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Personally I'm a bit skeptical of this. Just right off the bat, it's easy to find research that shows how the Native Americans in California used wild fire to o

Personally I'm a bit skeptical of this. Just right off the bat, it's easy to find research that shows how the Native Americans in California used wild fire to open up farming land. And there are the Native Americans who would drive entire herds of buffalo off of cliffs. They're human, not divine saints.

ridicter 3y ago
We're a few narratives deep. You're responding to the "noble savages" strawman -- the OP article never claimed such. (Moreover, you're responding with a relatively isolated incident of Native Americans driving buffalos off cliffs, which I agree happened and Is Not Good. But it's odd to mention in the larger historical context that the American Buffalo became endangered due to industrial scale slaughter caused by European settlers--A Big Deal, relatively speaking.) On balance, yes, Native people are often the best guardians of the forest for a mix of reasons. One is the animistic belief systems, which falls under the "Noble Savage" bucket. But the other is they more often than not don't industrial-scale commoditize their living spaces, part and parcelling out the goods as raw material inputs. Which other groups, like Asians and Whites, often have.
mathewsanders 3y ago
Those smaller controlled burns help prevent organic matter from building up that can lead to more devastating uncontrolled fires. The national parks service has been incorporating those methods into their fire management practices. And driving bison of cliffs were a sustainable hunting practice - it was habitat loss due to farming and commercial hunting that led to their population decline.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  The bison were deliberately shot in order to force the Comanche onto reservations. "Empire of the Summer Moon" https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060 https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful...
7952 3y ago
I think the argument is that native people have lived in that way for thousands of years and reached a state of equilibrium with nature. It is definitely more complex than just looking at individual events. It is not better or worse necessarily, just more stable. When you introduce new technology or even disease that stability is lossed. Ad an example the death of native Americans to European disease reduced the amount of intentional burning. This may have substantially reduced global co2 levels.
- tbrownaw 3y ago
  > lived in that way for thousands of years and reached a state of equilibrium with nature Nature is not static. A small example would be Darwin's Finches shifting prevalence of break size from year to year. Or multi-year predator-prey boom and bust cycles. Or how bacteria learned to eat nylon in less than a century. Cultures are not static. For example the Inca and Aztec empires apparently only date back to the 12th and 13th centuries.
- therealdrag0 3y ago
  Yes equilibrium after overhunting many large mammals and driving them extinct, horses, giant sloths, mammoths. Those indigenous sure know how to manage ecology!

ridicter 3y ago

We're a few narratives deep. You're responding to the "noble savages" strawman -- the OP article never claimed such. (Moreover, you're responding with a relatively isolated incident of Native Americans driving buffalos off cliffs, which I agree happened and Is Not Good. But it's odd to mention in the larger historical context that the American Buffalo became endangered due to industrial scale slaughter caused by European settlers--A Big Deal, relatively speaking.) On balance, yes, Native people are often the best guardians of the forest for a mix of reasons. One is the animistic belief systems, which falls under the "Noble Savage" bucket. But the other is they more often than not don't industrial-scale commoditize their living spaces, part and parcelling out the goods as raw material inputs. Which other groups, like Asians and Whites, often have.

mathewsanders 3y ago

Those smaller controlled burns help prevent organic matter from building up that can lead to more devastating uncontrolled fires. The national parks service has been incorporating those methods into their fire management practices. And driving bison of cliffs were a sustainable hunting practice - it was habitat loss due to farming and commercial hunting that led to their population decline.

WalterBright 3y ago
The bison were deliberately shot in order to force the Comanche onto reservations. "Empire of the Summer Moon" https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060 https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful...

7952 3y ago

I think the argument is that native people have lived in that way for thousands of years and reached a state of equilibrium with nature. It is definitely more complex than just looking at individual events. It is not better or worse necessarily, just more stable. When you introduce new technology or even disease that stability is lossed. Ad an example the death of native Americans to European disease reduced the amount of intentional burning. This may have substantially reduced global co2 levels.

tbrownaw 3y ago
> lived in that way for thousands of years and reached a state of equilibrium with nature Nature is not static. A small example would be Darwin's Finches shifting prevalence of break size from year to year. Or multi-year predator-prey boom and bust cycles. Or how bacteria learned to eat nylon in less than a century. Cultures are not static. For example the Inca and Aztec empires apparently only date back to the 12th and 13th centuries.
therealdrag0 3y ago
Yes equilibrium after overhunting many large mammals and driving them extinct, horses, giant sloths, mammoths. Those indigenous sure know how to manage ecology!