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Before agriculture and civilization as we know it, people lived all over the world. Their lifestyles were sustainable and included meat.

nkoren 10y ago
"Sustainable", if you conveniently forget about the extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, Woolly Rhino, Giant Sloths, Sabre Tooth Cats, Glyptodonts, Elephant Birds, Giant Lemurs, Giant Otters, Cave Lion, Cave Bear, Cave Hyena, Irish Elk, American horses, Diprotodons, Neanderthals, Denisovans etc. It wasn't until we finished extirpating the majority of the non-African megafauna and apex predators and the totallity of all other human species that we could even be bothered to settle down and invent agriculture and civilization, et cetera. All the indigenous people who we have any evidence of from historical times (eg. the last 5,000 years) are already living in a post-ecocidal world, where every species that could be rendered extinct with relatively simple technology already had been. Sustainable, my ass.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Those large creatures added up to a tiny fraction of the ecosystem - almost a negligible portion. They're visible and interesting - fuzzy and dangerous etc - but of no significance to most of life on earth. Like insects, birds, worms, bacteria etc. Not to mention grasses, flowering plants and algae. No, most of life on earth never noticed the extinction of apex predators ( nor their invention either ).
  - nkoren 10y ago
    You need to learn about trophic cascades. Here's a quick intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q This played out in the Pleistocene extinctions to a very significant degree, having tremendous effect on ecosystems everywhere. Here's an entire conference worth of the subject: http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/events/2014/megafauna-conference/index.html http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/events/2014/megafauna-conference/ind...

nkoren 10y ago

"Sustainable", if you conveniently forget about the extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, Woolly Rhino, Giant Sloths, Sabre Tooth Cats, Glyptodonts, Elephant Birds, Giant Lemurs, Giant Otters, Cave Lion, Cave Bear, Cave Hyena, Irish Elk, American horses, Diprotodons, Neanderthals, Denisovans etc. It wasn't until we finished extirpating the majority of the non-African megafauna and apex predators and the totallity of all other human species that we could even be bothered to settle down and invent agriculture and civilization, et cetera. All the indigenous people who we have any evidence of from historical times (eg. the last 5,000 years) are already living in a post-ecocidal world, where every species that could be rendered extinct with relatively simple technology already had been. Sustainable, my ass.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Those large creatures added up to a tiny fraction of the ecosystem - almost a negligible portion. They're visible and interesting - fuzzy and dangerous etc - but of no significance to most of life on earth. Like insects, birds, worms, bacteria etc. Not to mention grasses, flowering plants and algae. No, most of life on earth never noticed the extinction of apex predators ( nor their invention either ).
- nkoren 10y ago
  You need to learn about trophic cascades. Here's a quick intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q This played out in the Pleistocene extinctions to a very significant degree, having tremendous effect on ecosystems everywhere. Here's an entire conference worth of the subject: http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/events/2014/megafauna-conference/index.html http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/events/2014/megafauna-conference/ind...