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> Many people seem to think there will be mass die offs Humans have already caused many mass die offs. Go into a forest today and try to catch dinner with yo

> Many people seem to think there will be mass die offs Humans have already caused many mass die offs. Go into a forest today and try to catch dinner with your bare hands and you'll find it is near impossible. Yet it used to be possible - that's how our ancestors lived. Us inventing aids like the bow and arrow has depleted the wild animal population enough that we now couldn't survive without such aids.

notadoomer236 3y ago
But survive and thrive we do. And if you go to many places in North America (or around the world) you can still see large populations of wild animals, many recovering substantially with improved protection policies.
inference-lord 3y ago
I highly doubt bow and arrows have to do with this depletion, Australian Aboriginals were highly highly effective hunters with spears woomeras and boomerangs and there was an abundance of wild life around in their presence.
- hnfong 3y ago
  But there weren't a billion of them around. FWIW, quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow : "The trade of yew wood to England for longbows was such that it depleted the stocks of yew over a huge area."
- Jensson 3y ago
  Australian Aboriginals didn't have bows so not sure how that proves anything.
  - inference-lord 3y ago
    They could've killed a lot of shit with similarly effective weaponry, if they wanted too, their culture wasn't into that. My proof is that they're the oldest surviving civilization on earth and lived mostly a hunter gatherer lifestyle without running out of food and requiring mass scale agriculture to survive.
lenkite 3y ago
Growing up in a rural area, I used to catch dinner with a sling as a kid. Fat pigeons were my target. This is still possible today. :)
- Jensson 3y ago
  Historically you could go and catch a pig or similar reliably and feed your family since they were everywhere. Today it is hard to even feed yourself, you need many pigeons to feed even one person for a day. Did you know that just a couple of thousand of years ago there were more elephants than humans in sub Saharan Africa? Feeding yourself with hunting then is really easy, there are meat giants to eat everywhere, that is what earth was like when humans were still hunters. Then humans hunted most of the largest animals to extinction and the remaining got turned to cattle.
  - TearsInTheRain 3y ago
    If you want easy access to wild pigs just move to Texas lol, they have a real problem with them
  - lenkite 3y ago
    "Did you know that just a couple of thousand of years ago there were more elephants than humans in sub Saharan Africa? " This does not appear surprising. Elephants were perfectly adapted to that environment and able to fend off dangerous predators. Humans - several thousand years ago - were not as dangerous. And thus used to be the prey of necessity for older, limping lions in the past. The old big cats could no longer catch a fleeting gazelle but the slow, clumsy humans made an acceptable substitute - even if the meat tasted like bad pig. Even in the last millennium, thousands of humans were devoured by man-eating cats.
    - defrost 3y ago
      > but the slow, clumsy humans made an acceptable substitute The humans that made thorn bush corrals and teamed up with spears when one yelled lion? They're not as easy for big cats as many might think, even today you can see barefoot humans with spears facing down cats and cats shying away from the sound of humans. Only old slightly mad cats gave humans a go, and they rarely lasted long until people teamed up and took out the man eaters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJZR68KSIgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJZR68KSIgY > Even in the last millennium, thousands of humans were devoured by man-eating cats. That's, like, one or two a year ... comparable to drowning and other accidental fatalities. In reality, outside the drama of Rudyard Kipling story, it's a rare bit of drama for big game hunters to have an actual man eater to go after.

notadoomer236 3y ago

But survive and thrive we do. And if you go to many places in North America (or around the world) you can still see large populations of wild animals, many recovering substantially with improved protection policies.

inference-lord 3y ago

I highly doubt bow and arrows have to do with this depletion, Australian Aboriginals were highly highly effective hunters with spears woomeras and boomerangs and there was an abundance of wild life around in their presence.

hnfong 3y ago
But there weren't a billion of them around. FWIW, quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow : "The trade of yew wood to England for longbows was such that it depleted the stocks of yew over a huge area."
Jensson 3y ago
Australian Aboriginals didn't have bows so not sure how that proves anything.
- inference-lord 3y ago
  They could've killed a lot of shit with similarly effective weaponry, if they wanted too, their culture wasn't into that. My proof is that they're the oldest surviving civilization on earth and lived mostly a hunter gatherer lifestyle without running out of food and requiring mass scale agriculture to survive.

lenkite 3y ago

Growing up in a rural area, I used to catch dinner with a sling as a kid. Fat pigeons were my target. This is still possible today. :)

Jensson 3y ago
Historically you could go and catch a pig or similar reliably and feed your family since they were everywhere. Today it is hard to even feed yourself, you need many pigeons to feed even one person for a day. Did you know that just a couple of thousand of years ago there were more elephants than humans in sub Saharan Africa? Feeding yourself with hunting then is really easy, there are meat giants to eat everywhere, that is what earth was like when humans were still hunters. Then humans hunted most of the largest animals to extinction and the remaining got turned to cattle.
- TearsInTheRain 3y ago
  If you want easy access to wild pigs just move to Texas lol, they have a real problem with them
- lenkite 3y ago
  "Did you know that just a couple of thousand of years ago there were more elephants than humans in sub Saharan Africa? " This does not appear surprising. Elephants were perfectly adapted to that environment and able to fend off dangerous predators. Humans - several thousand years ago - were not as dangerous. And thus used to be the prey of necessity for older, limping lions in the past. The old big cats could no longer catch a fleeting gazelle but the slow, clumsy humans made an acceptable substitute - even if the meat tasted like bad pig. Even in the last millennium, thousands of humans were devoured by man-eating cats.
  - defrost 3y ago
    > but the slow, clumsy humans made an acceptable substitute The humans that made thorn bush corrals and teamed up with spears when one yelled lion? They're not as easy for big cats as many might think, even today you can see barefoot humans with spears facing down cats and cats shying away from the sound of humans. Only old slightly mad cats gave humans a go, and they rarely lasted long until people teamed up and took out the man eaters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJZR68KSIgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJZR68KSIgY > Even in the last millennium, thousands of humans were devoured by man-eating cats. That's, like, one or two a year ... comparable to drowning and other accidental fatalities. In reality, outside the drama of Rudyard Kipling story, it's a rare bit of drama for big game hunters to have an actual man eater to go after.