Human Agency and Resilience to Holocene Desertification in the Eastern Mongolian Gobi
The archaeology of the eastern Mongolian Gobi Desert provides us with excellent examples of the adaptability of human societies to rapidly changing environments. Researchers once believed prehistoric populations in dryland regions were at the mercy of increasing desertification throughout the Holocene. They assumed these societies were compelled to turn to pastoralism in response to desertification, and subsequently, herding economies themselves intensified landscape degradation. However, new research in the Mongolian Gobi Desert indicates a different trajectory of human interaction with this desert steppe environment. Here the progression from forager to herder reveals adaptability, resilience and a sustainable existence over the course of millennia.
Our research in the eastern Gobi Desert of
southern Mongolia demonstrates that since the retreat of the Pleistocene 11,700
years ago, the landscape and vegetation of the region has profoundly changed.
In the Middle Holocene, lakes and wetlands punctuated the landscape. These
ultimately disappeared due to temperature shifts and southward movement of the
East Asian Monsoon. Wetland patches are critically important to mobile foragers
in semi-arid environments. They provide year-round natural “stores” of plant and
animal resources and often, seasonal migrations are tethered around these lush
mosaic environments. New geoarchaeological and phytolith research at Zaraa Uul,
Sukhbaatar Province, Mongolia shows that former Pleistocene lakebeds supported
small freshwater ponds and wetlands during the Middle Holocene. These marshes
formed a rich environment for hunter/gatherers who found reliable sources of
grass seeds, rhizomes of sedges, and a variety of animals concentrated near
these water sources. The reliably resource-rich points on the semi-arid
landscape minimized subsistence risk, and facilitated movement of
hunter-gatherers throughout this region of the otherwise inhospitable Gobi
Desert, up until the period of time when pastoralists began to dominate this
landscape, ca. 3500 years ago.
The entrance of pastoralists to the region
coincided with the disappearance of the former wetlands, and the beginning of
true desertification. Geoarchaeological and phytolith research at the Ikh Nart
Nature Reserve, Dornogobi Province, suggests that the herders and their
sheep/goats and cattle introduced the lusher Stipa grass varieties and shrubs
from more northerly steppe zones, thus contributing to the “improvement” of the
vegetation communities despite the retreat of the East Asian Monsoons and
increasing range of the dryland zones. This allowed a sustainable existence in
this region, and increasing social complexity. These findings are in profound
contrast to assumptions that pastoralists contribute to the degradation of dryland
environments.