefully outlines the methodological back- grounds of various hemispheric estimates and describes concisely the more common techniques of population projection, the many types of documentary records used in the past, and the various ecological indicators of population potential and carrying capacity. An overview by Woodrow Borah focuses on the history of the debate, demonstrating how population estimates have risen as better statistical techniques have been adopted. He suggests that both the wide disagreement over estimates and the very likely large margins of error will gradually be reduced through local analyses that incorporate the best possible awareness of contemporary social and ecological conditions in constructing projection methods. In essence, it appears that the direction of the debate will be determined largely by interdisciplinary efforts conducted in the field as well as in the archive.

Taken together, the seven regional studies included in this collection ade- quately emphasize the limitations involved in favoring one form of evidence over another. Several of the essays provide current reviews of the known documentary source material for specific areas, and Denevan's introductory notes to each of the four sections (the Caribbean, Central America, and Yucat~in; Mexico;South America; and North America) offer a clear and succinct assessment of the pub- lished materials not covered in the essays. In this sense, a good part of the volume serves much the same function as Dobyns' (1966) earlier evaluation of the debate in that it reviews and consolidates known findings.

Three of the studies follow Borah's suggested directions while the remain- ing four focus primarily on the interpretation of archival data. Rosenblat's low

224 Book Renews

estimate of the preconquest population of Hispaniola is based on an extremely strict interpretation of several of the available documentary sources. His refusal to agree even in part either with Cook and Borah's opinion on the early spread of disease in Hispaniola (Cook and Borah, 1971: 409-410) or with Sauer's view that early depopulation was caused by disruption of native dietary patterns associated with Spanish suppression of hunting and fishing (Saner, 1966: 200-204) is a major weakness in the argument. Similarly, Radell's study of the Nicaraguan slave trade during the 16th century relies on a set of elaborate assumptions that tie together data obtained from slave ship registries. The problem here is that one has some idea of how many Indians were removed, but the assumptions required for an adequate projection are too great. Radell's population figures do not agree with the results of several recent examinations of the area, which suggests that further cross-checking, perhaps through the analysis of archaeological data, might narrow the range of estimates.

Pyle's research on Argentina and Ubelaker's study of the sources and methods utilized by James Mooney in compiling estimates of North American Indian populations are aimed at rediscovering and piecing together bits of written information. Both essays demonstrate the difficulty involved in producing sound estimates for regions that experienced contact periods much later than Middle America. Pyle's cross-checking of various subregional aboriginal population estimates suggests a need for additional archaeological studies analyzing the spatial variation in resource bases and carrying capacities to determine the size of marginal groups. In calling attention to the sources traditionally used by North American historical demographers, Ubelaker demonstrates that the detailed investigation of earlier estimates may often yield more profitable results than the application of new techniques to misinterpreted data.

If, as Borah points out, the continuation of the debate depends on the combination of tested methods of historical and ecological analysis, then the essays of Sanders, Denevan, and Shea certainly have much to say about the future of research on native populations. These three studies depart from the more orthodox approaches and call particular attention to the role of environmental conditions in affecting depopulation rates.

The idea that the high civilization areas of the Andes and Central Mexico had achieved parity in population numbers is unresolved, yet accepted by many. Shea's essay defends a conservative estimate for the Central Andes. His view that the spread of epidemic disease was much slower in the Andes than in Central Mexico rests on the idea that the linear pattern of settlement in the Andes was less conducive to the spread of contagious disease than was the concentric cir- cle pattern found in Mexico. The possible spread of disease from Central Mexico prior to the Spanish conquest of Peru and evidence indicating an Inca population already in decline lend further support to his conservative precontact estimate. Whether or not the estimate is widely accepted, Shea's view that the spatial ar- rangement of human settlement affected the diffusion of epidemic disease cer-

Book Reviews 225

tainly deserves testing in other situations where the documentary record is more extensive.

In areas where there is limited archaeological evidence and a paucity of written records, determination of carrying capacities will undoubtedly conti- nue to provide the most useful population estimates. Denevan's study of Greater Amazonia utilizes such a method. Natural habitats form the spatial units for cal- culating potential populations based on the assumption that "where good soils and rich wildlife resources coincide, there can be expected the densest and most permanent native settlement" (p. 209). In other words, dietary composition and the availability of a proper food supply are, in this case, critical in determining the distribution of population. The problem is that, lacking sufficient archaeological evidence, development of resources using uniform systems of technology must be assumed. The application of the model to other areas could add the cor- roborative evidence necessary in reducing the range of population estimates.

A most significant essay is Sanders' study of the population of the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region: the Basin of Mexico and the Teotihuac~in Valley. Sanders challenges the Cook and Borah estimate of 25,200,000 for Central Mexico in 1519, holding that the rate of population decline prior to 1568 was not as great as Cook and Borah calculated, and that an estimate of 11,400,000 is more accurate. His revision of the population curve for Central Mexico follows a detailed criticism of the sources and techniques of interpretation previously used (Cook and Borah, 1960). The curve that Sanders presents assumes no major decline associated with disease before 1540. A survey of the potential for maize and surplus crop cultivation in the Teotihuac~in Valley moreover indicates a potential population of 135,000, or less than one-half of the 320,000 estimated according to the Cook and Borah curve.

Several considerations should be made in weighing the impact of Sanders' results. First, the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region encompasses a smaller area than Cook and Borah's Central Mexico. It consists of the upland region where depopulation rates were presumably lower. The Central Mexico area includes the tropical lowlands where depopulation rates were much higher. Second, Sanders' survey of crop potential in the Teot/huac~n Valley assumes a level of cultivation which may have been higher. Third, Sanders assumes that relatively high depopulation ratios were unlikely before the major epidemics of the 1540s, yet if, as Shea suggests, depopulation ratios decline with population, a steeper curve may be more accurate (p. 129).

Sanders' essay is bound to stir debate. It demonstrates that a careful combination of methods using a broad base of evidence can produce a convincing estimate. When compared with Rosenblat's strict interpretation of the written record, it points out the need for interdisciplinary approaches to an essentially interdisciplinary problem.

The other essays together with Denevan's commendable introductions to each of the book's five parts furnish a most comprehensive review and discussion

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of the sources, methods, techniques, and estimates that have been developed. Denevan is to be complimented. He has assembled a thorough, solid, and balanced collection that will be used often.

REFERENCES

Cook, S. F., and Borah, W. (1960). The lndian Population of Central Mexico, 1531-1610. Ibero-Americana, No. 44. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.

Cook, S. F., and Borah, W. (1971, 1974). Essays in Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean. Vols. 1, 2. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.

Dobyns, H. (1966). Estimating aboriginal American population: An appraisal of techniques with a new hemispheric estimate. Current Anthropology 7: 395-416.

Sauer, C. O. (1966). The Early Spanish Main. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.

Michael M. Swarm Department of Geography

Syracuse University Syracuse, New York

Climates of Hunger: Mankind and the World's Changing Weather. By Reid A. Bryson and Thomas J. Murray. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1977, xv + 171 pp., charts, maps, references, index, $8.95 (cloth).

"Climates of Hunger are Changed Climates." So begins this timely popu- larization of two decades of wide-ranging interdisciplinary research conducted at the Center for Climatic Research of the University of Wisconsin. Bryson and Murray offer a glimpse of climate, the history of climate, and the history of man. While the connections offered between climate and man's ecosystems will stir debate, it is unlikely that more elegant interdisciplinary research will be offered.

Climates o f Hunger is divided into four parts. In the first, a case is made implicating climate change in the fall of Mycenae, the migration of the Hittites, and the disappearance of the Upper Republican Indians of the American plains. In the second, the written historical record is merged with the earliest meteorological data and is brought to life with information from the sagas of the Vikings and the successes and failures of European wine harvests. In part three, "The Monsoons Fail," the end of Harappa around 1500 B.C. and the Sahel disaster of the 1970s are joined. Finally, Bryson and Murray deal with the question of the causes of climate change. Each of the four parts is a synthesis of previously pub- lished researches.

Usually prologues in books are hurriedly paged through to get to the first chapter. The prologue in Climates o f Hunger is, however, filled with informatior~ on man and climate in the 1970s and illustrates how sensitive moder~ man is h,

Book Renews 227

climate fluctuations and to climate change. Once the reader understands this current climatic sensitivity he is ready to examine seriously the history of climate- man interactions.

In the first chapter, the fall of Mycenae in 1230 B.C. is offered as a climate- change generated ecocrisis. Could it be? Bryson and Murray proceed to demonstrate how modern meteorological data and analyses can be brought to bear on a question that is 3000 years old. The solution is both plausible and interesting. But that is not the point. It is that such crises are not always the invention of 20th-century man, but are recurrent in history. The impact of climate change on man and man's impact on climate are considered. In subsequent chapters numerous climatic crises are studied, but the flavor and diversity of the book may be gleaned from its index: Anatolia, Blaserk, Creek, Rnagmahal, and Westwetter - names that promise to capture the reader's interest.

The ranks of experts on tropical climate have swelled in recent years and no less than six theories have been advanced to explain the cause of the Sahelian drought. Bryson's theory, sometimes referred to as the "Sahelian effect," focuses on the interaction of polar and tropical climate systems and is the object of much current debate. To date the controversy is without resolution. Bryson's theory of the role of atmospheric dust in the cooling of planet earth, relative to planetary wanning due to CO2, is likewise a subject of debate between Bryson and his peers. This issue is also unresolved. Bryson is fond of saying to his critics that one must adjust theories according to the evidence, not the other way around. In this regard, the Center for Climate Research at Wisconsin is a fountainhead of empirical data on climate change.

The last chapter of Climates of Hunger is "The Lessons of Climatic History." Each lesson could merit the book's selection as a Book-of-the-Month Club alter- nate selection.

Like all good books of popular science, this one will attract both the criticism and critical review of scientists who reside safely within the bounds of a single discipline. In metcorological circles, Bryson's ideas have spawned new research. Similarly, Climate~ of Hunger should offer new research perspectives for human ecologists.

Bruce P. Hayden Department of Environmental Sciences

University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia

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