No Planet B: comparative reflections on hydraulic engineering and zoonotic epidemics in the Jordan Valley in Early Neolithic time and Twenty First Century

Abstract

This article focuses on the critical importance of knowledge, a key trait of human culture, in multi-species environmental coadaptation and niche co-construction in human evolutionary history. It draws upon two cases of hydraulic engineering and associated zoonotic epidemics in the Jordan Valley, which is part of the planetary crossroad of human migration and cultural (including knowledge) exchange since prehistoric times. The first case is based on existing archaeological studies of the Neolithic town of Jericho about 10,000 years ago and the second based on our ethnographic fieldwork on a Pumped-Storage Hydropower project in construction since 2017. This article does comparative analysis of knowledge for niche construction at local and planetary scales, following ecologists' recent observation of the Earth becoming one single ecosystem and human beings’ only ecological niche. It explores and calls for cross-disciplinary approaches to studying social-cultural processes of sharing and innovating knowledge adaptive to today’s planetary ecological changes.