Human Ecology of the Andes

by

Vladimir R. Gil Ramón

• LAST REVIEWED: 24 May 2017
• LAST MODIFIED: 21 June 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0175

Introduction

Human ecology encompasses a broad field, contemplating the relationships between human societies and the biophysical environment. Investigations include anthropogenic impacts and feedback, mostly of non-Western and non-industrialized societies, or rural populations within more contemporary urban societies (see Oxford Bibliographies in Ecology article Human Ecology). The Andes is the world’s longest above-ground mountain range, a chain of mountains that runs north to south from Venezuela and Colombia to Tierra del Fuego, stretching approximately 6,000 km through the current territories of seven countries in western South America. Demarcating the Andean geographic and cultural region and subregions is problematic, evolving since colonial times (see Daniel Gade’s Nature and Culture in the Andes, cited under General Overviews). Western observation of the connections between humans and the Andean environment can be traced to 16th-century and 17th-century Spanish colonial chronicles. Reports such as Iñigo Ortiz de Zúñiga’s visit to the León de Huánuco Province in 1562 inspired modern anthropologists such as John V. Murra, who studied ecological factors affecting the development of Andean civilizations (see Land Use and Verticality and Agrarian and Exchange Systems). Murra’s ethnohistorical work on the vertical nature of Central Andean production systems around fifty years ago has deeply marked human ecological Andean studies. Earlier influences included naturalists and field researchers such as Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, German geographer Carl Troll (see General Overviews), and Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello (see Defining the Andean Region). This article emphasizes human ecological research informing connections between humans and the physical environment. Sustainability and social development both emerge as major topics, more or less in conflict, especially since colonial Spanish times. The highlands of the Central Andes are the core of studies of the Andean region, and they are the main focus of this essay. Nonetheless, these questions and approaches are applicable to the whole region. Predominant attention on the Central Andes—Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia—reflects its peculiar history as the heartland of pre-Hispanic civilizations, including Inca and early colonial developments, as well as the unique domestication of flora and fauna, making this area one of the most biodiverse on the planet (see Gade 1999, cited under General Overviews). A considerable portion of recent research reflects public concern about environmental crises caused by industrialization as well as interventions based on the social and natural sciences. The Andean region illustrates these global conflicts, a place where debates on human ecology are linked with concerns about the environment’s impact on human livelihood and development as well as the biophysical footprint of anthropogenic projects. The preparation of this article was possible thanks to a research fellowship at the Central European University (CEU), supported by the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations. The administrative work of Maja Skalar, coordinator of the fellowship program, was crucial. Substantial conversations with CEU professor László Pintér and colleagues at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy were important for the article organization. Megan Anderluh, assistant editor at Oxford Bibliographies, was very helpful during the article revisions. The generous support and insights from language faculty and professional translator and interpreter Patrícia Beták were essential to the completion of this work.

General Overviews

Considering its remarkable size and long history, the Andean region still awaits appropriate socio-ecological and geological historical study. The first scientific attempts to analyze Andean environment and cultures feedbacks can be traced to the work of naturalists and field researchers, such as Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (see Humboldt and Bonpland 2009, Humboldt and Bonpland 2011), Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello (see Tello 1930, cited under Defining the Andean Region), German geographer Carl Troll (see Troll 1935), and Peruvian geographer Javier Pulgar Vidal (see Pulgar Vidal 1996). Troll’s pioneering work in landscape ecology and mountain geoecology in tropical America played a fundamental role in Andean cultural geography (see also Troll 1968 under Defining the Andean Region). His maps and diagrams have been borrowed or adapted by Andeanists such as Ukrainian anthropologist John Murra (see Murra 1972 and Murra 1985, cited under Land Use and Verticality) for decades. Murra is probably the most recognized scholar within human ecological Andean studies, mostly acknowledged for his work on precolonial verticality, while promoting scholarly work on societies and their livelihoods over several millennia in the Andes (see Murra, et al. 1986). Masuda, et al. 1985 debates human-nature conceptual models from Murra’s “vertical archipelago” (see Murra 1972, cited under Land Use and Verticality), while covering “ecological complementarity” to include concurrent control of ecological zones contiguous or horizontally disseminated, beyond macro vertical management. Murra, et al. 1986 presents a multifaceted view of societal organization and livelihood in the Andean region, from Inca times to the colonial conquest until the emergence of independent republics in the nineteenth century. The most salient review for Andean sociotechnological studies is Morlon 1996, which covers agriculture and herding sociotechnologies, including traditional infrastructure and planting tools, as well as social systems of rural Andean agriculturalists. Brush and Guillet 1985 (cited under Cultivation and Herding) provides a valuable synthesis of the small-scale agro-pastoralism subsistence model in the Andes through the articulation of household production and consumption, complemented with supra-household resource access, exchange, and management. Gade 1999 provides an environmental history of Andean organisms and biodiversity, informed by the lenses of societal livelihoods that interacted with a vast arrange of creatures, both native and introduced species. The articles emphasize dissonant harmonies in a region where scholarship has stressed isolated and stable communities. The geographic overview of the tropical Andean mountains in Young 2011 emphasizes change and biodiversity in the varied earth surface and ecological systems, within biogeographical barriers and elevational gradients, including human impacts on biodiversity in coupled natural-human systems. For studies on Andean exchange and market cultures since precolonial times, Lehmann 1982 as well as Larson, et al. 1995 are very useful resources, especially if combined with more current reviews, such as Mayer 2002.

• Gade, Daniel W. 1999. Nature and culture in the Andes. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.

  Gade, a US geographer, provides an environmental history of Andean species and nature, such as forests, malaria, tapirs, llamas, alpacas, coca, rats, and food plants, with essays deeply informed by the lenses of the societal livelihoods that interacted with them. For nature/culture interfaces, provides an assessment of the depiction of lo Andino (the Andean) tradition and its spatial boundaries. Compares cultural ecology and ecological analysis, including cultural and historical geography perspectives.

• Young, Kenneth. 2011. “Introduction to Andean Geographies”. In Climate Change and Biodiversity in the Tropical Andes. Edited by Sebastian K. Herzog, Rodney Martínez, Peter M. Jørgensen, and Holm Tiesse, 8–11. Buenos Aires: Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) and Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE).

  In this scholarly report, US geographer Young presents an updated overview of the tropical Andean mountains (above 500 meters) in the countries of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, emphasizing features of change and diversity in the varied earth surface and ecological systems, within biogeographical barriers and elevational gradients. Also reviews the complex factors contributing to the distribution of species and ecosystems, besides the human impact on biodiversity in these “couple natural-human systems.”

• Humboldt, Alexander von, and Aimé Bonpland. 2009. Essay on the geography of plants. Edited with an introduction by Stephen T. Jackson. Translated by Sylvie Romanowski. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

  Humboldt’s investigative expedition to Central and South America in 1799–1804 with botanist Bonpland inspired remarkable scientific explorations during the nineteenth century. Chronicles of the journey were published after Humboldt’s return to Europe, starting with this essay, which is among the most referred writings in natural history, and one of the foundation works of ecology and biogeography. Humboldt was the first to publish precise descriptions of Andean topography through cross-section diagrams, which appeared in this book (see also Gade 1999). Originally published in 1807 as Essai sur la géographie des plantes.

• Humboldt, Alexander von, and Aimé Bonpland. 2011. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the new continent: During the years 1799–1804. 7 vols. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511920295

  Originally published in 1814. Humboldt engraved the Andes into the intellectual world map. In the colossal thirty-four volumes of his discoveries, Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, the Personal Narrative section amalgamated with scientific meticulousness and poetic elicitation became particularly significant. Humboldt was considered the most renowned scientist of his time, and his writings inspired figures such as South American liberator Simón Bolívar and naturalist Charles Darwin, along with artists and essayists, including Henry Thoreau, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Edgar Allan Poe.

• Larson, Brooke, Olivia Harris, and Enrique Tandeter, eds. 1995. Ethnicity, markets, and migration in the Andes: At the crossroads of history and anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.

  Collection of ethnohistorical essays on different periods of Andean history, with case studies on Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia written by recognized scholars. Focuses on the history of market development in the highlands, debating the residents’ participation, as well as non-market- based economies, including the extent of the presence of commercial exchange and different interpretations of money.

• Lehmann, David, ed. 1982. Ecology and exchange in the Andes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

  This assemblage of essays contains rural Andean case studies written by anthropologists, economists, and historians. Addresses the impact of capitalist development on peasant societies and the extent that influence was shaped by Andean cultures, ecologies, and climate. The discussion of the limits of the verticality system (see Land Use and Verticality) includes cultural debates of reciprocity and market-oriented strategies. Useful for scholars interested in accessible ethnographies of peasants in globalized neoliberal economies.

• Masuda, Shozo, Izumi Shimada, and Craig Morris, eds. 1985. Andean ecology and civilization: An interdisciplinary perspective on Andean ecological complementarity. Papers from Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium 91. Tokyo: Univ. of Tokyo Press.

  Significant collection of essays and case studies selected from a symposium on the “character, evolution, and effects of the creative dynamism between man and environment in the central Andes” (pp. xii–xiii), influenced by John Murra’s “vertical archipelago” (see Murra 1972 and Murra 1985, both cited under Land Use and Verticality and see Exchanges). The term “ecological complementarity” includes contiguous or horizontal control of ecological zones, beyond macro vertical management.

• Mayer, Enrique. 2002. The articulated peasant: Household economies in the Andes. Boulder, CO: Westview.

  This substantial book covers findings and detailed reflections from more than three decades of research in Andean communities. Reflects how rural household livelihoods are embedded within larger socioeconomic structures since pre-Hispanic times, overcoming extreme challenges for their production, mostly in Andean Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Central aspects include trade reciprocity and redistribution in pre-Columbian economies; the impact of the Spanish colonial regime on rural households; cargo systems and wealth, profit-loss relations of on-site conservation, land tenure histories, networking in contemporary barter communities; and the impacts of neoliberalism.

• Morlon, Pierre, comp. and coord. 1996. Comprender la agricultura campesina en los Andes centrales (Perú–Bolivia). Lima, Peru: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolomé de Las Casas.

  DOI: 10.4000/books.ifea.2642

  Renowned scholars present a vast array of agriculture and herding sociotechnologies of rural Central Andean agriculturalists. Covers traditional Andean infrastructure and planting tools, such as terraces and chaquitaclla, the functionality of sectorial-fallow systems, models of ecological complementarity, and agricultural risk minimization in the high Andean plateau. Available in Spanish and French.

• Murra, John V., Nathan Wachtel, and Jacques Revel, eds. 1986. Anthropological history of Andean polities. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

  Valuable assortment of essays by scholars from the Andes, Europe, and the United States combining archaeology, anthropology, and history. A multifaceted view of societies in the Andean region over several millennia. Analyzes social organization facing the challenges of the Andean landscape through the impact of the Inca system on different regions and how colonial conquest altered 19th-century republics.

• Pulgar Vidal, Javier. 1996. Geografía del Perú: Las ocho regiones naturales. Lima, Peru: Peisa.

  Originally published in 1941. Based on verticality concepts, Peruvian geographer and lawyer Pulgar Vidal presents the most commonly adopted conceptual model of geographical differences in Peru, combined with field observations, including toponymical denominations of folk categorizations.

• Troll, Carl. 1935. Los fundamentos geográficos de las civilizaciones andinas y del imperio Inca. Revista de la Universidad de Arequipa 9:127–183.

  Describes Andean culture as formed by the synthesis of indigenous and colonial traits. Highlighted native Andean farming tools, which are manual and individual, unlike European agricultural utensils, such as the plow, that used animals. Some technologies above 3,500 meters are still used now. Insightful remarks on the central division of lifestyles and the Inca civilization in the upper limit forest on the eastern Andean slope. Available in Spanish and German. Originally published as “Die geographischen Grundlagen der andinen Kulturen und des Inkareiches,” Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv 5 (1931): 258–294.