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The Aborigines very likely helped turn much of Australia into a desert. http://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-australias-climate-4454 http:

The Aborigines very likely helped turn much of Australia into a desert. http://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-australias-climate-4454 http://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-au... And our paleo ancestors helped hunt woolly mammoths into extinction. Turns out people are people and the "noble savage" thing is mostly myth. Not much hidden wisdom, not really any secret medicinal knowledge, just less effective ways of understand the world and doing things. This isn't to suggest pre modern cultures aren't worth studying, but it is to say they aren't worth romanticizing.

crispinb 9y ago
> The Aborigines very likely helped turn much of Australia into a desert. That isn't remotely what that article (or the paper it summarises) suggests -- it has nothing whatsoever to do with desertification. The magnitude of ecological effects of indigenous settlement of Australia is as yet very poorly understood and highly contested, and the timeline even more so. It's possible, but by no means demonstrated, for example, that early human settlement wiped out megafauna, but that it quickly settled into a sustainable pattern as the incomers learned to manage the continent. To label any detailed description of indigenous cultures as 'romanticizing' or relating to 18th century 'noble savage' myths, for no better reason than that it contradicts unevidenced & derogatory popular myths, is just lazy. A portrait deriving from the actual evidence carefully unearthed so far suggests nothing remotely resembling a 'noble savage' account of indigenous Australian civilisation, nor one that was 'less effective' than ours. Indigenous Australians were not purely hunter-gatherers, running naked around a 'pristine' environment, but were active managers of an entire continent's biomass. The aforementioned Gammage and Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu are the best popular accounts, both drawing on and carefully referencing primary sources. Reading either might dispel a few prejudices.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  "That isn't remotely what that article (or the paper it summarises) suggests -- it has nothing whatsoever to do with desertification" Yes it is and yes it does. (But to find this out you have to read all the way to the end.) The idea is that monsoon patterns were changed and the dry season extended which heated the land and resulted in more aridity. It's not a fringe theory at all and there is a fair degree of evidence for it. Point being, primitives didn't necessarily live in Harmony with nature at all. Any more than we do. They just (to address your later point) were less "effective".
  - crispinb 9y ago
    > Yes it is and yes it does. (But to find this out you have to read all the way to the end.) I've read both it and the study it refers to. It has nothing to do with desertification (and it's not empirical -- it's simply modelling a possibility). > It's not a fringe theory at all I said 'contested', not 'fringe'. Big, big difference. The appropriate response when something is contested is to reserve judgement. As I do. And as Gammage, Pascoe et al do (it has little relation to their theses). > Point being, primitives didn't necessarily live in Harmony with nature at all. Only hippies ever suggested they did. The mainstream emerging picture of Australian indigenous civilisation has nothing whatsoever to do with 'living in H[sic]armony with nature'. That you choose that phrase, and jump so reactively at straw men, displays only your tribal affiliation to a general thesis, without any knowledge of the specifics.
    - mythrwy 9y ago
      We must be reading entirely different articles. "We showed that the climate responded significantly to reduced vegetation cover in the pre-monsoon season. We found decreases in rainfall, higher surface and ground temperatures and enhanced atmospheric stability" In other words, burning vegetation led to a more arid climate. That is the entire thesis of the article. It's really pretty clear. Not to beat a dead horse still further but one of us is really missing something here. It could be me and if it is I'd like to know what. "Contested" isn't cause to reserve judgment at all. The age of the earth is contested. Man made climate change is contested. But the age of the earth is very likely what geologists claim it is. And it's also very likely aboriginal burning is one of the causes of aridity in Australia. In which case they weren't "managing" so much as ignorantly abusing. Very much as we do today.
rkallos 9y ago
Most of America's landscapes were managed by indigenous peoples for tens of thousands of years. The idea of Europeans sailing to find a sparsely-populated wilderness is a myth. Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world in the 15th century. Furthermore, the fact that biochar is a buzzword in green agriculture today shows how little we've learned, seeing as indigenous populations used the "hidden wisdom" of 'terra preta' for thousands of years to enrich the soil. The quality of our crops today is built on thousands of years of selective breeding and clever farming by peoples in pre-Columbian America. Sure, pre-modern cultures may have had "less effective" understandings of medicine or technology, but at the same time, these cultures survived for millennia. We're definitely more effective at screwing up our planet than they ever were. Given the pending ecological disaster(s) we're facing, it's probably more responsible to try and learn from the examples set by ancient cultures rather than flippantly declaring that they were "less effective", and dismissing any contrary information as romanticizing.
- cthalupa 9y ago
  The Aztecs had progressed beyond tribal society. They were an empire. If there had been peaceful trade, etc, they would likely be no different than you and I. They were certainly on the same path, if a bit behind.
  - meddlepal 9y ago
    They were a primitive technology empire though weren't they? I've always had the impression their tech was closer to that of the ancient Egyptians... so close to 2000 years behind the Europeans.
    - cthalupa 9y ago
      Sure. But tech catches up fast when you trade for it. And even if we'd left them completely alone, they almost certainly would have kept progressing, albeit significantly slower.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  I may have been a bit hasty. There is valuable lesson to be learned from primitive societies. Here's a summation: "How not to do things unless you want 45% infant mortality and a short brutal life full of pain and hunger".

crispinb 9y ago

> The Aborigines very likely helped turn much of Australia into a desert. That isn't remotely what that article (or the paper it summarises) suggests -- it has nothing whatsoever to do with desertification. The magnitude of ecological effects of indigenous settlement of Australia is as yet very poorly understood and highly contested, and the timeline even more so. It's possible, but by no means demonstrated, for example, that early human settlement wiped out megafauna, but that it quickly settled into a sustainable pattern as the incomers learned to manage the continent. To label any detailed description of indigenous cultures as 'romanticizing' or relating to 18th century 'noble savage' myths, for no better reason than that it contradicts unevidenced & derogatory popular myths, is just lazy. A portrait deriving from the actual evidence carefully unearthed so far suggests nothing remotely resembling a 'noble savage' account of indigenous Australian civilisation, nor one that was 'less effective' than ours. Indigenous Australians were not purely hunter-gatherers, running naked around a 'pristine' environment, but were active managers of an entire continent's biomass. The aforementioned Gammage and Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu are the best popular accounts, both drawing on and carefully referencing primary sources. Reading either might dispel a few prejudices.

mythrwy 9y ago
"That isn't remotely what that article (or the paper it summarises) suggests -- it has nothing whatsoever to do with desertification" Yes it is and yes it does. (But to find this out you have to read all the way to the end.) The idea is that monsoon patterns were changed and the dry season extended which heated the land and resulted in more aridity. It's not a fringe theory at all and there is a fair degree of evidence for it. Point being, primitives didn't necessarily live in Harmony with nature at all. Any more than we do. They just (to address your later point) were less "effective".
- crispinb 9y ago
  > Yes it is and yes it does. (But to find this out you have to read all the way to the end.) I've read both it and the study it refers to. It has nothing to do with desertification (and it's not empirical -- it's simply modelling a possibility). > It's not a fringe theory at all I said 'contested', not 'fringe'. Big, big difference. The appropriate response when something is contested is to reserve judgement. As I do. And as Gammage, Pascoe et al do (it has little relation to their theses). > Point being, primitives didn't necessarily live in Harmony with nature at all. Only hippies ever suggested they did. The mainstream emerging picture of Australian indigenous civilisation has nothing whatsoever to do with 'living in H[sic]armony with nature'. That you choose that phrase, and jump so reactively at straw men, displays only your tribal affiliation to a general thesis, without any knowledge of the specifics.
  - mythrwy 9y ago
    We must be reading entirely different articles. "We showed that the climate responded significantly to reduced vegetation cover in the pre-monsoon season. We found decreases in rainfall, higher surface and ground temperatures and enhanced atmospheric stability" In other words, burning vegetation led to a more arid climate. That is the entire thesis of the article. It's really pretty clear. Not to beat a dead horse still further but one of us is really missing something here. It could be me and if it is I'd like to know what. "Contested" isn't cause to reserve judgment at all. The age of the earth is contested. Man made climate change is contested. But the age of the earth is very likely what geologists claim it is. And it's also very likely aboriginal burning is one of the causes of aridity in Australia. In which case they weren't "managing" so much as ignorantly abusing. Very much as we do today.

rkallos 9y ago

Most of America's landscapes were managed by indigenous peoples for tens of thousands of years. The idea of Europeans sailing to find a sparsely-populated wilderness is a myth. Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world in the 15th century. Furthermore, the fact that biochar is a buzzword in green agriculture today shows how little we've learned, seeing as indigenous populations used the "hidden wisdom" of 'terra preta' for thousands of years to enrich the soil. The quality of our crops today is built on thousands of years of selective breeding and clever farming by peoples in pre-Columbian America. Sure, pre-modern cultures may have had "less effective" understandings of medicine or technology, but at the same time, these cultures survived for millennia. We're definitely more effective at screwing up our planet than they ever were. Given the pending ecological disaster(s) we're facing, it's probably more responsible to try and learn from the examples set by ancient cultures rather than flippantly declaring that they were "less effective", and dismissing any contrary information as romanticizing.

cthalupa 9y ago
The Aztecs had progressed beyond tribal society. They were an empire. If there had been peaceful trade, etc, they would likely be no different than you and I. They were certainly on the same path, if a bit behind.
- meddlepal 9y ago
  They were a primitive technology empire though weren't they? I've always had the impression their tech was closer to that of the ancient Egyptians... so close to 2000 years behind the Europeans.
  - cthalupa 9y ago
    Sure. But tech catches up fast when you trade for it. And even if we'd left them completely alone, they almost certainly would have kept progressing, albeit significantly slower.
mythrwy 9y ago
I may have been a bit hasty. There is valuable lesson to be learned from primitive societies. Here's a summation: "How not to do things unless you want 45% infant mortality and a short brutal life full of pain and hunger".