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DAVID R. YESNER Life in the "Garden of Eden": Causes and Consequences of the Adoption of Marine Diets by Human Societies IN EXAMINING THE BIOCULTURAL BASIS OF HUMAN FOOD PREFERences and aversions, it is important to document not only short-term idiosyncratic aspects of human foodways, but also longer-term historical trends underlying the acceptance and rejection of food types. Both the causes and the consequences of such major transformations in human foodways need to be assessed. It is in this spirit that this paper attempts to address the question of the causes and consequences of the relatively late adoption of seafood diets by human societies, using some current research being conducted in Maine and Alaska. The historical fact that maritime resources were not exploited until relatively late in the prehistoric record has been recently discussed by Osborn (1977) and others, and has attracted a general consensus of agreement. Very few coastal sites predate the late Upper Paleolithic in the Old World, even in areas (such as England) with emergent shorelines in which earlier sites are not likely to have been erased by subsequent coastal erosion. Those sites that do predate the late Upper Paleolithic show only very scanty evidence of the use of coastal resources (e. g., at Terra Amata; see de Lumley 1969) or certainly much less use of those resources than in Upper Paleolithic or later times at the same location (e.g., at Klasies River mouth in South Africa; see Singer and Wymer 1982; Volman 1978). The overall pattern of these sites suggests that a real commitment to maritime lifeways did not precede late Upper Paleolithis times. Similarly, in the New World, early occupants (Paleo-Indians and hypothetical pre-Clovis occupants) have not been found to have used marine resources, and in most parts of North America a real commitment to maritime lifeways postdates the mid-Holocene (Yesner 1983). What is it in the nature of marine re285 IV. Pre-State Foodways sources, then, that prevented their exploitation until relatively late in prehistoric times, and what conseqeunces did this use have on the development of human societies? Binford (1983) suggests that coastal resources have been characterized by many archaeologists, including myself, as a "Garden of Eden" in which there is "plentiful food just for the picking," providing "a setting for the beginnings of sedentary life." Binford finds this proposition distasteful because it leads to what he terms a "historical problem": "If aquatic resources are to be considered Gardens of Eden, why did early populations apparently not realize this fact?" This, in turn, seems to lead to the implication that, in terms of the seacoast, "some peoples were 'more perceptive' or 'smarter' ... while others ignored its self-evident advantages" (Binford 1983: 202). If, indeed, such mentalistic notions are to be rejected in favor of ones based on natural selection , then we are left asking two questions. First, is the Garden of Eden model accurate, or must we replace it with a model that suggests that coastal resources are "second rate" (Osborn 1977) in order to explain why coastal environments were not initially exploited in either the Old or the New World? If neither model should prove to be accurate, however, what alternative forces may have led to a failure to exploit marine resources until relatively late? A second paradox that needs to be addressed has to do with the set of constraints imposed upon a society by its resource base. Binford (1983) notes that some have used the Garden of Eden principle to suggest why huntergatherers have rejected agriculture in some places (e. g., coastal California), whereas in other places (e. g., coastal Peru), the sedentism associated with intensive harvesting of seafoods has been viewed as a causative agent underlying the development of agriculture. In addition, the range of political organization that has been attributed to maritime hunter-gatherers ranges from bandlevel societies (e. g., among the Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego) to "big-man" types of societies (e. g., among coastal Californians or New Englanders), hereditary chiefdoms (e. g., among Aleuts or Northwest Coast Indians), and even incipient state-level societies (e.g., in coastal Peru). How, then, do the constraints of the productive process help us to understand these seemingly divergent consequences of maritime adaptation for the development of cultural complexity? The "Garden of Eden" Versus the "Second-Rate Resource" Model Recently a number of archaeologists-including myself (Yesner 1981)-have argued that optimal foraging theory presents a robust model that allows one to explain...

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