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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
by 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 agoYou 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 agoIt'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.