Gwen Robbins Schug wrote in the Anthropology News in 2020 that the deterministic view that climate change invariably causes migration, competition, violence, and collapse is overly simplistic. Bioarchaeology shows us that human responses are far more complex and diverse. Today one-third of the global community is “sheltering in place” in their homes as we try to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The moment arrived when the number of confirmed cases in Italy had reached 17,000 and news reports were already describing the anguish of families as funeral homes refused to collect bodies of the dead. Today they have more than 115,000 cases. The total number of cases globally exceeds one million. This situation seems extreme until we take a long view of human history; for example, the Black Death pandemic killed about 30 million people in Europe from 1347 to 1352.
History and archaeology are important sources of information about the biocultural and social experience of past diseases, historical and socio-cultural factors that shape the spread of pathogens, and how changing human-environmental interactions contribute to the risk of emerging infections. Bioarchaeology—contextualized analysis of ancient human remains—does have limits; our data do not provide accurate mortality rates or precise chronology, for example. But within those limits, bioarchaeologists are currently focused on looking to the past for nuanced perspectives on a whole suite of major challenges facing human populations today, including pandemics. Here are a few things we have learned so far.
Four major challenges to the survival of our species
Emerging infections are part of a changing demographic trend in human health. Currently, we are amidst the third such epidemiological transition—rising rates of nutritional insufficiency, degenerative conditions, and emerging and re-emerging pathogens are becoming substantial sources of morbidity and mortality. This is largely due to modernity; the past 150 years brought us modern medicine and antibiotics but also antibiotic resistance, sedentism, poor diets, and obesity. Public health consequences of the epidemiological transition will be exacerbated by anthropogenic climate and environmental changes, which will also have direct and indirect effects on human health. Climate change is also contributing to the sixth mass extinction—a biological annihilation that is rearranging life on Earth and will have negative impacts on ecosystem functioning and the maintenance of civilization (see Barnosky et al. 2011; Ceballos, Ehrlich, and Dirzo 2017). These end-stage consequences of industrialization and global capitalism will fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest communities due to rising urbanism and social inequality, which exacerbate human health concerns. Bioarchaeologists work at this nexus of environmental change, human health, and infectious disease.
Human skeletal remains also demonstrate that climate and socio-economic changes often lead to resilience in human communities but persistence often includes various forms of suffering. Anthropological perspectives on these topics are critically needed for planning and policy making at the highest levels of global governance. Currently, global planning groups are working on their responses to climate and environmental change and public health concerns. Unfortunately, these professionals don’t typically rely on archaeology to inform their decision making. Instead, planning discourse is shaped by the human security field, and those scholars cite Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker when they need an “anthropological” perspective on “human nature” in the face of environmental catastrophe and civilization collapse (see chapters in the book edited by Buikstra published by Springer: Robbins Schug, Parnell, and Harrod 2019 for more on this topic). Dangerous misconceptions abound. For example, many planning documents belie assumptions that resource scarcity, social inequality, and environmental migration will inevitably lead to increased inter-personal violence and civilization collapse. This perspective is responsible for a dangerous narrative at the Department of Defense that the United States should do whatever it takes to “win decisively” and prevail over those that would challenge our supremacy in the world (ibid).
But bioarchaeology also provides an antidote to determinism, but read on into this article for details.
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