Overcoming Environmental Determinism: Introduced Species, Hybrid Plants and Animals, and Transformed Lands in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds
Date
2015-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Routledge
Abstract
The botanical and zoological literature of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds displayed a triumphalist attitude about the possibilities of introducing animals and plants to new lands. Animals and plants could be reshaped to suit human desires by training and cultivation, and by experiments in interbreeding and grafting. Entire lands could even be transformed to make them more hospitable. Little concern was displayed about maintaining a land in its original state, or about preserving the purity and autochthony of its indigenous creatures. The celebration in botanical and zoological literature of the world’s plasticity calls into question the seeming rigidity and pessimism of environmentally deterministic theories in the ancient world.
Description
Keywords
introduced species, Ptolemaic Egypt, Theophrastus, History of Botany, Roman Empire
Citation
Secord, J. (2016). Overcoming environmental determinism: Introduced species, hybrid plants and animals, and transformed lands in the hellenistic and roman worlds. The routledge handbook of identity and the environment in the classical and medieval worlds (pp. 210-229) doi:10.4324/9781315686622