May 22, 2014

An island where Africans act like Asians

Whenever you mention that African-Americans seem to have brought with them some sub-Saharan African behavioral patterns, it's now traditional for somebody to say: "Africans are the most genetically diverse people on earth" and/or references to the dazzling diversity of African cultures. In reality, with famous exceptions like the Bushmen and Pygmies, Africa is a fairly homogeneous place for its vast size. As genetic anthropologist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza summed up in his 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes, “… differences between most sub-Saharan Africans other than Khoisan and Pygmies seem rather small.” Similarly, sub-Saharan cultures tend to be variations on a rather limited number of themes.

There are some exceptions, however, John Reader's Africa: Biography of a Continent provides a fascinating example of a not very African place in the heart of Africa: the island of Ukara in Lake Victoria in northwest Tanzania, in which a favorable environment leads to a Malthusian trap, which seems to lead to more Eurasian-like behavior.

The population has been around 16,000 for a century, with about one percent of the population annually moving to the mainland, a rate of increase unusual in Africa until recently.

Ukara has a few major advantages over the surrounding mainland of Africa: no tsetse flies to spread sleeping sickness. No lions and no elephants, either, to compete with humans. Life (and death) is presumably less random than on the African mainland, so hard work and investment pay off more reliably.

Life on Ukara sounds rather like life in a poor Southeast Asian peasant society rather than in most of Africa. A 1968 aerial survey showed that 98.6 percent of the land on the island was in use. In contrast to the typical pattern of land use rights in Africa, almost every resource on the island, including each tree, is privately owned, which has prevented deforestation. (Here's a description of Ukara from a libertarian perspective.) People on Ukara practice much more intensive and sophisticated agriculture than elsewhere in Tanzania, supposedly working ten hours per day, every day.

I spent some time looking for accounts by recent tourists visiting Ukara Island, but it became apparent that very few people go there, which is not surprising since people on holiday generally visit big cities or go to less crowded places to relax. We tend to think of islands as being less crowded (and thus more relaxing) than mainlands because they are less convenient to get to, but in Africa, apparently, things work the opposite. Being inconveniently far out in Lake Victoria makes life healthier and less risky than being on the mainland.

Has the Ukaran culture spread with the steady flow of Ukarans to the mainland of Africa? Evidently, no. Phil Raikes wrote in 1986:

This provides a very clear example of Esther Boserup's contention that necessity in the form of population pressure is the mother of agricultural innovation. Further evidence for this comes from the fact that Ukara Islanders who migrate to the mainland, where population density is far lower, promptly drop their labour-intensive methods (over ten hours per day throughout the year) for the much easier methods practised on the mainland.

I'm not sure what the ultimate lessons are from Ukara Island, but the place is worth thinking about.
    

18 comments:

DR said...

I think on a larger scale it can be said that Tutsis behave much like Asians. This even goes so far that Tutsi Paul Kagame explicitly trying to replicate the Singapore model in Rwanda.

Anonymous said...

The highlands of Ethiopia have a basically Eurasian climate and ecosystem (it's the only place in Africa with real wolves.) And lo and behold, you get a Eurasian civilization there, complete with grain agriculture, castles, and feudalism.

give some gum to me ho ho ho said...

But ... but ... but ... that's environment, having an effect on culture, being determinative even! I think I need to sit down.

Anonymous said...

Jared Diamond's 'Collapse' gives a fairly good account of another African method of dealing with the 'Malthusian trap'.
The Rwandan massacre of 1995 is well known, but it was preceeded by a whole series of massacres - which also occurred in neighboring Burundi - which pockmarked the post colonial history of these places at regular intervals.
Rwanda is the most densely settled African nation that there is. It is an agricultural nation where the natives must subsist on their small plots to survive. Rapid population growth, (in the order of 3% per annum, the highest that humans can possibly achieve), meant that the plots were subdivided into ridiculously small parcels that couldn't possibly support life. Hence every few years there would be massacres and the plot/person ratio restored - rather like the classic lynx/lemming Hudson Bay peaky curve.
Diamond made a good case that it was this dynamic and NOT the supposed Hutu/Tutsi emnity that was the *real* source of periodic Rwandan death orgies.

Steve Sailer said...

Rwanda and Burundi are also places that have been closer to the Malthusian limit. They were better organized when Speke and Burton got there in the 1860s.

Dahinda said...

"sub-Saharan cultures tend to be variations on a rather limited number of themes."

A lot of this probably has to do with the Bantu Expansion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_expansion

SRBEL said...

Linked this today.

Anonymous said...

A thought provoking point, but I would restate it slightly. African societies have been operating at Malthusian limits, it is just that the sources of those limits are different than those that operated in Europe leading up to the Industrial Revolution. So if disease or predators is the major limiting factor as population grows rather than food production, you still have a Malthusian trap but with different causes and the genetic adaptation to its features will be accordingly different. I took away from A Farewell to Alms that basically every human society until the Industrial Revolution was well described by Malthusian models (temporary technological shocks causing some temporary wealth surge met with population growth and disease shocks, i.e. Black Plague, met with increases in average wealth) IIRC Clark analyzes some tribal societies to show that they are at Malthusian limits but with lower technology, and thus lower populations.

gwern said...

> (Here's a description of Ukara from a libertarian perspective.)

I think you forgot a link there.

Anonymous said...

Saying nice things about Jared Diamond is not popular hereabouts. Me, I think his little old realist heart is dying to pop out of his thin lips.

Anonymous said...

Remember reading once that next door island Ukarewe was the suspected global epicentre of HIV.

Gordo

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure that Steve overstates his point about African biodiversity.

The best basketball players seem to come from the USA, even efforts to recruit Africans don't seem to work. The best strength and sprinting athletes seem to come from West Africa, while the marathoners are all from east Africa.

Anonymous said...

There's a link on Wiki which might be the missing link :

http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=275

ATBOTL said...

"The highlands of Ethiopia have a basically Eurasian climate and ecosystem (it's the only place in Africa with real wolves.) And lo and behold, you get a Eurasian civilization there, complete with grain agriculture, castles, and feudalism."

You also have Eurasian genes predominating there.

Pat Boyle said...

Actually it wasn't Burton and Speke who discovered the source of the Nile. It was Jeremy Clarkson. I saw it on BBC America.

Speaking of TV shows. I used to watch 'Monsters Inside Me' a show about parasites. There were always plenty of references to Africa there too.

They would have a very sick guy tell the parasitologist - "No doc I haven't eaten anything odd or been anywhere exotic except for eating raw crabs on the beach of Lake Tanganyika last month'.

Just thinking about all the creepy-crawlies in Africa make me queasy.

Pat Boyle

Anonymous said...

"In reality, with famous exceptions like the Bushmen and Pygmies, Africa is a fairly homogeneous place for its vast size. As genetic anthropologist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza summed up in his 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes, “… differences between most sub-Saharan Africans other than Khoisan and Pygmies seem rather small.” Similarly, sub-Saharan cultures tend to be variations on a rather limited number of themes."

I don't know. Ethiopians seem very different from Nigerians in build, facial features, and personality. As different as Europeans and Asians.

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Eric Rasmusen said...

I wonder if the Bantu are like the Slavs--- an ethnic group that most people look down on, tho they don't admit it, but which has been remarkably successful over a vast area despite not producing the glamor figures of history. The funny thing is that from a social Darwinist point of view, both groups are fantastic racial superstars, but from more mainstream points of view, they're failures because they don't produce as many Nobel laureates as, for example, Jews and Germans.