Back to the Garden : Nature and the Mediterranean World from Prehistory to the Present / James H. S. McGregor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGregor, James H. S., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human ecology--Mediterranean Region--History.

Human ecology.

Agriculture--Mediterranean Region--History.

Agriculture.

Mediterranean Region--History.

Mediterranean Region.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (381 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A cultural and ecological history of the Mediterranean region and humankind's broken covenant with nature The garden was the cultural foundation of the early Mediterranean peoples; they acknowledged their reliance on and kinship with the land, and they understood nature through the lens of their diversely cultivated landscape. Their image of the garden underwrote the biblical book of Genesis and the region's three religions. For millennia, there was no sharp divide between humankind and the land that was home. To be sure, the elements could be harsh, their origins mysterious, but there was a widespread consensus that presumed a largely harmonious working relationship with Nature. Traditional agriculture in the ancient Mediterranean mimicked the key traits of naturally occurring ecosystems. It was diverse, complex, self-regulating, and resilient. This relationship effectively came to an end in the late eighteenth century, when "nature" was steadily equated with the untamed landscape devoid of human intervention. In the early part of the century, the human world, the agricultural realm, and the province of uncultivated nature were one continuous field with no internal boundaries. By century's end, however, key writers had created a sharp divide within this continuum and separated the agricultural world from the world of nature. This abrupt and dramatic change of sensibility upended ecological understanding and had enormous consequences-consequences with which we are still struggling. In Back to the Garden, James H. S. McGregor argues that the environmental crisis the world faces today is a result of Western society's abandonment of the "First Nature" principle-of the harmonious interrelationship of human communities and the natural world. This essential work offers a new understanding of environmental accountability while proposing that recovering the original vision of ourselves, not as antagonists of nature but as cultivators of a biological world to which we innately belong, is possible through proven techniques of the past. Much has been lost, the landscape has been degraded, and traditional knowledge has died away. But there is still much that can be recovered, studied, and reimagined.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: How Did We Get Here?

1. The Paleolithic Landscape

2. Neolithic Revolutions

3. The Spread of Farming Culture

4. Uruk and Egypt, the Great Powers

5. The Primacy of Landscape in West Asia

6. Mediterranean Trade and Regional Cooperation

7. The Greek Link between Landscape and Cosmology

8. Roman Agriculture: Three Case Studies

9. Medieval Christian Ecological Understanding

10. Muslim Ecological Understanding

11. Renaissance Landscape and Food

12. Mechanistic Models and Romantic Wilderness

13. Silence, Loss, and Catastrophe

14. The Modern Mediterranean

Conclusion: What Is to Be Done?

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

0-300-21062-0

OCLC:

903963757