Mon 17 March: Greece and Revisionist Environmental History

Discussion seminar March 17 with Oliver Rackham – Greece and revisionist environmental history
Reflection by Kristina Berglund

Yesterday’s discussion seminar with Professor Oliver Rackham as well as the assigned article dealt with the ecology and pseudo-ecology of ancient Greece. As a revisionist historical ecologist Rackham presented some of the main theories about the ecology of ancient Greece and discussed how some of these theories might be described as pseudo-ecology. Before further elaborating on this I have to say I think it is fascinating how it is even possible to say anything about what happened so many years ago, the existence of plants, trees and what the climate was like. It is amazing to think about how we can know all this, and also how we in can learn from this history.

In academia as well as in everyday life, people lacking deeper understanding of a particular field or question reduce information into generalizations and simplify the information in order to make sense of it. These generalizations are done all the time, and are often helpful to get an understanding of a certain event, problem or issue. However, when these simplifications become what Rackham calls ‘factoids’ it becomes more problematic. These presumed ‘facts’ are in reality not true at all, and as they grow bigger they can form a pseudo-theory, in the case of Greece a ‘pseudo-ecology’ – “a coherent, logical, reasonable, and widely accepted system of belief having no connection with the real world”. Rackham argues that due to many different reasons, landscape history and maybe particularly the landscape history of Greece, is particularly susceptible to this non-objective, untrue ecologies.
Rackham points out that the ecology of ancient Greece does not look very different from Greece today – today being defined as Greece up until the extensive changes of the 20th century. Many traditional accounts of Greece’s ancient ecology as e.g. being a ‘Garden of Eden’: a lush, green area covered with high growing trees, are thus not valid in Rackham’s view. What would have been of further interest for me would have been to hear Rackham elaborate more about what he thinks about the changes in landscape and ecology after the 20th century and onwards to today, and why this part of history is not included in his accounts.
Not having enough personal knowledge on Greek ecology either today or in ancient times, the main point I take with me from this seminar is the importance of critically analyzing facts and narratives we often take for granted as self-evident. To ask whether different information we absorb really is ‘true’, or at least to critically examine the motives and theories that underpin different narratives. This might be more important now than ever, as we live in a society characterized by information-overload and globalization of communication. I bring with me from this seminar the significance of taking in as much different sources of information as possible before making conclusions about a specific question – whether the question regards the reasons for the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the existence of wolfs in Sweden, or what ancient Greek ecology looked like. Although this is not something new or particularly ground-breaking, I think it is important to remind ourselves about it.

Rackham draws an important and clear distinction between ecology and pseudo ecology, and his fundamental argument is powerfully made.

It is vital to note that many of the literary writers who he cites are not historical ecologists and are not attempting to be. When they write about past natures they are doing so for quite different purposes and in a quite different register and mode to that which historical ecologists are attempting. Just as it is wrong to use literary sources uncritically as a tool for historical ecology, so it is perhaps beside the point to accuse literary authors of getting the historical ecology wrong. This is not to disagree with Rackham’s analysis but to suggest that it is only potent when aimed at those who profess to be writing accurate historical ecology, not to those who are writing in different literary modes. Dante would be the most obvious example here.

Rackham’s exegesis of the fact that deforestation was not widespread in Greece until the 20th century is important, and serves as a salutary tale warning against making assumptions about landscape history.

Seminar 4, Mon 17th March:
Ecology and Pseudo-ecology, an example of Greece.
Reflections by Sabbath Sunday

Question: How would you argue that pseudo-ecology is a problem in understanding ancient history besides Greece?

According to Oliver Rackham’s arguments in his article ‘Ecology and pseudo-ecology, an example of Greece,’ pseudo-ecology refers to historical records about ecology that are either politically biased or unintentionally created especially by ancient and pre-modern writers. He argues that when historical facts are on record, it is likely that some people may take it as the real truth if they are not very critical about the source of the information. So, the works of revisionist historians like Rackham and others has be to decipher and construe what was wrongly recorded by early writers. Pre-modern scholars fell in the trap of writing pseudo-ecology of Greece, much as their predecessors, the Greek philosophers did in their original scripts.

My reflection therefore, is directed at the Greek situation of recording pseudo-ecology and how it may have been the same in other ancient civilizations like Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia and others. Rackham argues that the original records of ecological history of Greece were flawed by lack of references by philosophers like Homer, Socrates and Aristotle. They were also not trained botanists and thus were limited in identifying specific species. In some of their records, they created a wrong impression that Greece was covered in thick forests with special tree stands that were suitable for ship building, and house construction. Also the fact that these philosophers were elderly and only staying in cities, thus, their local observations could not represent the whole of Greece. Besides, throughout their ages, many things may have happened to the environment which would disqualify their old memories. Also the pre-modern scholars became the conformists of such records without being critical. They are also accused of patching up pieces of historical information to create an impression of the real ecology of a given place. The same scenario could be affecting other ancient historical data apart from Greece because of similar circumstances.

However, Oliver Rackham’s strong argument in the interpretation of ancient ecology without relying solely on pseudo-historians is looking for clues from other sources and to employ modern scientific means like critical observation of satellite images in comparison with old maps. In order to establish the real ecology of past and present Greece and other areas, certain factors must come into play. Rackham argues that human activities like agriculture and livestock keeping in Greece and indeed in other ancient civilizations must have been very influential in transforming the environment to what it looks like today. Geological changes like tectonic movements causing uplifts, and volcanic eruptions may have been some of the main factors in influencing ecology. Climate change is another factor which is mentioned by E. Huntington, a geographer quoted by Rackham. This is also evident in the desert areas that were once occupied by powerful ancient civilizations which were supported by agriculture.

Finally, I have understood from Rackam’s presentation that revisionist history has now been overtaken by mainstream research assessments of such scenarios as pseudo-ecology through multidisciplinary cooperation in search of the right information. Environmental history is one of such disciplines that will continue to delve into new areas of research to uphold this view.

Seminar with Oliver Rackham, Reflection by Fu Yaqi

In the seminar, Oliver Rackham presented to us what his idea about the situation of ecology in ancient and nowadays Greece. He firstly introduced the climatic and geographical characters of Greece and associated these with real ecological conditions Greece could have. Places which he mentioned especially are Crete and Cyprus. He also provided us three theories in explaining Greek ecology and by showing pictures gave us what the image of Greece in the eyes of Nicolas Poussin in 1648 and the Lost Eden authors.

What’s the real ecology in Greece? In discuss about ecology in modern Greece, it’s not hard to find traditional explanations are easily to fall into the degradation theory: that in brief, vegetation is suffering degradation now, and usually yesterday is better than today in ecology. However, the fact is not that simple and pessimistic, these degradation scholars may make pseudo-ecology unconsciously. Rackham’s finding is inspiring, he found “a consistent change from Greece Yesterday to Greece today is the increase in wild vegetation, especially trees” (Oliver Rackham, Ecology and pseudo-ecology, 20). In order to proof this finding, he selected photographs and pictures between different ages and compared them. And from his comparison, he surely noticed the fact that trees were not in decline, but in the opposite increasing by time, especially pines. Simultaneously fires caused by vegetation were in an increase, which may well be another proof of the inadequacy of deforestation.

In ecology, ancient Greece was not less complicated than modern time. The difficulties partly lay in the insufficiency of primary sources, and exaggeration by explanation. Some methods like pollen, if used in ancient ecology research, would be difficult in application as well. Different connotations of words between languages and ages, however, made misunderstanding thus causing wrong estimate, for example, the words wood and timber were not separated by Greek but the differences exist in English. Rackham’s essay corrected some stereotypes which we believed so deeply as to taking them as common sense. For example, trees protect soils from erosion is commonly believed by us but not true in Greece, for erosion is a catastrophic process there according to his finding.

It should be cautious when we want to use modern theories, ideas and frameworks trying to understand the ancient time in ecology. As to the question “did the ancient Creeks have an attitude to ecology”, unlike some other scholars, Rackham chose to answer it humbly: I do not know (Oliver Rackham, Ecology and pseudo-ecology, 33). His attitude is what I appreciated. We can not assume ancient people have the same “ecological awareness” as us, while their cosmology, methodology and epistemology, if not distinctively separated, at least in some parts are different from nowadays us. Keeping eyes on their peculiarities is far more important and appropriate than trying to “assimilate” them into our theories.

Mon 17 March: Greece and Revisionist Environmental History
Yu Wang
The seminar with Professor Oliver Rackham as well as the assigned article dealt with the ecology and pseudo-ecology of ancient Greece:the example of Ancient Greece is very interesting topic. Professor Oliver Rackham mentioned in his book that the Ancient culture was unsustainable, and Greece has gone to the bad. He believed in that Ancient Greece was not all that different from Greece Yesterday.But have to notice that the climate change imposed from outside had an real effect on it. Olive Rackham also reminder us to notice a clearly differernt danger in Greek is, What an Ancient Greek would miss from Greece today is not forests but wetlands. Most of the fens and many of the lakes were thoroughly destroyed in the 19th and 20th centruies.Degradation has at last caught up with Greece. I agree with him that, we used to make some mistakes when we do the deep discussion. We used to too much rely on written documents and also too much only focus on trees diseases, neglected some other plants, animals which is also parts of Environment. For example the problem for Greek today is not lost trees but wetlands. And I also agree on another point he mentions on his paper that, expect the history of the landscape to be simple, over-generalize, gathering different phrase, information, fragments from different countries different time period, create a kind of ecology history in our mind. For example,we students are all come from different places in the world, studying in Sweden doesn’t mean we should also take Swedish ecology condition as only right dissicussion background.

Question: How would you argue that pseudo-ecology is a problem in understanding ancient history besides Greece?
Sorry for late post, had some computing problems.
I am glad we had the chance to interact with Oliver Rackham yesterday because I think we have mostly explored environmental history from the social sciences’ perspective these last few months and have not studied much of the natural sciences unfortunately. However, the natural sciences are crucial for understanding our surrounding species, the way plants and animals evolve in ecosystems, namely what we call “ecology”. It seems that if we do not have scientific data about the world then it becomes pointless to write history. We need information from the past if we are to understand the way the world evolved to become the place we now live in. Particularly in regard to global current issues such as the massive spreading of plant diseases, scientific data about the past is necessary.
Rackham mentioned different methods in order to study a landscape, some are scientific methods such as pollen analysis and artifacts’ analysis, but other methods are more questionable because of their lack of accuracy. For example, the study of written sources is extremely questionable, since we do not know how much we can trust the person who wrote and sometimes it is hard to know what the author was really writing about. Using the Bible as a source for historical ecology seems to me very problematic, the Bible’s authorship remains a mystery for most people, and creates a gap between believers and non-believers: some believe it was given by God, others think it was written by men, indeed this a great issue regarding the accuracy of the source.
Pseudo-ecology is a great issue for understanding ancient history because we are constantly overflowed with information about the past, some is true but some is not. It is very hard to make a distinction between what we can trust or not. It would be helpful to understand ancient history better so that we could understand more of our present, but unfortunately some mysteries remain mysteries. Facts are scrambled among a sea of factoids and many conclusions have been drawn from assumptions.
The field of environmental history is a young one and would require much more research in order to understand it better. I think we should be very cautious about what we say when it comes to ancient history. Many people today in the trend of a “paleo-lifestyle” make assumptions about the ancient past. It should be recommended to be more cautious about ancient history data.

Response to Sunday Sabbath by Morag Ramsey.

Thanks for the thorough response Sabbath.

I found Rackham’s account of ancient Greek ecology very interesting as well, and I had very little idea to what extent contemporary ecologists and such relied on written documents from the time. While there are obvious traps to look out for with oral and written history, I found it fascinating that pollen samples could confuse people’s interpretation of data as well, as Rackham’s article mentioned the similarities between maquis, savannah and tree pollen samples.

Your response reminded me, once again, of how interdisciplinary studies are being stressed to us throughout this course. As you mentioned, Rackham encourages a multipronged attack when it comes to assessing information, such as including using modern scientific tools with reading ancient maps.

I hope you are right that environmental history will be one of the disciplines that contributes to demystifying certain factoids!