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

Abstract

While tropical rainforests in central Africa are often assumed as "green desert" where human cannot live by entirely depending on wild food resources, recent studies suggest that hunter-gatherers could survive there even in the dry season, when food resources are relatively scarce. Newly found archaeological investigations also suggest the existence of early, hunter-gatherers' habitation in the forests of central Africa. Recent field research in Cameroon by Yasuoka (2006; 2009a) showed the key food to sustain the forest life is comprised of wild yams with annual stems, which are gregarious and found only in limited "gaps" formed under supposedly human influences in the past. Other forest food species are also 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 human-induced vegetations throughout the equatorial forests of Africa. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the implications of such human-induced vegetations for understanding the history in the region. It is also important to examine the forest ecosystem and landscape in a perspective of historical ecology, i.e., from the viewpoint of interactions between man and forest environment, which may provide the forest peoples with a basis for claiming customary rights to the forests.