Food Chains, Ecosystems and Myths: A Lasting Anthropological Concern

Before the rise of environmental conservation movements in the 1960s, anthropologists had already begun to advocate concepts of ecosystem analysis as the key to understand how humans maintain sustainable interactions with their surroundings. This lasting concern, which crisscrosses temporal, regional, and disciplinary boundaries, led to investigations on how multifaceted cultural mechanisms are developed in this human-environmental feedback loop. For instance, questions can be asked: How have the domestication of plants and animals altered the substance and nutritional levels of our daily life? Or how have the availability and variations in food chains flows regulated the rhythms of social activities? Last but not least, how have folk tales and myths about these cultural mechanisms been incorporated internally to enhance and reinforce group cohesion and legitimize traditional cultures? Looking at these issues in the Chinese cultural context, we may conclude that Shen Nong worship is the counterpart of the holistic concept of ecosystems in anthropology.