Swamp

Nature and Culture

Anthony Wilson

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781780238449
• eBook ISBN: 9781780238913
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Geology & Earth Sciences
• Index: Biological Sciences

Throughout history, swamps have been idealized and demonized, purged and protected. Today, they are simultaneously considered metaphorical places of evil, pestilence, and death, and treasured as diverse biological ecosystems teeming with life. Covering not only swamps and bogs but also marshes and wetlands, Swamp ventures into the cultural and ecological histories of these mysterious, mythologized, and misunderstood landscapes. Anthony Wilson takes readers into swamps across the globe, from the freshwater marshes of Botswana's tremendous Okavango delta, to the notable swamps between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to the peat bogs in Russia, the British Isles, and Scandinavia, which have been used as energy sources for centuries. It explores ideas and representations of wetlands across centuries, cultures, and continents, considering legend and folklore, mythology, literature, film, and natural and cultural history. As it plumbs the murky depths of swamps from the distant past to an uncertain future, Swamps provides an engaging, accessible, informative, and lavishly illustrated journey into these fascinating landscapes.

1 Swamp as Home: People of the Swamps

Before the palaces of Ur were built men had stepped out from such a house and launched canoes like this to go hunting in the reeds . . . Five thousand years of history were here, their pattern of life little changed.

Wilfred Thesiger

The Garden of Eden, some say, lay within a swamp.

Historians’ efforts to locate a possible site for the biblical birthplace of humanity often lead them to southern Sumer, among the marshes of southern Iraq.¹ Further, Sumerian and Babylonian Creation legends evoke images of a world conjured from swampy chaos. The Enuma Elish, an epic poem probably handed down from even more ancient Sumerian tradition before being transcribed in 2000 BC, describes the world’s origins as the outcome of a desperate struggle between the gods of Good and Evil, of Order and Chaos. Once Marduk, also called Enlil, the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon, routed the dragons and serpents of the army of chaos, he made the sky, the stars and eventually the world. Gavin Young, a journalist and travel writer who lived among the Marsh Arabs of Iraq for several years in the mid-twentieth century, draws a direct connection between Marduk’s creation of the world and the Marsh Arabs’ creation of their wetland homes: ‘“He built a reed platform on the surface of the waters, then created dust and poured it around the platform” – and this, briefly stated, is how today’s Madan [Marsh Arabs] create the artificial islands on which they site their reed houses.’² Whether or not we embrace biblical or other mythological origin stories, it is clear that human civilization began in, and eventually emerged from, wetland spaces.

Traditionally, swamps have been associated more with the absence of humanity than with its origins. Indeed, we often define swamp spaces as wilderness, either implicitly or explicitly outside human dominion. Given the stigma attached to swamps and bogs, it may seem surprising that so many of the world’s civilizations began and developed in or near wetlands. From Mesopotamia to the Mekong Delta, from the Macedonian marshes in the era of Alexander the Great to the Niger Delta in Mali, from Rome by the Pontine Marshes to the Netherlands, wetlands have seen the birth and development of civilizations all over the world. The Fertile Crescent, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is characterized by abundant freshwater swamps that support tremendous biodiversity. The area is generally acknowledged as the cradle of human civilization: our earliest evidence of both written language and of the development of foundational technology such as the wheel comes from this region. Archaeologists surveying ‘wet sites’ all over the world have uncovered evidence of settlements both among and on the edges of swamps, marshes, fens and bogs, dating back to prehistory.

Early peoples probably settled among the wetlands for a variety of reasons. Wetland agriculture offered advantages in that it required little in the way of technology, offering relatively comfortable subsistence. Rich in wildlife and fertile, swamps and marshes provided sustenance as well as safety to early peoples. Wetland waterways allowed people to travel easily by boat before land travel by road was a widespread possibility. Peat bogs offered little in terms of arable land or easy travel, but provided fuel for burning and material for building, two essential elements for human settlement. The natural bounty of the wetlands made them attractive, if not for people to settle among them, then at least for them to build settlements along their edges.³

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of prehistoric wetland settlements all over the world. In Japan, the Kamo settlement gives evidence of a group of hunter-gatherers who lived at the edge of the swamp, hunting deer, otter and wild boar, and fishing for dolphin and other sea life during the Jōmon period, an era of Japanese prehistory that began around 14,000 BC. In western England, the Somerset Settlement sites at Glastonbury and Meare provide evidence of late prehistoric people who farmed the wetlands to develop prosperous, sheltered homes in the midst of the marsh. Similar settlements throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas and all over the world tell similar stories of early peoples who prospered in wetland or wetland-adjacent settlements, cultivating rice and other staples suited to wetland agriculture, and supplementing them with swamp fowl, game and fish.

For those who did venture into their depths to settle, swamps and marshes also offered protection and concealment. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of such protected settlements all over the world. In New Zealand, archaeologists have discovered versions of Maori pa, fortresses often associated with hilltop settings, adapted to swamps and crannogs. These fortresses, built by filling a framework of partially buried stakes with gravel and rock to form a foundation and enclosing the structure with a fence, could typically only be reached by boat. They were fortified against attack, surrounded by sharp submerged stakes that could capsize the unwary and were evidently used throughout the prehistoric era in Aotearoa.⁴

We are able to learn a surprising amount about people who lived so long ago because of the remarkable troves of archaeological knowledge found in wetland sites. These sites are extraordinarily important from an archaeological standpoint because materials like wood, cloth and even – or especially – human bodies can be preserved in peat and mud in ways that are not possible in other environments. Many ancient peoples around the world, even if they did not live among the wetlands proper, used swamp, bog and marsh areas as burial grounds. Ancient cemeteries like the one at Windover in Florida indicate that early Native Americans used wetlands this way dating back to around 5000–6000 BC. At Windover, bodies have been found that were wrapped in mats made of grass, then submerged in ponds and held to the pond’s bottom with stakes. As the pond filled with peat, the bodies were preserved. Sites like this one, as well as the bogs of northwestern Europe, from which a great many bodies have been unearthed, indicate that ancient people in many places around the world used wetlands as burial places, likely because of their potential preservative properties.⁵

Amazing Pantanal River – the Pantanal in Brazil is one of the world’s largest tropical wetland areas.

Wet peat on a bog, Torronsuo National Park, Finland.

Bog bodies are a unique phenomenon that offer incredible glimpses into the very distant past. The earliest discovery of a bog body dates back to 1773, while the first photograph of one was taken in 1871. A distinctive combination of factors, including temperature, acid produced by the sphagnum in the soil and protection from air and from organisms that might feed on corpses, gives bog peat astonishing preservative properties. Researchers have unearthed bodies from Windover that have been preserved almost perfectly – flesh, clothing, brain matter, teeth, even stomach contents – for more than 7,000 years.⁶ Bodies have also been unearthed from many sites in Europe. The famous Grauballe Man, a magnificently preserved body found in a peat bog at the village of Grauballe in Jutland, Denmark, dates back to the third century BC. He and Tollund Man, another bog body found in Jutland and dating back to the fourth century BC, were both unearthed in the 1950s, with soft tissue, clothing and internal organs intact. Another peat bog near Lindow Moss in the northwestern part of England yielded two famous bog bodies – first Lindow Woman in 1983, then Lindow Man, humorously nicknamed ‘Pete Marsh’, in 1984. Bodies like these provide a wealth of information about the past, but also lead to mysteries. Many bog bodies show evidence of tremendous violence. Their throats have often been cut, cords or ropes are found tied around their necks, and their bodies show other signs of intentional, perhaps ritualized violence. The dark stories hinted at by these violent deaths tend to enhance the aura of sinister mystery surrounding bogs.

Wetland archaeological finds also indicate that wetlands were sacred spaces to ancient peoples. Votive effigies dating back to the Gallo-Roman era have been unearthed from the bottoms of spring-fed pools in France. Sites in New Zealand, Finland and Ireland, among others, have yielded prehistoric treasures that strongly suggest sacrifices of worldly goods to appease or to appeal to entities associated with wetlands.

However welcoming and sacred wetland spaces may have been for prehistoric peoples, a general pattern seems to hold true nearly everywhere. As people developed technology and were able to exert more control over their natural environments, they tended either to leave marshes and swamps behind, or to drain or clear them. Indeed, one vision of European history, as summed up by the anthropologist Stuart McLean, frames it as ‘one of protracted struggle against the abject, waterlogged expanses marking its own inner and outer frontiers’.⁷

Indeed, in most places around the world, the story of human interaction with wetlands is one of gradual modification and eventual control through the development of specialized agriculture and technology. The building of a superstructure of roads over treacherous bogs to connect one island to another; the introduction of irrigation and drainage systems in marshes and swamps – signs of ancient peoples modifying and repurposing wetland spaces to fit their needs have been found all over the world. In Bronze Age Britain, people appear to have inhabited the coastal marshes, taking advantage of marsh agriculture and the salt they could extract from the briny waters, but by the Iron Age, most had moved inland. In the Netherlands, coastal wetland dwelling persisted considerably longer, as inhabitants mastered techniques of wetland agriculture. In fact, the effectiveness of their processes of taming the wetlands led to the comparatively rapid evanescence of the wetlands hundreds of years later. A general pattern emerges when studying inhabitants of coastal wetlands in the period stretching from the Early Neolithic era to the end of the Iron Age. Swamp- and marsh-dwellers tended to move from living off the bounty of the land itself to cultivating and modifying it to better suit their purposes. As their techniques became more specialized and sophisticated, they typically moved further inland; as they became more adept at taming the land, they became less dependent on the natural environment. Indeed, in many places and for many cultures, the story of civilization is a movement out of the swamps and marshes, followed by systematic draining or taming of or otherwise dominating them.

In the ancient world, many cities and towns were built in close proximity to marshes and swamps. This nearness brought with it both advantages and disadvantages, both in terms of practical concerns and philosophical notions about the nature of civilization. The ancient Greeks and Romans prized order, and saw aesthetic appeal in the tamed, controlled landscape. Swamps and marshes, then, were fundamentally offensive to this ideal. Ancient texts by classical writers like Vitruvius and Columella warn against the hazards of settling near miasmatic bogs and marshlands, for reasons ranging from the abundance of snakes and insects to the corruption of their dampness itself.⁸ Nevertheless, cities like Ravenna, Alexandria, Agrigento, Babylon, Syracuse and even Rome itself rose up among swamps and marshes, and enjoyed a measure of tactical advantage due to their defensive properties.⁹ People have regarded swamps and marshes with profound ambivalence throughout most of human history.

Modern footpath or gangplank over a pond in the woods. Old trees standing in a moor or swamp in the forest, with sunbeams and smooth light falling through the treetops.

Despite their ubiquity and frequent proximity to urban areas, the swamps’ primal associations come in large part from their resistance to cultivation and development; most often, ‘swamp peoples’ are characterized as, if not aboriginal, markedly less ‘developed’ than others. Whether Europeans coming from the bogs to build civilizations around hall-centred settlements, or African tribes draining and cultivating swampland to advance and improve agriculture, a culture’s emergence from the swamps is generally regarded as a step in its development and modernization. In some senses, such a designation may be colonialist denigration or cultural chauvinism; often, though, it reflects a harsh reality of limited access to medicine, education and contemporary technology. Because most swamp-identified cultures have not represented themselves through written records, the understanding we have of them is inevitably filtered through the perspectives of outsiders. These outsiders may be visitors or newcomers, viewing the swamp denizens from the perspective of a colonist or tourist, or they may be descendants, trying to connect with a vanished or vanishing cultural tradition, blending genuine cultural tradition with nostalgia. Just as the swamps themselves have been regarded, constructed and interp...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Terra Incognita
• 1 Swamp as Home: People of the Swamps
• 2 Swamp as Quagmire: Obstacle, Trial and Problem
• 3 Swamp as Horror: Monsters, Miasma and Menace
• 4 Swamp as Spectacle: Paradise, Sanctuary, Aesthetic Object
• Postscript: Paradise Lost? The Swamps’ Uncertain Future
• APPENDIX: AN ARRAY OF MAJOR WORLD WETLANDS
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INDEX