Pastoralism

Origins

It is believed that recognizable pastoralist systems date back several thousand years. While the differentiation between wild and domestic livestock in archeological evidence remains challenging, most studies suggest that the presence of domestic cattle goes back at least 6,000 years (for example, in northeast Africa). One of the most prominent views of the origins of pastoralism in the earlier literature suggests that pastoralism is an evolutionary stage in human history, directly derived from hunting and gathering and followed by farming and sedentarization. However, archaeological evidence and historical documents suggest that the origins are more complex. For instance, evidence suggests that agriculture started earlier than pastoralism.

Management

Pastoralists live mostly in marginal areas. They inhabit regions of the world in which the natural environments provide little potential for cultivation due to their rainfall or temperature regimes, or terrain. These marginal areas include drylands, rangelands, savannas, steppes, tundra, and mountains. The natural resource base in pastoral environments is generally characterized by patchiness of resources across time and space. Temporal variation of biomass is closely tied to climatic conditions that are often highly variable and unpredictable; this is particularly true in drylands. Here, vegetation has adapted to variable rainfall by accumulating seed reserves in the soil that germinate when rainfall conditions allow. In cold environments, the limiting factor is temperature and a short growing season restricts access to fodder and requires its conservation for the winter.

The resource management system of pastoralists is considered one of the most effective strategies for [Page 1346]utilizing drylands and a well-adapted strategy to sustain human populations in environments with limited resources. The most important component of pastoralist systems is mobility—an adaptive resource use strategy to manage risk by exploiting highly variable natural resources (water and forage). It is aimed at minimizing the effects of drought. A range of other considerations play a role in determining movement patterns: for example, soil conditions, environmental factors (dew, shade, predators), avoiding pests, disease, and damage to crops, proximity to markets, household labor availability, cultural gatherings, territorial boundaries, political insecurity, and social relations. Mobility is determined by a detailed environmental knowledge, and a complex system of rules and regulations that determine whether communities can negotiate access to resources.

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