CENTRAL AFRICAN FORESTS AS HUNTER-GATHERERS'LIVING ENVIRONMENT: AN APPROACH TO HISTORICAL ECOLOGY

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While tropical rainforests in central Africa are often assumed as "green desert"where human cannot live by entirely depending on wild food resources, recent studiessuggest that hunter-gatherers could survive there even in the dry season, when food resourcesare relatively scarce. Newly found archaeological investigations also suggest the existenceof early, hunter-gatherers' habitation in the forests of central Africa. Recent field researchin Cameroon by Yasuoka (2006; 2009a) showed the key food to sustain the forest life iscomprised of wild yams with annual stems, which are gregarious and found only in limited"gaps" formed under supposedly human infl uences in the past. Other forest food species arealso found more in secondary forests than in mature forests, as reported in previous studies.Moreover, there are increasing evidences that show the distribution of a variety of humaninducedvegetations throughout the equatorial forests of Africa. It is necessary, therefore, toexamine the implications of such human-induced vegetations for understanding the history inthe region. It is also important to examine the forest ecosystem and landscape in a perspectiveof historical ecology, i.e., from the viewpoint of interactions between man and forestenvironment, which may provide the forest peoples with a basis for claiming customary rightsto the forests.
2012-03-01