Locational Aspects of Cultural Ecology: The Case of the Goat in Non-Western Agriculture

Abstract

W A tHEN in 1333 the Muslim traveler Ibn Batuta landed at the port of Alaya (the present Turkish town of Alanya) on the south shore of Asia Minor, he described, in part, that settlement with the following phrases: is inhabited by Turkmens, and is visited by the merchants of Cairo, Alexandria, and Syria. It has quantities of wood, which is exported from there to Alexandria and Dimyat, and thence carried to the other parts of Egypt.' Nearly five hundred years later, in 18oo, when the British officer Captain William Martin Leake visited the area, he spoke of vessels, called by the Turks Ghirlanghitsh (swallow), which are generally formed with three masts and a bolt-sprit, all bearing triangular sails, being built there in the Seljuk shipyard,2 which retains its fame, though not its activity, to the present day. Thus do we find evidence in this area of a long-term industry and trade based on the use of forest products. In 1963 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that only some 1 1 percent of this same region was covered with productive forest, and 28 percent with degraded forest, maquis, garigue, and burnt areas.3 These figures represented a significantly lower acreage for forested areas of all qualities than the extent in previous decades of this century.4 Four causes are recognized for the depletion of the forest resources: overpopulation, overgrazing by goats and sheep, forest fires, and insect damage. Insect damage is considered insignificant, and the fire danger, though great, is now being reduced. It is the first two sources of forest degradation that are considered most important, and in the words of another FAO report,5