Arrival Of Europeans Research Articles

A Brief History of Whakapapa: Māori Approaches to Genealogy

Whakapapa is the Māori term for genealogy. It has been described by some as the skeletal structure of Māori epistemology because all things have their own genealogies. In research, whakapapa has been presented in tribal histories, Māori Land Court records, and consistently as a framework for mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and Māori research methodologies. This essay offers a brief overview of the ways in which whakapapa has been understood and negotiated in research particularly after the arrival of Europeans. Some early ethnographers, for instance, applied their own genealogical methods of dating to whakapapa, which influenced various Māori approaches from the twentieth century. With the advent of literacy and print, Māori experimented with new ways to record genealogy, and yet the underlying oral, ethical, and cultural practices that are crucial to whakapapa have remained integral to how it still lives and operates in Māori communities today.

The ethnohistory of freshwater use on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)

Sources of drinking water on islands often present critical constraints to human habitation. On Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), there is remarkably little surface fresh water due to the nature of the island's volcanic geology. While several lakes exist in volcanic craters, most rainwater quickly passes into the subsurface and emerges at coastal springs. Nevertheless, the island sustained a relatively large human population for hundreds of years, one that built an impressive array of monumental platforms (ahu) and statues (moai). To understand how Rapanui acquired their scarce fresh water, we review ethnohistoric data from first European arrival (1722) through the mid-twentieth century. Ethnohistoric accounts identify a diversity of freshwater sources and describe various Rapanui freshwater management strategies. Our findings highlight the importance of coastal freshwater seeps and provide much-needed insight into how Rapanui procured this vital and necessary resource.

EL SÍNODO AMAZÓNICO, LA AMAZONÍA Y LA IGLESIA

El artículo destaca la particularidad de un Sínodo sobre la Amazonía y sus efectos posibles para la Iglesia Católica, tanto local como globalmente, en la mayor región de bosque tropical del planeta. Posee no sólo una tremenda bio­diversidad sino también una gran diversidad cultural. Esta va desde los pueblos originarios, presentes en la Amazonía miles de años antes de la llegada de los europeos, hasta las complejas formaciones demográficas urbanas y rurales actuales. Describe los procesos preliminares desarrollados en la preparación del Sínodo, plantea algunos de los desafíos contemporáneos para la Amazonía y propone algunas de las características de una iglesia con rostro Amazónico que podrán también influenciar en la iglesia Universal.

Measuring the impact of European colonization on Native American populations in Southern Brazil and Uruguay: Evidence from mtDNA.

The major aim of this article was to estimate the demographic impact of European arrival and colonization over Native American populations from southern Brazil and Uruguay. We also compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genetic diversity, structure, and demography of Native American lineages present in current indigenous (Natives) and nonindigenous admixed (Admixed) populations to estimate the effective population size (Ne ) of contemporary and ancestral (pre-Columbian) Native American populations. We retrieved published mtDNA sequences from Native (n = 396) and Admixed (n = 309) populations from southern Brazil, Uruguay, and surrounding areas. We conducted genetic diversity, structure, and demographic analyses. Finally, we used Approximate Bayesian Computation to estimate the Ne for current Native, Admixed, and pre-Columbian Native American populations. We found higher Native American mtDNA genetic diversity in admixed rather than in indigenous populations (131/309 vs 27/396 different haplotypes, respectively). Only Admixed populations maintained ancient signals of the Native American population expansion approximately 14 to 17 kya, which have decayed in Natives. Our Ne estimates suggest that Natives represent only 0.33% (0.18%-1.19%) of the Ne for ancestral pre-Columbian indigenous populations. Admixed populations represent an important genetic reservoir of Native American lineages, many of which are extinct in contemporary indigenous populations. In addition, the Native American lineages present in Admixed populations retain part of the past demographic history of Native Americans. The intensity of the reduction is congruent with historical accounts of strong indigenous depopulation during the colonization process.

Microrrestos de vegetales cultivados y silvestres en fragmentos cerámicos. Primeras evidencias en el Centro Occidente argentino

West-central Argentina was the southern limit of the spread of agriculture in South America until European arrival, and the consumption of agricultural products varied its intensity during the last 2,000 years. A first for this region, this paper analyzes plant micro-remains adhered to the surfaces of ceramic fragments from northern Mendoza archaeological sites: Rincon de Los Helados (pre-cordillera) and Memorial de la Bandera (piedmont). Our aim is to present a preliminary study on the use of plants between ca . 2,000 and 1,000 years BP, and thereby contribute to data concerning the function of ceramic vessels. The results indicate the presence of maize and algarrobo starch, supporting previous analyses of plant macro-remains and isotopes in human bones.

Stable isotopes reveal patterns of diet and mobility in the last Neandertals and first modern humans in Europe

Correlating cultural, technological and ecological aspects of both Upper Pleistocene modern humans (UPMHs) and Neandertals provides a useful approach for achieving robust predictions about what makes us human. Here we present ecological information for a period of special relevance in human evolution, the time of replacement of Neandertals by modern humans during the Late Pleistocene in Europe. Using the stable isotopic approach, we shed light on aspects of diet and mobility of the late Neandertals and UPMHs from the cave sites of the Troisième caverne of Goyet and Spy in Belgium. We demonstrate that their diet was essentially similar, relying on the same terrestrial herbivores, whereas mobility strategies indicate considerable differences between Neandertal groups, as well as in comparison to UPMHs. Our results indicate that UPMHs exploited their environment to a greater extent than Neandertals and support the hypothesis that UPMHs had a substantial impact not only on the population dynamics of large mammals but also on the whole structure of the ecosystem since their initial arrival in Europe.

Late Quaternary Fossil Mammals from the Cayman Islands, West Indies

Abundant fossils of nesophontid lipotyphlan insectivores and capromyid rodents have been collected from late Quaternary deposits on the Cayman Islands, an island group separated by a major marine barrier from other Caribbean landmasses and isolated from anthropogenic impacts until the arrival of Columbus in 1503 CE. These collections have not previously been formally described. Using morphological and ancient DNA approaches, we document three new taxa of extinct endemic terrestrial mammals from this island group: Nesophontes hemicingulus (Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac), Capromys pilorides lewisi (Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brac), and Geocapromys caymanensis (Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac). Morphometric comparisons with other extinct and living West Indian mammals indicate that the biogeographic origins of all three new taxa are from source populations on Cuba. Ancient DNA data indicate very low sequence divergence of Capromys pilorides lewisi from mainland Cuban C. pilorides (only 0.5% across the entire mitogenome). Using probabilistic analysis of existing and new radiometric dates, we calculate an estimated extinction date of 1700 CE (95% confidence interval = 1632–1774 CE) for the Cayman Brac Capromys population. This result suggests that at least one endemic Cayman terrestrial mammal population survived for well over a century following first European arrival in the Cayman Islands. The West Indies lost nearly all its species-rich late Quaternary land mammal fauna during the late Holocene due to direct or indirect human impacts, and this study provides a new baseline to understand the magnitude of human-caused mammal extinctions during the recent past.

Redefining the age of tattooing in western North America: A 2000-year-old artifact from Utah

How people decorate their bodies provides insight into cultural expressions of achievement, group allegiances, identity, and status. Tattooing has been hard to study in ancient societies for which we do not have tattooed mummies, which adds to the challenge of placing current body modification practices into a long-term global perspective. Historic studies document the practice of tattooing among many Indigenous North American groups. While the distribution and complexity of tattoo traditions indicate these practices predate the fifteenth century CE and arrival of Europeans, the antiquity of North American tattooing is poorly understood. During a recent inventory of legacy archaeological materials from the Turkey Pen site in southeastern Utah, we discovered a tattooing implement constructed from a sumac stem, prickly pear cactus spines, and yucca leaf strips. This artifact was recovered in 1972 from an in situ midden but, until now, remained unidentified. The tattooing artifact dates to 79–130 CE during the Basketmaker II period (ca. 500 BCE – 500 CE), predating European arrival to North America by over 1400 years. This unusual tool is the oldest Indigenous North American tattooing artifact in western North America and has implications for understanding archaeologically ephemeral body modification practices. Events such as the Neolithic Demographic Transition—which occurs in many places around the globe—may link to an increase in body modification practices as social markers, as appears to be the case for the Basketmaker II people in the southwestern United States.

Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492

Human impacts prior to the Industrial Revolution are not well constrained. We investigate whether the decline in global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 7–10 ppm in the late 1500s and early 1600s which globally lowered surface air temperatures by 0.15∘C, were generated by natural forcing or were a result of the large-scale depopulation of the Americas after European arrival, subsequent land use change and secondary succession. We quantitatively review the evidence for (i) the pre-Columbian population size, (ii) their per capita land use, (iii) the post-1492 population loss, (iv) the resulting carbon uptake of the abandoned anthropogenic landscapes, and then compare these to potential natural drivers of global carbon declines of 7–10 ppm. From 119 published regional population estimates we calculate a pre-1492 CE population of 60.5 million (interquartile range, IQR 44.8–78.2 million), utilizing 1.04 ha land per capita (IQR 0.98–1.11). European epidemics removed 90% (IQR 87–92%) of the indigenous population over the next century. This resulted in secondary succession of 55.8 Mha (IQR 39.0–78.4 Mha) of abandoned land, sequestering 7.4 Pg C (IQR 4.9–10.8 Pg C), equivalent to a decline in atmospheric CO2 of 3.5 ppm (IQR 2.3–5.1 ppm CO2). Accounting for carbon cycle feedbacks plus LUC outside the Americas gives a total 5 ppm CO2 additional uptake into the land surface in the 1500s compared to the 1400s, 47–67% of the atmospheric CO2 decline. Furthermore, we show that the global carbon budget of the 1500s cannot be balanced until large-scale vegetation regeneration in the Americas is included. The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas resulted in a human-driven global impact on the Earth System in the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution.

Controlling the Ever Threatening ‘Other’

Ideas of Australia being invaded by a foreign ‘Other’ have been present throughout much of its history and this legacy is still present today. My paper will reveal the red thread of control that runs through Australia’s attitude and policy towards asylum seekers since European arrival. Claims of current restrictions against asylum seekers being mere Islamophobia ignore this history. From the grudging admission of Jewish refugees during times of Nazi oppression to quotas placed on certain nationalities and later draconian punishments for those claiming asylum without a prior visa, control of the ‘Other’ has been a constant theme, with current policies of mandatory detention and off shore processing on far away Pacific islands separating the Australian ‘Self’ from the foreign ‘Other.’

Laboured Protest: Black Civil Rights in New York City and Detroit During the New Deal and Second World War by Oliver Ayers

Book Reviews Oliver Ayers. Laboured Protest: Black Civil Rights in New York City and Detroit During the New Deal and Second World War. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 290. Abbreviations. Bibliography. Index. Cloth: $149.95. America’s memory of the civil rights movement remains hotly contested, twisted by politics, and historiographically debated. While scholars agree that the movement predated Martin Luther King Jr., where, when, and why remain elusive. Recent scholarship, inspired by Jacqueline D. Hall’s “long” civil rights thesis, has made bolder claims about the early period of protest. Laboured Protest revisits the foundational New Deal and wartime era for civil rights, labeling it “less powerful” and “more fragile” than previously thought. Ayers—history lecturer at the New College of Humanities, London—argues that the 1930s and 1940s were not just a period of origins. Instead, the experiences highlighted the need for a specific recipe of broad-based and coordinated national activism. It was the unfulfilled promises of the foundational period that laid the groundwork for future successes (p. 276). Ayers builds Laboured Protest on four principles. First, he returns to the beginning of the New Deal (1933) until the end of the Second World War (1945) bringing into focus the fault lines that hindered the movement as forces on the left converged. Second, he focuses on two case studies, New York City and Detroit—the “race” capital and “labour” capital, respectively—to marry the local and national dimensions of the movement. When and where only take the story so far, Ayers argues; whom defines the story. Laboured Protest’s third principle focuses on those affected, how black workers experienced and articulated the problems they faced in employment (p. 8). Finally, there is the central role of the achievements of the New Deal and wartime civil rights protest. By tracing the contours of black protest from the Great Depression, Ayers presents a period of “‘laboured protest” in which collaborative protest was undermined by personal, political, and generational differences. Behind the statistics that defined the losses and gains of the period lie thousands of individual stories. Ayers brings to light the impact of “laboured protest” on the lives of the very individuals who were given the “grand runaround” during this formative era. For example, Loretta Royal reported that her attempts to obtain employment were thwarted due to segregated housing; “a Harlem address is a dead giveaway” (p. 149). Executive order 8802 only inflamed the problem as the states became intolerant of wartime dissent. The Ford strike of 1941 showed the generational, political, and personal differences of the protest in Detroit. 154 The Michigan Historical Review Many black workers were reluctant to jettison their “hard-won” relationship with Ford where many younger workers sought to even the playing field (p. 120). The fractious nature of protest at both local and national levels tackled practical questions of funding, tactics, and leadership; powerful countervailing political forces revealed the deepseated dilemma about how best to tackle discrimination in employment. That returning black soldiers had a platform to lament the circumstances represented marked change from the pre-New Deal era. Ayers points out that the fight for fair employment was one of the most important consequences of the period. Laboured Protest as such muddies the historiographical waters, by illuminating the much-contested landscape of the New Deal and wartime years in tandem to show that the specific recipe of broad-based and coordinated activism needed to make headway was both sporadic and fleeting. Despite a somewhat nauseating number of acronyms that flood the pages, there is a marvelous amount of detail in an effortlessly told story about the energetic campaigning of an ultimately more complex and diverse movement towards fair employment. Gillian Macdonald Central Michigan University Barbara J. Barton. Manoomin: The Story of Wild Rice in Michigan. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2018. Pp. 224. Appendices. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paper: $29.95. Barbara J. Barton, an endangered-species biologist, argues that there were large beds of wild rice along the coastlines of the Great Lakes and inland waters of current-day Michigan before the arrival of Europeans. Manoomin, titled after the word in Anishinaabemowin for wild rice, begins by establishing...

Another reading of classical concepts: Reactualization of the Simmel’s stranger and the enemy on the case of contemporary migration from the middle east

Although formalism is mostly often considered to be an outdated theoretical orientation in sociology, Simmel?s short essay on stranger has made a very large influence on authors throughout the twentieth century. In contemporary sociology, Simmel?s name is often mentioned in studies of migration from the Middle East because they have re-actualized the question of a strangeness and interpretative models of constructing otherness between the native population and newcomers. The aim of this paper is to show how a classical sociological concepts can serve as a valid starting point for the study of the contemporary social phenomenon. Emphasis is placed on the distinction between stranger and enemy in Simmel?s essay on the stranger which is under-explored. This distinction will be especially important when we analyse the attitude of the West towards Muslim migrants whose arrival in Europe is accompanied by discourses of risk and the alleged inevitability of conflict between civilizations.

English

South Africa has its own texture of cultural diversity unparalleled by any in the history of the world. The diversity emanates from the period of the Dutch settlers (1640s) occupying land in the country through their by conquest of the non-militant indigenous inhabitants. Soon the British arrived (1800s) and occupied more land. Before long, the two settler groups were fighting for ownership and control of the land. As soon as their conflict was resolved, the Dutch settlers now started a program of separate development by removing the indigenous people from fertile land to Bantustans. The result therefore was an uprising of the people culminating in the democracy gained in 1994, thereby bringing to an end an error of inhuman treatment in which the whites were and are still the beneficiaries. South Africa today has twelve language groups (official 11 because for no known reason the Khoisan have been excluded), and all these people meet in the workplace. The arrival of other Europeans, Africans and Asians as economic refugees has not made the situation better. The South African landscape is now more diverse than ever and this is reflected at the workplaces creating a need for diversity management. This paper focuses specifically on identifying the extent to which the managers are aware and prepared to manage culturally diverse environment. Whilst there is continued assertion by managers that they know enough about the other cultures, there is unprecedented neutrality to pertinent questions and statements dealing with the subject. The finding is that the managers who are largely white and coloured have not taken enough pain to understand and accommodate the majority 80% black who are the indigenous inhabitants.   Key words: Cultural diversity, workplace, the Cape metropolis, managers’ views.

Butzer ‘Down Under’: Debates on anthropogenic erosion in early Colonial Australia

The arrival of Europeans in the New World, and the rapid deforestation for agriculture and settlement that shortly followed, resulted in large and rapid increases in soil erosion and sediment aggradation. In Australia, as in parts of North America and other New World sites, this event dates to the last several centuries of the Common Era, a period for which we have surprisingly little historical or scientific data capable of informing debates on the impact of European colonisation on soils and erosion. These research themes and debates were central to the work of Karl Butzer, who undertook field and archival research in Australia to test existing ideas of the timing and magnitude of landscape response to colonisation. In this paper, the work and impact of Butzer in Australia is reviewed as part of ongoing scholarship on the impact of colonisation on landscapes to which Butzer contributed (Butzer and Helgren, 2005). Geomorphic records of soil erosion and historical accounts of land use and impact from eastern Australia show that European settlement, land clearing, and agriculture resulted in rapid, and often severe, increases in erosion in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mirroring the experience of anthropogenic soil loss experienced in other parts of the world. It is postulated that the geomorphic response to European settlement in Australia is more complex than researchers have previously noted that, in some contexts, continues to influence catchment processes decades and centuries after colonisation.

El Caribe como objeto de estudio histórico: una aproximación desde las publicaciones en el Anuario de Estudios Americanos

En este artículo se analiza la producción historiográfica referida al Caribe que ha sido publicada en el Anuario de Estudios Americanos en sus 75 años de vigencia ininterrumpida. Entre 1944 y 2018 hemos contabilizado un total de 180 trabajos publicados. Aplicando una metodología cuantitativa en conjunción con una revisión analítica hemos logrado unos resultados que consideramos útiles desde el punto de vista de la investigación historiográfica, constatando que el Anuario de Estudios Americanos es una publicación de referencia para estudiar los diferentes espacios caribeños desde la llegada de los europeos hasta el siglo XX.

Alien Bamboos in South Africa: a Socio-Historical Perspective

Changes in fashions and economic imperatives underlying plant introductions have a profound influence on the movement of species around the world. Using bamboo introductions into South Africa as a case-study, we explore these issues by assessing historical trends through a literature review and determining current human perceptions based on a questionnaire distributed via social media. We identify five main phases of introduction and distribution of bamboos in South Africa associated with: (1) the intra-African migration of people; (2) the arrival of Europeans; (3) growth of the agricultural and forestry sectors; (4) small-scale domestic use by landowners; and (5) the rise of the “green economy.” Our narrative is built around 27 alien bamboo species (taxa mentioned in the literature that could be linked to currently accepted nomenclature). Bamboos were among the first plants introduced to South Africa by European settlers, and they are still used and valued by many landowners, although on a small-scale. Bamboos now create conflicts of interest because they are both valued and perceived to be weeds (the latter particularly by people who do not utilise them).

Indigenous Environmental Justice, Knowledge, and Law

This article aims to introduce a distinct conception of Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ) based on Indigenous legal orders, knowledge systems, and conceptions of justice. This is not to suggest in any way that the existing environmental justice (EJ) scholarship is flawed; in fact, the scholarship and activism around EJ have been central in diagnosing and drawing attention to injustices that occur on a systematic basis everywhere in the world. This article argues instead that such discussions can be expanded by acknowledging that concepts of environmental justice, including distinct legal orders informed by Indigenous knowledge systems, already existed on Turtle Island for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans. It also suggests that environmental justice framed within Indigenous worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies may make significant contributions to broader EJ scholarship, particularly in relation to extending justice to other beings and entities in Creation. This approach acknowledges ongoing colonialism and emphasizes the need to decolonize in order to advance innovative approaches to IEJ.

Humans and climate as designers of the landscape in Serra da Bocaina National Park, southeastern Brazil, over the last seven centuries

Abstract Campos de altitude and Araucaria forest are unique and highly diverse ecosystems and focus areas for conservation and restoration in southeastern Brazil. This paper reports a high-resolution paleoecological study of an approximately 700-year Late Holocene core, a period that includes the influence of two highly distinct civilizations and the transition between them: Amerindian/pre-Columbian and European/post-Columbian. Results highlight the interworkings of regional climate change and local human agency in “designing” the Late Holocene forest-grassland mosaic in the Serra da Bocaina. Amerindians maintained more open highland habitats probably through slash and burn agriculture. The depopulation of the study region after European arrival in the 1500s plus increasing precipitation led to a marked and rapid rebound in forest cover. After 1720 CE, establishment of permanent European communities and farming in the study area led to forest loss and a renewed expansion of grassland. Based on current knowledge about forest-grassland relationships, and in light of projections for warmer and wetter conditions in southeast Brazil, we provide suggestions for management strategies that might better maintain the mosaic of Araucaria forest and campos de altitude in the southeastern Brazilian highlands.

Hanödaga:yas (Town Destroyer) and Mantle

America’s native peoples have been forced to be both inner and outer emigrants since the arrival of Europeans, including British, to Turtle Island. The founding of the United States was arguably the first Brexit, with the following twist: the violent withdrawal of British colonists from the kingdom of Great Britain was also a wholesale withdrawal of British identity in favour of an ‘American’ identity conjured from opposition to taxes and a race war for Indian land. During that British civil war George Washington, known as Hanödaga:yas (Town Destroyer) in our Iroquois language, sent his generals on a scorched-earth campaign calling for ‘the total destruction and devastation of their settlements… that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed’. Fifty of our villages, and extensive farm fields, storehouses and orchards, were burned to the ground. More than five thousand of our Haudenosaunee ancestors fled as war refugees, homeless, hungry and dispossessed, from their own lands.Mantle is a large-scale, site-specific earthwork honouring Virginia’s Native American nations that has recently been dedicated onsite at the Capitol in Richmond. I based its form on the shell beadwork of Powhatan’s Mantle, the deerskin object in the Ashmolean Museum thought to be part of Powhatan’s gift to King James in 1608, its thirty-odd spiral-embroidered disks are symbols of the villages and tribes of his chiefdom.In an uncharacteristic move in January, Trump signed a bill granting long-overdue federal recognition to six of Virginia’s tribes. Despite this gesture, the Trump administration has proven as hostile to America’s Native peoples as it is to its current immigrants – through its rushed approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline, threatening of sacred sites by shrinking Bears Ears National Monument, and a plan to impose work requirements on Native American Medicaid recipients in direct violation of treaties.

The Role of Breadfruit in Biocultural Restoration and Sustainability in Hawai‘i

The Hawaiian Islands today are faced with a complex mix of sustainability challenges regarding food systems. After European arrival, there was a change of dietary customs and decline in traditional Hawaiian agriculture along with the cultural mechanisms which sustained them. Recently, there has been a resurgence for local food and culture alongside an enthusiasm for breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis)—a Polynesian staple crop. To investigate the role of breadfruit and biocultural restoration in Hawai‘i, we conducted surveys and interviews with local breadfruit producers. Overall, we found that breadfruit has the potential to provide holistic, practical and appropriate solutions to key issues in Hawai‘i, including food security, environmental degradation and public health, while simultaneously lending to the revival of cultural norms and social relationships. As breadfruit cultivation expands rapidly in Hawai‘i, the opportunities for increased social and environmental benefits can be realized if appropriately encouraged.