레바논 숲과 그 황폐화 과정에 관한 사료적 고찰

A Historical Consideration on Cedrus Libani and its Deforestation

The mountains of Lebanon, famed for their once extensive cedar forests, still harbor several forest remnants. The natural range of Cedrus libani extends in a great arc from the mountains southwest of Antalya in Turkey to about the latitude of Sidon(modern Saida). Cedrus libani forests also occur north of Lebanon, on Jabal Alaouite in north-western Syria. Forests are found in Cyprus. Cedar forests probably once formed a continuous band between 1,000 and 1,900 meters on the Mediterranean slopes of Mound Lebanon. It is now generally agreed that the prevalent scrub vegetation of the Levantine highlands is the degraded remnant of an original cover of forest. Evidence of the degree and extent of the transformation has been accumulated by historians, botanists, geographers, and other scholars in many parts of this complex realm. But the contrast between ancient and modern conditions is perhaps most strikingly evident on the humid, western versant of Mount Lebanon. From the time of the earliest Egyptian and Mesopotamian documents(ca. 2600 B.C.), even the Hebrew Scriptures until the reign of Emperor Hadrian(A.D. 117-138) this area was known for its valuable timber. Cedar forests at one time probably covered large areas in the mountains of the Near East, but actual documentation of the areas covered is not readily available. The forests were an important source of timber for the early civilizations of the Near East and the Nile from the time of the Phoenicians, who used it extensively for ship-building, the construction of temples, palaces, and other large buildings, cedar was also prized by the builders of coffins and other appurtenance of burial, etc., and who did a thriving business shipping cedarwood to the Egyptians. The Assyrians and later the Romans exploited these timber resources of Lebanon, even their appearance elsewhere suggests that the surviving forests were regarded as a threatened, or at least an exhaustible, resource. Today much of it as barren as the mountains of the Sahara. Only scattered remnants survive of the once extensive stands of cedar, fir, and juniper, and most of the oak forest have been reduced to scrub. What did Mount Lebanon look like in prehistoric time, and how and why was its vegetation so greatly modified? To answer these questions, even tentatively, is to come to grips with processes that offer unrivaled evidence of man's ability to transform nature. I will survey that the deforestation happened not by a natural disaster but by the impact of human activity on the vegetation of Mount Lebanon. In addition to it, I will discuss what the ancient historical documents were mentioned about the ecology of the forest of Lebanon, varieties of Cedar, characteristic trees of the Levant, and Cedrus libani as the religious and mythological images, fable of the trees, timber-cutting by YHWH as the divine judgement etc.