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Reminds me of a quote from Charles Eisenstein. He cites The Once and Future World and then channels Steve Nicholls in Paradise Found: "Atlantic salmon runs so

Reminds me of a quote from Charles Eisenstein. He cites The Once and Future World and then channels Steve Nicholls in Paradise Found: "Atlantic salmon runs so abundant no one is able to sleep for their noise. Islands “as full of birds as a meadow is full of grass.” Whales so numerous they were a hazard to shipping, their spouts filling the entire sea with foam. Oysters more than a foot wide. An island covered by so many egrets that the bushes appeared pure white. Swans so plentiful the shores appear to be dressed in white drapery. Colonies of Eskimo curlews so thick it looked like the land was smoking. White pines two hundred feet high. Spruce trees twenty feet in circumference. Black oaks thirty feet in girth. Hollowed-out sycamores able to shelter thirty men in a storm. Cod weighing two hundred pounds (today they weigh perhaps ten). Cod fisheries where “the number of the cod seems equal that of the grains of sand.” A man who reported “more than six hundred fish could be taken with a single cast of the net, and one fish was so big that twelve colonists could dine on it and still have some left.” I used the word “incredible” advisedly when I introduced these images. Incredible means something like “impossible to believe”; indeed, incredulity is a common response when we are confronted with evidence that things were once vastly different than they are now." (I posted the MacKinnon section here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064787)

crazygringo 7y ago
I'm not sure exactly what those quotes are referring to, but many reports of European settlers to the New World, while technically true, were greatly misleading. Prior to arrival of the Europeans, the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife. When the Europeans arrived, the diseases they brought wiped out 90+% of the indigenous population, according to some estimates. By the time they explored the continent, the population was mainly gone, far in advance. So there's a strong theory that the incredible over-abundance of wildlife the Europeans saw was actually a huge ecological imbalance, as many animals had lost their natural (human) predators. And that phenomena such as millions of passenger pigeons blocking out the sun overhead weren't "natural" at all, but actually severe ecological imbalance. (This isn't to say, of course, that now we haven't swung way too far in the other direction. But just that the tales of abundance aren't necessarily a naturally balanced state either.)
- nroets 7y ago
  Native Americans arrived less than 80,000 years ago. That's a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. They were not the natural predators.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    I think the phrase natural predator just means the predator in the environment that keeps some other species in check. 80,000 years may be a blink in an eye in evolutionary terms but it does not take that long for a predator to come into an environment and become entrenched as the natural check on some other species. I would say https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5802/1111 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5802/1111 for example of introduction of species something like this https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/285705 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/285705 for how dominance of predator works. However not sure how well the Native Americans were actually keeping animals in check given the many species they have been shown to have helped bring to extinction. That said not sure how long it would take from being a natural predator to being a keystone species.
    - cutemonster 7y ago
      @nroets, Humans (the Europeans in this case) made the Dodo bird extinct quite fast, closer to 80 years than 80 000. One doesn't need to be someone's long time natural predator to have an impact
  - mwaitjmp 7y ago
    I believe the accepted period is around 15,000 years ago, possibly slightly earlier.
    - netcan 7y ago
      Those dates are in flux recently. As is the pattern in discoveries of our very ancient history... the story gets more complicated as we go. The fallacy that, IMO, we are falling into is (ironically) caused by scientific reductionism... the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. This doesn't work as well for the evidence types paleoanthropology has to work with.
symmitchry 7y ago
I find the state of the environment so shockingly depressing, it's incredible. What would I give to see the world like that?
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  Well, you’d have to give billions of lives.

crazygringo 7y ago

I'm not sure exactly what those quotes are referring to, but many reports of European settlers to the New World, while technically true, were greatly misleading. Prior to arrival of the Europeans, the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife. When the Europeans arrived, the diseases they brought wiped out 90+% of the indigenous population, according to some estimates. By the time they explored the continent, the population was mainly gone, far in advance. So there's a strong theory that the incredible over-abundance of wildlife the Europeans saw was actually a huge ecological imbalance, as many animals had lost their natural (human) predators. And that phenomena such as millions of passenger pigeons blocking out the sun overhead weren't "natural" at all, but actually severe ecological imbalance. (This isn't to say, of course, that now we haven't swung way too far in the other direction. But just that the tales of abundance aren't necessarily a naturally balanced state either.)

nroets 7y ago
Native Americans arrived less than 80,000 years ago. That's a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. They were not the natural predators.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  I think the phrase natural predator just means the predator in the environment that keeps some other species in check. 80,000 years may be a blink in an eye in evolutionary terms but it does not take that long for a predator to come into an environment and become entrenched as the natural check on some other species. I would say https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5802/1111 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5802/1111 for example of introduction of species something like this https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/285705 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/285705 for how dominance of predator works. However not sure how well the Native Americans were actually keeping animals in check given the many species they have been shown to have helped bring to extinction. That said not sure how long it would take from being a natural predator to being a keystone species.
  - cutemonster 7y ago
    @nroets, Humans (the Europeans in this case) made the Dodo bird extinct quite fast, closer to 80 years than 80 000. One doesn't need to be someone's long time natural predator to have an impact
- mwaitjmp 7y ago
  I believe the accepted period is around 15,000 years ago, possibly slightly earlier.
  - netcan 7y ago
    Those dates are in flux recently. As is the pattern in discoveries of our very ancient history... the story gets more complicated as we go. The fallacy that, IMO, we are falling into is (ironically) caused by scientific reductionism... the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. This doesn't work as well for the evidence types paleoanthropology has to work with.

symmitchry 7y ago

I find the state of the environment so shockingly depressing, it's incredible. What would I give to see the world like that?

toasterlovin 7y ago
Well, you’d have to give billions of lives.