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My thoughts as well. If the native Americans had the technological ability to extinct the Buffalo they would have done it. Just as they killed off many more fra

My thoughts as well. If the native Americans had the technological ability to extinct the Buffalo they would have done it. Just as they killed off many more fragile species and other tribes. Life in pre Colombian America was just as nasty as it was in post Colombian America.

earthboundkid 2y ago
> If the native Americans had the technological ability to extinct the Buffalo I think it's more the case of if they didn't have the ability to create a balance. Things like the creation of the Amazon rainforest and the domestication of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, quinoa, llamas, etc. were because Native Americans figured out how to do those things. It's likely though that the first Native Americans just didn't know that stuff yet and accidentally ate all the mammoths or whatever because they didn't yet have a tradition of "only eat the mammoths when the third moon rises after Orion returns" or whatever. Those kinds of cultural traditions are social technologies, and they enable ways of life that would otherwise collapse in a few decades. In the Pacific, Hawaiians and others had seemingly useless taboos like "women can't eat bananas" but following the taboo rules sustained a huge population (estimates for Hawaii vary, but it was at least a significant fraction of the current population without international shipping!). In the Amazon, manioc is a great staple crop… as long as you serve it exactly right so you don't slowly poison yourself. They figured that out, but I'm sure there were many generations that got it wrong before they got it right. So I don't think the framing should be "plains Indians didn't know how to kill off the buffalo." Rather a) plains Indians didn't have horses pre-European contact, so that whole way of life didn't exist until modernity and b) balancing with nature is a learned cultural achievement.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  No, it's not about any woo woo natural balance. Mammoths were really easy to kill and if they were anything like their elephant cousins would have taken 10-15 years to reach sexual maturity. Their population would also be considerably lower and larger animals are more sensitive to change because they reproduce slower and their are fewer of them. Buffalo on the other hand reach sexual maturity at 2-3 years, there were many more of them. They replaced their populations faster. The first humans in North America didn't extinct buffalo because they couldn't, they would have had to have much more population and civilization progress before that became a risk.
  - Log_out_ 2y ago
    You are right. But you are trying to educate a political vital mythos away, that just can not die. The noble savage always wins, as it is a coreconcept of the back to nature "movement".
    - earthboundkid 2y ago
      It's not "noble savage" to note that Native Americans domesticated numerous crops used globally today and that such domestication was a technological achievement, much like the domestication of the horse in central Eurasia or the cultivation of rice in Asia. It's basically the opposite idea: rather than being "naturally" in balance with nature, Native Americans figured it out the same way humans figured everything else, through trial and error, and at the cost of countless lives. It is closer to the stereotype to believe that Plains Indians had some kind of timeless way of life, instead of recognizing they occupied a temporary historical niche that lasted between the introduction of the horse and the near extinction of the buffalo. Introducing history to our understanding of Native American achievements and failures is the only way to treat them as equally human as every other culture.
- bitcurious 2y ago
  > Things like the creation of the Amazon rainforest Kind of a ridiculous myth when you consider the diversity of life uniquely adapted to the various micro environments of the amazon rainforest. It would be multi-million-year terraforming project.
  - earthboundkid 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_agriculture_in_the_Amazon_Basin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_agriculture_in_t...
doubloon 2y ago
citation needed.

earthboundkid 2y ago

> If the native Americans had the technological ability to extinct the Buffalo I think it's more the case of if they didn't have the ability to create a balance. Things like the creation of the Amazon rainforest and the domestication of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, quinoa, llamas, etc. were because Native Americans figured out how to do those things. It's likely though that the first Native Americans just didn't know that stuff yet and accidentally ate all the mammoths or whatever because they didn't yet have a tradition of "only eat the mammoths when the third moon rises after Orion returns" or whatever. Those kinds of cultural traditions are social technologies, and they enable ways of life that would otherwise collapse in a few decades. In the Pacific, Hawaiians and others had seemingly useless taboos like "women can't eat bananas" but following the taboo rules sustained a huge population (estimates for Hawaii vary, but it was at least a significant fraction of the current population without international shipping!). In the Amazon, manioc is a great staple crop… as long as you serve it exactly right so you don't slowly poison yourself. They figured that out, but I'm sure there were many generations that got it wrong before they got it right. So I don't think the framing should be "plains Indians didn't know how to kill off the buffalo." Rather a) plains Indians didn't have horses pre-European contact, so that whole way of life didn't exist until modernity and b) balancing with nature is a learned cultural achievement.

colechristensen 2y ago
No, it's not about any woo woo natural balance. Mammoths were really easy to kill and if they were anything like their elephant cousins would have taken 10-15 years to reach sexual maturity. Their population would also be considerably lower and larger animals are more sensitive to change because they reproduce slower and their are fewer of them. Buffalo on the other hand reach sexual maturity at 2-3 years, there were many more of them. They replaced their populations faster. The first humans in North America didn't extinct buffalo because they couldn't, they would have had to have much more population and civilization progress before that became a risk.
- Log_out_ 2y ago
  You are right. But you are trying to educate a political vital mythos away, that just can not die. The noble savage always wins, as it is a coreconcept of the back to nature "movement".
  - earthboundkid 2y ago
    It's not "noble savage" to note that Native Americans domesticated numerous crops used globally today and that such domestication was a technological achievement, much like the domestication of the horse in central Eurasia or the cultivation of rice in Asia. It's basically the opposite idea: rather than being "naturally" in balance with nature, Native Americans figured it out the same way humans figured everything else, through trial and error, and at the cost of countless lives. It is closer to the stereotype to believe that Plains Indians had some kind of timeless way of life, instead of recognizing they occupied a temporary historical niche that lasted between the introduction of the horse and the near extinction of the buffalo. Introducing history to our understanding of Native American achievements and failures is the only way to treat them as equally human as every other culture.
bitcurious 2y ago
> Things like the creation of the Amazon rainforest Kind of a ridiculous myth when you consider the diversity of life uniquely adapted to the various micro environments of the amazon rainforest. It would be multi-million-year terraforming project.
- earthboundkid 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_agriculture_in_the_Amazon_Basin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_agriculture_in_t...

doubloon 2y ago

citation needed.