Baobab

Modern humans, descendants of a founding population that separated from chimpanzees some five to eight million years ago, are today the only living representative of a branching group of African apes called hominins. Because of its extraordinary size and shape, the baobab (Adansonia digitata L.) has long been identified as the most striking tree of Africa's mosaic savanna, the landscape generally regarded as the environment of hominin evolution. This book makes the case for identifying the baobab as the tree of life in the hunter-gatherer adaptation that was the economic foundation of hominin evolution. The argument is based on the significance of the baobab as a resource-rich environment for the Hadza of northeastern Tanzania, who continue to be successful hunter-gatherers of the African savanna. The Hadza are known for having one of the best baobab cultures in the world, though it is yet to be documented in a systematic way. They are also now widely recognized by researchers from various disciplines as among the most important hunter and gathering cultures for theorizing hominin evolution in association with the Africa savanna. In May 1991, the Desert News published an article describing an exhibition of forty-five Hadza photographs at the Utah Museum of Natural History. They were taken by James F. O'Connell, an archaeologist at the University of Utah who is well known for his Hadza research, and the exhibition was aptly titled "Children of the baobab: Growing up Hadza." As foragers in the landscape of human evolution, the Hadza model for us the possible practical and inspirational significance of the baobab for prehistoric hominins, especially species of the genera Australopithecus and Homo. From this perspective, we are all in a sense "children of the baobab."

In his influential article on the medical, social, and cultural significance of the baobab (Adansonia digitata) in African communities, the anthropologist John Owen (1970:36) referred to the baobab as a "silent chronicler of events down the centuries," noting that archaeologists, physical anthropologists, cultural anthropologists, ecologists, historians, and folklorists "can learn a great deal from studying this very unusual tree." According to Nicholas Jones (2016:17), who is also a major contributor to the development of Hadza studies, "Given that baobab trees have been found by radiocarbon dating to live up to about 1000 years (Patrut et al., 2007), we can suspect that the Hadza have not been without these and other of their staple food plants at any time in the last thousand years." There is indeed a lot to be learned from studying the baobab/human association. But if we are to think of ourselves as "children of the baobab," we will need a much more expanded time frame than suggested by the idea of "centuries," or even thousands of years. It is in this context of the long view that the baobab is identified in this book as humanity's tree of life. The rich baobab culture of the Hadza makes them an appropriate group for exploring the idea of the baobab as humanity's tree of life because many Hadza remain viable foragers in the ancestral landscape of human evolution.