Horitcultural Societies in History & Today

Recently I have been listening to some Toby Hemenway talks as research for the permaculture classes that I am teaching. In one of them I came upon the point he brings up about horticultural societies of history being examples of permacultural societies. Specifically, he mentions three examples in the particular talk: the milpa tenders of Mesoamerica, the Hopewell in North America, and the Jōmon in Japan. These were people who tended the wild/semi-wild plants & animals around them (in contrast, agriculturalists fully domesticated plants & animals). In other words, horticulturalists are gardeners; agriculturalists are farmers. Horticulturalists lived in the mountains, hills & foothills (in contrast, agriculturalists live in valleys). Horticultural societies reached high levels of culture. The Jōmon period lasted for 13,000 years, a few millennia longer than agriculture. Here are some more traits found in each:

Horticultural people... do some hunting & some agriculture, but they're really in an intermediate ground between agricultural & hunter-gatherer societies.
Horticulture is the practice of "culturing plants" not "culturing fields",
Horticulturalists tend polycultures,
Horticulturalists encourage succession,
Horticulturalists love shrubs, trees & vines,
Horticulture ecosystems still function,
Horticultural societies locate spirit right here on earth. They tend to be spiritually grounded right here on the planet,
The forest is where horticulturalists get most things: "the forest is my Wal-Mart" – Central Asian man,
Horticultural hill dwelling people grow polycultures (tubers, bananas, beans - all much harder to measure). Hill folk don't grow as much grain as valley folk,
Foothill people grow maize. Their primary hillside grain is usually maize/corn, but they didn't grow as much grain as valley dwellers,
Forest gardeners & milpa tenders were seen by Western scientists as "hunter-gatherers" because they couldn't easily [see and] measure the value of their polycultures. Westerners saw the "wild" even though it was an incredibly sophisticated & manipulated food forest that behaved like an ecosystem,
Food forests have multiple yields & multiple benefits happening all at once,
Horticultural societies have much flatter hierarchies,
Horticultural rulers rule by competence rather than by force,
Horticultural societies have processes for removing rulers,
Foraging & Horticultural societies have specific mechanisms in place to stop "aggrandizers", people who are making themselves "grand" (aka: status seekers, bullies, accumulators of material goods),
Horticultural societies have a culture of conservation,
Horticultural societies have a culture of cooperation.

Agricultural people have fully domesticated plants, animals, & themselves...
Agricultural societies develop technology, granaries, processing,
Agricultural societies form sedentary cultures,
Agricultural societies need police & armies to protect communal grain silos/stores,
Agricultural societies have Lords (hierarchy) to decide who gets grain. The word 'Lord' is a portmanteau of Loaf+Ward (the keeper of the grain). The person who controls the grain, literally,
Agricultural societies have accountants to measure trade,
Agricultural societies have a ruling elite,
Deities in agricultural societies are "somewhere else" usually in the sky,
Renaissance/Enlightenment: rationality – data, proof > received knowledge,
The state sees the forest only as timber/fuel (eg. Romans cleared North African forests for building warships, etc.),
Scientifically managed forests arise. Forest = military power,
A king can look at a forest & ask "When can this forest grow me enough timber to build warships to beat that king over there?" & Charcoal to build weapons,
As agricultural societies began to dominate forest dwellers, people no longer made a living in the woods. Industrialization occurred,
The state has rationalized the forest, making it "legible" so you know exactly what is there. You can "read" it. You make a village legible so you know who owns what. This facilitates taxation,
Eliminated communal land tenure (The Commons) because value cannot easily be assessed. Eg. Enclosure Acts in England: created rich land owners, barons, landlords, etc,
Land ownership simplified taxation. The Great Wall of China was to keep taxpayers in. Outside the Great Wall was "wild" = not taxed,
Civilizations formed in valleys: flat, navigable bodies of water – the state can easily control them,
Valleys became state-controlled areas with grain-growing people,
Valley people grow grains because they're storable, transport well, lightweight, easily measure its yield in a field,
Agricultural societies worship aggrandizers (accumulators),
Agricultural societies adopt a reductionist worldview,
There is no ecosystem on the planet that over the past 10,000 as use for agriculture, that is better because agriculture was there.
-Toby Hemenway, Liberation Permaculture (Permaculture Voices by Diego Footer)

Needless to say, this talk got me thinking, & I wanted to ask fellow permies...
What are some other examples of horticultural societies? Historical examples as well as today?

I don't think there is any inherent difference in the people in these various societies. They all used what they had and whatever knowledge they had to control nature to whatever extent they chose. Some chose a less destructive model.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any period in history when an Agricultural Society was defeated by hunter gatherers or this transitional group. Agricultural societies have tended to overrun the others. It is still going on, with agriculture and other industries pushing deeper and deeper into wild lands.

I think it mostly has to do with population pressure. If I worked with the wild plants on my 7 1/2 acres, I would be able to get some percentage of my own diet from it. My place is mostly forest. If I mowed it all down and it were farmed intensively, it could probably produce enough food for 50 people. There would be little room for wildlife, as humans would occupy every corner.

Food forests represent a middle ground, where greater human population is possible, without excluding almost every other living creature.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I don't think there is any inherent difference in the people in these various societies.

The way I interpreted Toby's talk, he did not make an argument about inherent differences in the people in horticultural societies & agricultural societies. He brought up the fact that where they lived (mountains, foothills, & valleys) created certain conditions for distinct societal structures to emerge.

Dale Hodgins wrote:They all used what they had and whatever knowledge they had to control nature to whatever extent they chose. Some chose a less destructive model.

Agreed. And from my interpretation of the talk, the agricultural model is demonstrably significantly more destructive. See topsoil depletion, expulsion of freshwater, snow melt, rainwater to the oceans causing the drying up of the continents, dominator cultures, etc. One can look to the "Fertile Crescent" today to see agriculture's long-term effects.

Dale Hodgins wrote:Unfortunately, I can't think of any period in history when an Agricultural Society was defeated by hunter gatherers or this transitional group. Agricultural societies have tended to overrun the others. It is still going on, with agriculture and other industries pushing deeper and deeper into wild lands.

Because they need strong men to guard the grain, dominator reductionist societies seem to emerge with agriculture.
Also, as Charles C. Mann points out in 1491, small-arms were more advanced in Native North America than in Europe. European rifles were less accurate & took more time to reload than a bow & arrow. A huge percentage of Native North Americans had succumbed to diseases they weren't immune to (Europeans, who lived in higher concentration groups of people near cattle -cattle packed tightly together creating & harboring diseases-, maybe bathed once a year, while Americans bathed sometimes twice a day) before the outright genocide of the small percentage of indigenous peoples who were left after the great majority died of European diseases. Consequently, the European diseases played a major role in their demise.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I think it mostly has to do with population pressure. If I worked with the wild plants on my 7 1/2 acres, I would be able to get some percentage of my own diet from it. My place is mostly forest. If I mowed it all down and it were farmed intensively, it could probably produce enough food for 50 people. There would be little room for wildlife, as humans would occupy every corner.

Farming intensively (aka: grain agriculture in the valleys) does create a surplus &, in fact, gives rise to higher populations. Toby brings this up in the talk. The point seems to be that grain surplus created by valley agriculture is the root cause of the population pressure issue, as well as the emergence of dominator culture. Horticultural societies looked down upon hoarders & aggrandizers while agricultural societies looked up to them and, consequently, hoarded grain. Horticultural societies formed forest communities, not forest homesteads.

Dale Hodgins wrote:Food forests represent a middle ground, where greater human population is possible, without excluding almost every other living creature.

Precisely, food forest societies -like the milpa tenders, Hopewell, and Jōmon- being what Toby defines here as horticultural societies.

The direction I hope this thread to take is of examples of horticultural societies of the past & present.

I am trying to think of such societies in Europe and it's difficult to make the argument about a specific region or time  that would fit the description you give . I can think of areas where different approaches were used as part of a wider society for example tree beekeeping in Poland historically  ( maybe also still going in turkey ) the Sami up in the artic , walnut forests in France and Italy until recently , maybe the old cork oak forests in Iberia , maybe the England pre 1066.
Each of these had elements of sustainability lost in today's modern world

Thank you David, those are all great examples.
As for Eastern Europe, Marija Gimbutas did some amazing research on peaceful pre-Greco-Roman societies.
The documentary Signs out of time, the story of archeologist Marija Gimbutas profiles this period as well as Marija's biography.

There are certain Oasis communities in Morocco and other areas bordering or within the Sahara, where food forests have existed for a long time.

In the New World, much of the Amazon basin was human controlled to some degree. By the time Spanish and Portuguese explorers made it deep into those forests, many of the people had succumbed to disease and the forest had begun reverting to a more natural form.
......
Hedgerows in England were a refuge for animals and source of fuel and building wood for humans. I wonder, if you go back a thousand years, if there was more food production within the hedgerow. There are certainly many plants that could thrive. Also, were hedgerows wider at one time? In recent history there have been attempts to make them narrower or to completely remove them, to accommodate large farming equipment. I imagine that when Britons were first becoming agricultural, that the plants and animals on the edge of fields, would have been much more important to them, then they are to modern farmers of that land.

Thinking a bit more certainly Saxon Britain maybe also the ancient " dark age kingdoms of
Mercia and Northumberland might warrant a look at . These kingdoms although large were well organized on a political level and religious level yet quite horizontal in structure compared to the later Normans . The number of inhabitants was very small for example England still had wild bear beaver and wolves . Yet the society supported such artistic treasures as Lindisfarne . Producing world famous illuminated manuscripts

David

Dale you are right about the hedgerows they used to be bigger and have more trees for fire wood pollarded as in France today  . Also the earlier hedges were curved as animal enclosures not straight as used in modern farming .

David

"Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) are a unique type of soils apparently developed between 500 and 9000 years B.P. through intense anthropogenic activities such as biomass-burning and high-intensity nutrient depositions on pre-Columbian Amerindian settlements that transformed the original soils into Fimic Anthrosols throughout the Brazilian Amazon Basin (Sombroek, 1966; Smith, 1980; Neves et al., 2003). These anthropic soils have similar texture, mineralogy, and other geochemical signatures with adjacent soils (Zech et al., 1990; Costa and Kern, 1999). However, they can be distinguished by their higher contents of ceramic and lithic artifacts and by their characteristic black color in sharp contrast with the yellowish to reddish adjacent soils. They are also anomalously enriched with P, Mg, Zn, and Mn, have higher water holding capacity, pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC), and thus sustain higher fertility compared to the intensely weathered acidic adja-cent soils (Sombroek, 1966; Lehmann et al., 2001)."
- Solomon, Dawit, Johannes Lehmann, Janice Thies, Thorsten Schafer, Biqing Liang, James Kinyangi, Eduardo Neves, James Petersen, Flavio Luizao, and Jan Skjemstad, Molecular signature and sources of biochemical recalcitrance of organic carbone in Amazonian Dark Earths, Geochemica et cosmochemica ACTA 71.9 2285-2286 (2007)

More info on human-generated soils of the Amazon:
Back to the Future: Terra Preta - Ancient Carbon Farming System for Earth Healing in the 21st Century by Planet People Passion

terra preta on Wikipedia.org

"Horticulture is still practiced successfully in tropical forest areas in the Amazon Basin and on mountain slopes in South and Central America as well as low population density areas of Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and Melanesia. ...

In the early 1950's, the Hanunóo mountain people of Mindoro Island in the Philippines were studied by the ethnographer Harold Conklin.  These horticulturalists recognized 10 principle and 30 derivative soil categories.  They also understood the suitability of each soil for their crops as well as the effects of erosion and over-farming.  They distinguished 1500 useful plants including 430 cultigens and they identified minute differences in plant structures.  All of this detailed knowledge was unexpected among horticulturalists.  The Hanunóo usually grew as many as 40 different crops in the same field.  As a result, their vegetable gardens looked more like a tangle of wild vegetation than our modern rows of crops.  This multi-cropping allowed them to have successive harvests throughout the growing season, while the dense vegetation of their crops broke the erosional force of rain and shielded delicate plants from the sun."
SOURCE: http://anthro.palomar.edu/subsistence/sub_4.htm

"The Hanunoo inhabit southern Mindoro Island, particularly in the towns of Mansalay and San Pedro. Their language is known as Hanunoo-Mangyan, or simply Mangyan. Unlike many other Filipino languages, Hanunoo-Mangyan has a written script, so that many members of the tribe can read and write. Their system of writing is descended from the ancient Sanskrit alphabet. There are 18 characters in the syllabary, three of which are vowels; the remaining 15 are written in combination with the vowels. Hanunoos use a bolo-shaped knife for inscribing on bamboo."
SOURCE: http://www.ethnicgroupsphilippines.com/people/ethnic-groups-in-the-philippines/hanunoo/

Another example of the practical farming knowledge of horticulturalists was found among the Birom people of the Jos Plateau in north central Nigeria.  An important food of the Birom was the tiny seeds from a grass that they called acha.  This cereal crop was traditionally grown in fields without the use of added fertilizers.  During the first half of the 20th century when Nigeria was still a British colony, colonial officials concluded that the Birom were ignorant of the effects of fertilizer because they did not put manure on their fields.  In fact, the acha crops failed when the Birom were induced by government officials to fertilize them.  Acha grows too quickly in enriched soils, falls over from its own weight, and rots before its seeds are ripe.  Following this failed experiment, the Birom were allowed to return to their traditional farming practices."
SOURCE: http://anthro.palomar.edu/subsistence/sub_4.htm

More photos of the Hanunóo mountain people of Mindoro Island in the Philippines:
Hanunóo woman moves her goats in a field near her home after arriving from her kaingin field by JacobMaentz, JacobImages.com

Mangyan permacultural infrastructure - floating produce down river on tire tubes twice a week to be sold in town by JacobMaentz JacobImages.com
Shouldn't we all be going to the farmers' market this way?!

Hanunóo horticultural mountain peoples' house, Mindoro Island, Philippines

"The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai, formerly Kamia or Diegueño, are Native American people of the extreme southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. They live in the states of California in the US and Baja California in Mexico. In Spanish, the name is commonly spelled Kumiai." Wikipedia.org/Kumeyaay

"PRE-CONTACT: 10000 BC - 1542
HARD ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE clearly suggests the Kumeyaay Indians have lived in the greater San Diego and northern Baja California Mexico area for some 12,000 years (600 generations)!
The earliest documented inhabitants in what is now San Diego County are known as the San Dieguito Paleo-Indians, dating back to about 10,000 B.C. Different groups later evolved as the environment and culture diversified. It is from one of these groups that the Southern Diegueño emerged at about 3,000 B.C. The Southern Diegueño are the direct ancestors of the Sycuan Band currently living in Dehesa Valley....
- sycuan.com
PRE-CONTACT Kumeyaay Life:
Southern California has always been a haven of good weather, and good life. The Kumeyaay of Pre-Contact wanted for nothing. With ideal climate, and a land that they cared for and in turn provided a bounty of crops, game, and medicine. With little to no thought given to hardship of survival, the Kumeyaay were able to turn their thoughts to ways to improve their life. This was a world of astronomers... horticulturists... healers... scientists... and storytellers....
- kumeyaay.com
...
Traditional Kumeyaay food sources such as acorns and pine seeds, for example, were placed in these holes, then smashed and ground into meal using a mano stone tool. Acorns were a staple food source of the traditional Kumeyaay diet, as such, oak trees were rarely cut down by the Indians because they grow this important food source."
http://www.kumeyaay.info/history/

I received some interesting additional info on this topic recently:

"Two additions I can offer are the antebellum home gardens of the Southern US, as documented by Dan Barber,

And the other are the coltura promiscua gardens of Mediterranean Europe.

Interestingly, living examples of these ancient traditions can still be found even in these areas of the world where agribusiness has acquired such predominance.

For the former, read The Third Plate where he describes a a trip (in the 80s or 90s I would imagine) to small family farm in South Carolina, established since the 1600s, that was almost completely self-sufficient in food (they made some money from moonshine liquor). This family had turned the principle of agribusiness on its head. Crammed onto their land were uncountable varieties of plants and many different livestock. After eating with the family Glenn reported to Dan on the “unreal impeccable flavour” of the meal.

He found one moonshine operation completely “off the grid.” The family had been farming the same land since the late 1600s. But this wasn’t just a moonshine operation. The family also raised pigs, goats, and sheep. And they grew countless crops for food. Everything was intertwined, and everything grew together.
   “So, you didn’t have field peas as field peas; you’d have field peas and corn together in the same field. You didn’t grow just wheat; you’d grow wheat that was, say, thirty inches tall, and then you maybe grow rye above it that was seven feet tall; harvest the rye first, cut it high, then cut low for the wheat, and then they’d have clover down at the bottom, or winter peas, or whatever. No one thing was growing in a field.”
   It was unlike anything Glenn had ever seen. “Like an idiot, I said to the father, ‘You can’t machine this.’ By that I meant you couldn’t run a tractor combine to harvest it. He looks at me real funny and says, ‘Why would we want to machine this? This is eating food.’ He wasn’t growing for animals. He was saying, ‘This is our kitchen food. This is what we eat.’ He would just as soon run a combine on his field as he would grow GM [genetically modified] corn. These people were frozen in time.”
   Glenn ate lunch with them. “Holy crap! I mean, everything on the table—everything—had been grown and processed on the farm,” he said. “It was unbelievable food. Breads, butters, jams, hams, even wine—you name it. Oh, the best corn grits I’d ever eaten. Unreal, impeccable flavor, simply and honestly prepared. I sat there with the bootlegging family in the middle of this food paradise and felt in reality what my mother had always said about southern kitchen gardens, and about the food she grew up on.

You might also find good info on the social aspect of these traditions in Ramp Hollow by Steven Stoll, which tells the story of the Whiskey Rebellion in post independence US where independent (white) horticulturalists from Appalachian were violently incorporated into the agricultural society of the USA -- a book much in the tradition of James C. Scott and especially interesting in that it treats traditions held by white Americans which not too long ago resembled those of 'savages' in distant climes. The South Carolina moonshiners of Dan Barber must have been vestigial remnants of this tradition.

Second group, the Southern Europeans... pretty fascinating stuff to be sure." - SIDDIQ KHAN

I just recently got back from visiting the people in the jungles of Mexico. I toured their traditional-style milpas and learned all about their shifting polyculture horticultural techniques. Essentially, it works like this: A large tree in the jungle near their settlement will be blown over in a wind storm taking out several trees around it. They'll clear a firebreak around this area & char all the vegetation inside. They then plant their polycultural garden: corn, beans, squash, chilies, tomatoes, etc. This garden will be fertile for 3-5 years. Then, after the soils are tired, they will plant it with trees: fruit trees, timber trees, plants for their thatched roofs, spiritual plants, as well as all the plants necessary for the jungle animals: trees that feed the birds, mammals, reptiles, etc. They will not burn this area until after 20 years have past. I was most surprised to learn that they also practiced aquaculture. They build cascading terraced paddies -like those in Hawai'i- & plant aquatic plants as fish feed. They would also gather insect nests from the forest, tap them together over the pond & the fish would eat the insects! So fascinating. They use modern tools: they weed & "mow" the grass with meter-long machetes!
Toby Hemenway gives an excellent account of the milpa system in this article: Seeing the Garden in the Jungle.
Below, in the first photo, is a second-stage milpa planting within a cleared "jungle". Note, all the surrounding jungle plants "outside the garden" have function & uses.
In the second photo, I was pleased to see cloud ear mushrooms growing on a tree stump in one of their gardens. I also was very pleased to learn that they cook & eat them!

So this research sent our team down a major rabbit hole that eventually spawned this Class Package on horticulturalists of ancient Amazonia for sale at the Permies Digital Marketplace. We hope it will be inspirational and useful to permaculture learners and teachers. :-)