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> He was from that area and told me that ranchers will let their cattle graze where ever they want, even on protected federal land, polluting pretty much every
by Amezarak 9y ago
> He was from that area and told me that ranchers will let their cattle graze where ever they want, even on protected federal land, polluting pretty much every water source and everything downstream. They were very right. We saw cattle feces everywhere. It was very unsettling.
Maybe this is an ignorant thing to say, but before cattle, there were massive herds of buffalo everywhere doing the same thing, right?
- _lflx 9y agoAnd the average human lifespan was like 50 years, so maybe they were dying of contaminated waters.
- Amezarak 9y agoAverage human lifespan was dragged down by infant mortality. Where we have good data, people lived to about the same age as today - or even longer.[1] See, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ [1] Obvious caveat that particularly awful periods of history in some locations had bad life expectancies - wars that killed a third of the population, the Black Plague, genocide, etc. The idea that human life expectancy has improved over time is a myth - unless you start counting in 1900. It's gone up and down throughout history, but ours is nothing special.