| Abstract: |
This paper addresses the question, raised in several recent papers (e.g., Bailey et al. 1989
Hart and Hart 1986
Headland 1987 and 1990b
Headland and Reid 1989), whether foragers could survive in tropical rainforest without access to agricultural goods through trade. The focus is on Malaysian peoples in particular, with some reference to other Southeast Asians
and on sago, with some reference to other sources of starch. The Malaysian peoples are the Austroasiatic-speaking 'Semang', a catch-all term for west Malaysian foragers like Batek, Kintaq, Kensiu and perhaps Temoq
their horticulturalist kin, Semai and Btsisiq, with both of whom I have resided
and Penan, Austronesian foragers of east Malaysia. In the last decade, some scholars have argued that most, or probably all, modern foraging peoples live in contact with agriculturalists or pastoralists and trade for agricultural products
most even know how to do agriculture (Dentan 1988a
Headland 1990b
Headland and Reid 1989). Even the Andamanese, in traditional ethnography the ideal type of isolated foragers, were eating rice and milk as early as the middle of the twelfth century (Polo 1934:377). This dependence of foragers on their agricultural and pastoral neighbours is consonant with the idea that rainforests are 'green deserts', without the resources to support a purely foraging way of life. The 'green desert' argument runs like this. In tropical rainforest most of the energy stored in plants is in trunks or leaves too high in the canopy to be worth gathering, even if edible (Bailey, Jenicke and Rechtman 1991:161
McElroy and Townsend 1985:185). Moreover, the subtler seasonality of the tropics makes storage of energy and moisture in tubers, rhizomes, etc., less adaptive than in zones with marked winters or dry seasons. Therefore, wild yams and other tubers do not produce and store enough starch reliably enough to support foragers without agricultural connections. The upshot, green desert theorists suggest, is that foragers could not live in the Malaysian rainforest without some sort of symbiotic relationship with horticulturalists, because tubers and pigs could not provide sufficient carbohydrates. The question is not, of course, whether nowadays west Malaysian foragers, generically Semang, trade to survive. Since no foragers anywhere survive without trade, this modern dependence, although consistent with the 'green desert' thesis, in no way proves it (Colinvaux and Bush 1991). Many Malaysian and Indonesian foragers seem to be 'professional primitives', people specialized in collecting forest products for use and for trade (Fox 1969
e.g., Peterson 1978a, 1978b). This trade has been extensive for many centuries (Dentan 1988a
Dunn 1975
Forbes 1885:235-236
Kress 1977:46
Needham 1972:178
Rambo 1985:31
cf. Eder 1988:38
Gardner 1982:463 and 1985:413). But, by the same token, modern Semang reliance on wild yams may also be a 'recent' adaptation to cultural contact, as may the reliance of east Malaysian foragers, Penan, on sago as their primary starch staple (Hutterer 1988:67
Langub 1988:207-208
Sastrapradja 1988:205). Cross-culturally, such shifts in foraging strategy are not rare (e.g., Headland 1988 and 1990b
P. Townsend 1990:146).
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