Humans in the desert

- Humans in the desert
Original title: Des humains dans les déserts
Vincent Battesti (ed.) in coll. Deserts, Living in extreme environments, p. 98-165
to be published on 10 October 2024
Éditions du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, 2024
In progress.

This edited book accompanies the major exhibition Deserts which will open to the public at the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution in the Jardin des Plantes of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris in spring 2025.

– This part Des humains dans les déserts includes the contributions from: Laure Assaf, Vincent Battesti, Charlène Bouchaud & Margareta Tengberg, Bernadette Robbe, Barbara Glowczewski, André Bourgeot, Catherine Baroin, Linda Gardelle, and Marie Roué.

– Introduction to the part III — Humans in desert, p. 98-165:

Humans in the deserts today? Technologies based on the exploitation of oil-derived energy have enabled the development of urban forms exemplified by Las Vegas, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi—human habitats that illustrate an “air-conditioned disconnection” from their desert environment. The case study of Abu Dhabi allows us to observe contemporary forms of “reconnection” with the desert.

The long history of human presence in deserts, both hot and cold, reveals three modes of living and thriving in these environments, far beyond mere survival. Human groups draw from these modes of production, sometimes combining them. One such mode involves the radical transformation of the environment to create a viable agro-ecosystem, capable of hosting coexistence between humans, cultivated plants, domesticated animals, and the rest of the living world in a hostile environment: the oases.

Two other alternative, more extensive modes stand out from this intensification. The first is a highly adapted approach to these environments through and for hunting or gathering—this is the least transformative mode. It often requires significant mobility of human groups across their territory to avoid exhausting it. This is also the case with another agricultural mode: pastoralism, which involves the herding of herbivores that provide sustenance to the humans who raise them.

These modes of production, shaped by humans to live in these challenging environments, generate both sets of constraints and technical, social, and cognitive choices. However, the following examples will illustrate how the inhabitants of these environments often do not share our understandings of terms like “desert” or “oasis.” These exogenous concepts, far from reflecting the lived and socially transmitted experiences of the inhabitants, impose a way of thinking, approaching, and using these spaces that is foreign to them.

– See the page dedicated to the edited book Deserts. Living in an extreme environment.