The Eternal Frontier by Tim Flannery, Heinemann, £20, ISBN
0434008664
SPECTACULAR advances in understanding how our planet works have enabled
biologists to join forces with earth scientists. The result is the most
satisfying holistic treatment of the co-evolution of life and the Earth to
date.
Tim Flannery shows us the benefits of this alliance. In The Eternal
Frontier he focuses on North America. We move from the moment when the
great Chicxulub meteorite struck, 65 million years ago, right through to the
present.
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Flannery’s reasons for focusing on this particular period are based on the
individuality of the continent. North America has repeatedly acted as a
“nursery” for important animal groups —particularly the horses. Successive
waves of immigration and emigration created unique and dramatic twists for its
fauna and flora.
The book develops an interesting point concerning the continent’s overall
shape. It is like a funnel, open to the north and bounded on each side by
mountain ranges running north to south—the opposite of Eurasia’s east-west
ranges. Although the components of what is now the North American plate have
remained at pretty much the same distance from the equator since they fused 50
million years ago, once the great cooling began during the Tertiary period,
polar and equatorial weather systems could swing unhindered up and down the
funnel. This produces the extreme temperature fluctuations we’re familiar with
today. (He cites the record-holding town of Spearfish in South Dakota with its
22 °C swing upwards in 2 minutes.) Combine this with the intermittent
exchange of species—sometimes a trickle, sometimes a flood—between
North America and both Eurasia and South America, and you have the ingredients
for an evolutionary roller-coaster ride.
Flannery is a palaeontologist and really goes to town with the Tertiary story
of fauna and flora. It’s not always easy to keep up with him. There are many
Latin names and, although he writes very well and tries to bring the animals to
life, I feel non-biologists will find some of this hard going.
The strongest part of the book begins with the most significant of all
immigrations. Homo sapiens finally made it across the Bering Straits
about 13,200 years ago—at least that’s the majority view: others argue for
earlier dates. I found Flannery’s treatment of the dispute excellent, and
likewise his reconstruction of the lifestyle of these first pioneers. They
improved the basic Stone Age tool kit, inventing the grooved stone projectiles,
or Clovis points. The weapon’s impact was enormous, eliminating much of the
megafauna in the geological twinkling of an eye.
There follows an attractive account of post-Columbian times, with telling
comparisons of the Spanish, French and English colonists. The fatal and tragic
impact of Europeans upon the native North Americans is familiar enough, but
Flannery’s account adds an ecological dimension often missing from the usual
story of perfidy and slaughter.
Horses, whose evolutionary cradle had been North America, fell like the
mammoths to the Clovis-point spears of the earliest humans. More than 12,000
years later they were reintroduced by the Spaniards and instantly adopted by the
plains natives, such as the Comanche. Horses became so much a part of their
culture that it is hard to believe it was not always that way. Then the European
wagons rolled west and that way of life was destroyed.
Flannery is now back in his native Australia after a spell at Harvard. This
book is a testament to his affectionate admiration for the glorious biodiversity
of North America. He ends on a forgiving and optimistic note, wishing well to
life there for the next millennium. Yet one of his earlier books about the
impact of Europeans on Australia is entitled The Future Eaters. You
might be forgiven for thinking the North Americans are up to a fair amount of
future eating themselves.
