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The important lesson is not that ancient people left no ecological footprint, but that a heavily managed landscape can still remain remarkably biodiverse

deleted 2mo ago
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spwa4 2mo ago
You mean: it can recover. Also 3M people is probably a lot easier than 220M (and that's just Brazil).
- puelocesar 2mo ago
  220M is the whole country, which is much bigger than the Amazon. Nowadays it's estimated the Amazon has around 46.9 million people. Much more than 3M, but still much less than your 220M
tkel 2mo ago
The lesson is more that indigenous people were (+ are) part of the ecology, not separate from it or above it. With cultural, social, technological, and spiritual practices that were formed dialectically and hyper-locally with the ecology, as a result of it, and as part of it. Often considered a keystone species in these ecologies.
- suddenlybananas 2mo ago
  Indigenous people aren't any more or less of the ecology than anyone else, unless you believe in blood and soil. Humans are part of the ecology, being indigenous has nothing to do with it.
  - curioadu 2mo ago
    In some ways I agree with you, but I also think that the other commenter indirectly might uncover some insights. For instance, Australian Aboriginals mighy have historically both; fire-stick farmed ("farming" in the sense of clearing land for animals to hunt, apart from some foraging, as far as I can tell) so much and in such a large area that both large animal species and perhaps some plant species went extinct or were greatly decreased in numbers and area; and done it for so many years and generations that the ecology changed and adapted according to repeated and frequent fire-stick farming, to the point of becoming reliant on humans doing fire-stick farming.
    - suddenlybananas 2mo ago
      Of course, but that's no different than the changes brought on by urbanization or climate change due to carbon emissions.
      - tkel 2mo ago
        Seems as though you are intentionally misunderstanding me. Urbanization is a practice that humans developed without ecological integration, it is a practice of subjugating or disregarding the surrounding ecology, and extermination of most of life within an ecosystem. As opposed to living within an ecosystem for thousands of years, not above or apart from it, most indigenous human societies in the Americas developed in such a way that is compatible and unique to it's hyperlocal ecological niche. Do you rely on the surrounding plants and animals in your area for sustenance, creating tools, daily life, etc? You do not, that's what I mean by living above/apart. Living in this way does not lead to an ecological society or a shared knowledge base of the surrounding ecology. Do your spiritual and cultural practices involve or integrate that reliance in some way? That's what I'm getting at.
        Jensson 2mo ago
        > Do you rely on the surrounding plants and animals in your area for sustenance, creating tools, daily life, etc? Europeans did that a few hundred years ago, almost everyone did all over the world, that is not unique to anywhere.
  - tempfile 2mo ago
    > unless you believe in blood and soil Not true, there are obviously other ways. There is an intuitive distinction between living in harmony with natural systems and simply dominating them with technology. That is all you have to believe, it doesn't have to be grounded in ethnonationalism. Humans are unquestionably part of the environment, and everything humans do bends the environment to their will, but it would clearly be at odds with how we use words to argue that say a nuclear power station is just as much "part of the ecology" as cultivation of soil.
    - RugnirViking 2mo ago
      > distinction between natural systems and simply dominating them with technology No? There's a rhetorical distinction, there isn't a physical distinction. It's like holistic medicine vs modern medicine, or wellness vs health, or human-centered design vs regular design, or chemical-free food vs regular food Any given thing is one or the other of these soley based on your perspective of it. Im sending this message to you right now by performing a ritual on a object made of rocks some guy found in the ground
      - tkel 2mo ago
        Everything is nature , but clearly human society is also distinct. Both can be true. Some anthropologist philosophers have referred to this as "first nature" and "second nature", second nature being human society which is also part of first nature but distinct from it.
        suddenlybananas 2mo ago
        But you're making out that indigenous people are part of this "first nature" rather than the "second nature", while industrial civilisation is strictly "second nature" which is frankly racist.
        tkel 2mo ago
        The 201 definition is that second nature is a realm of development beyond the bio-social realm, that tends to form into institutions that have their own methods and rate of development and change beyond biological evolution (natural selection, gene flow, mutual aid, etc). Bands, clans, tribes, federations, nations, etc. Other animals such as orcas also have been shown to have societies, language, culture, and history that is passed onto children. You could perhaps say that is also second nature. Call it what you want, but clearly modern human society is distinct in that it stands above (quite literally in the form of cities) and uniquely has the ability to threaten the rest of life on the planet. While at the same time being part of nature. Humans are part of the surrounding ecology whether we recognize it or not, as others have noted in this thread. The difference is many indigenous societies have tended to recognize it and integrate it into socio-cultural practices as a necessary part of survival in their local ecology, while our modern human society mostly does not. Consider the Kucadikadi people of now-Mono Lake , whose autonym literally means "eaters of the brine fly pupae". That is how closely their society, culture, and language is related to their local ecology, which "evolved" (in the 2nd nature sense) out of thousands of years of human society development and survival in that place. Notably their society has not developed to threaten or extinquish the brine flies on which they depend.
- modo_mario 2mo ago
  Indigenous people in north america contributed to multiple extinctions. This is the noble savage trope you're putting on display
  - tkel 2mo ago
    With regards to the Late Pleistocene extinction overkill hypothesis that you are referring to, your information is out of date, more recent evidence suggests that humans played only a minor or incidental role, with climate change (the end of an ice age), and habitat restructuring being the primary drivers. I don't think you understand what the noble savage trope is. I'm commenting on the development of indigenous human societies in the Americas. The vast majority of them were ecologically compatible. This is not a commentary on the morality of individuals. To take the Mexica empire as an example, they were not a moral civilization by our standards (neither were the Spanish colonizers), and they had an over-reliance on corn and obsidian, but other than that they survived in a way that did not stress or extinguish or destabilize the surrounding ecology.
    - curioadu 2mo ago
      I do not quite buy your arguments, and I am skeptical of several claims that you make. Without specific sources, it is more difficult for me to contest them, though I will not request sources. From your perspective, what caused the extinction of several megafauna/large species of animals after the arrival of Aboriginals in Australia?
      - frmersdog 2mo ago
        That's mistaking correlation for causation. I don't have proof, but let's consider an alternative: that the climate change that made those areas newly-hospitable to humans made them inhospitable to megafauna. Can you falsify "all of the species were subject to the same environmental shift" before you jump to "arriving humans hunted them all to extinction"? (And I recognize the parallels to some unsavory arguments, and would like to point out that the evidence regarding contemporary man-made climate change is strong and sound. But that's with industrialization and a couple orders of magnitude more people on the planet.)
- edbaskerville 2mo ago
  Unsurprisingly this one generated a lot of responses. My working hypothesis for this question involves colonization, technologically driven scales of time and space, and selection. The essence is totally obvious: either you develop sustainable practices or you go extinct. Consider a group of people colonizing an area previously uninhabited by humans. When they arrive, they will disrupt the local ecosystem to some extent. In some cases, the new combined system of ecosystem structure and human culture will settle into an attractor that can support humans for a long time (relative to frequency of colonization). In other cases, it will not, and the human population will die out. (Externally driven parameter changes can also turn a sustainable system into an unsustainable one.) With a low enough colonization rate, most active communities will be operating sustainably. Over time, technology increases the rate of spread of humanity. Cultures with more advanced technology increasingly spread into existing settlements as well as taking over existing land. But the basic process continues: some systems last; some do not. The ones that last longer are the ones with sustainable practices. This process is now operating at a global scale. Either we get sustainable, or things get bad. Some people have concluded that the easier path is to colonize other planets.
dev_l1x_be 2mo ago
> left no ecological footprint Well not in a sense you might think. There are few odd things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untouched-amazonian-rainforest-was-actually-shaped-humans-180962378/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untou...

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

spwa4 2mo ago

You mean: it can recover. Also 3M people is probably a lot easier than 220M (and that's just Brazil).

puelocesar 2mo ago
220M is the whole country, which is much bigger than the Amazon. Nowadays it's estimated the Amazon has around 46.9 million people. Much more than 3M, but still much less than your 220M

tkel 2mo ago

The lesson is more that indigenous people were (+ are) part of the ecology, not separate from it or above it. With cultural, social, technological, and spiritual practices that were formed dialectically and hyper-locally with the ecology, as a result of it, and as part of it. Often considered a keystone species in these ecologies.

suddenlybananas 2mo ago
Indigenous people aren't any more or less of the ecology than anyone else, unless you believe in blood and soil. Humans are part of the ecology, being indigenous has nothing to do with it.
- curioadu 2mo ago
  In some ways I agree with you, but I also think that the other commenter indirectly might uncover some insights. For instance, Australian Aboriginals mighy have historically both; fire-stick farmed ("farming" in the sense of clearing land for animals to hunt, apart from some foraging, as far as I can tell) so much and in such a large area that both large animal species and perhaps some plant species went extinct or were greatly decreased in numbers and area; and done it for so many years and generations that the ecology changed and adapted according to repeated and frequent fire-stick farming, to the point of becoming reliant on humans doing fire-stick farming.
  - suddenlybananas 2mo ago
    Of course, but that's no different than the changes brought on by urbanization or climate change due to carbon emissions.
    - tkel 2mo ago
      Seems as though you are intentionally misunderstanding me. Urbanization is a practice that humans developed without ecological integration, it is a practice of subjugating or disregarding the surrounding ecology, and extermination of most of life within an ecosystem. As opposed to living within an ecosystem for thousands of years, not above or apart from it, most indigenous human societies in the Americas developed in such a way that is compatible and unique to it's hyperlocal ecological niche. Do you rely on the surrounding plants and animals in your area for sustenance, creating tools, daily life, etc? You do not, that's what I mean by living above/apart. Living in this way does not lead to an ecological society or a shared knowledge base of the surrounding ecology. Do your spiritual and cultural practices involve or integrate that reliance in some way? That's what I'm getting at.
      - Jensson 2mo ago
        > Do you rely on the surrounding plants and animals in your area for sustenance, creating tools, daily life, etc? Europeans did that a few hundred years ago, almost everyone did all over the world, that is not unique to anywhere.
- tempfile 2mo ago
  > unless you believe in blood and soil Not true, there are obviously other ways. There is an intuitive distinction between living in harmony with natural systems and simply dominating them with technology. That is all you have to believe, it doesn't have to be grounded in ethnonationalism. Humans are unquestionably part of the environment, and everything humans do bends the environment to their will, but it would clearly be at odds with how we use words to argue that say a nuclear power station is just as much "part of the ecology" as cultivation of soil.
  - RugnirViking 2mo ago
    > distinction between natural systems and simply dominating them with technology No? There's a rhetorical distinction, there isn't a physical distinction. It's like holistic medicine vs modern medicine, or wellness vs health, or human-centered design vs regular design, or chemical-free food vs regular food Any given thing is one or the other of these soley based on your perspective of it. Im sending this message to you right now by performing a ritual on a object made of rocks some guy found in the ground
    - tkel 2mo ago
      Everything is nature , but clearly human society is also distinct. Both can be true. Some anthropologist philosophers have referred to this as "first nature" and "second nature", second nature being human society which is also part of first nature but distinct from it.
      - suddenlybananas 2mo ago
        But you're making out that indigenous people are part of this "first nature" rather than the "second nature", while industrial civilisation is strictly "second nature" which is frankly racist.
        tkel 2mo ago
        The 201 definition is that second nature is a realm of development beyond the bio-social realm, that tends to form into institutions that have their own methods and rate of development and change beyond biological evolution (natural selection, gene flow, mutual aid, etc). Bands, clans, tribes, federations, nations, etc. Other animals such as orcas also have been shown to have societies, language, culture, and history that is passed onto children. You could perhaps say that is also second nature. Call it what you want, but clearly modern human society is distinct in that it stands above (quite literally in the form of cities) and uniquely has the ability to threaten the rest of life on the planet. While at the same time being part of nature. Humans are part of the surrounding ecology whether we recognize it or not, as others have noted in this thread. The difference is many indigenous societies have tended to recognize it and integrate it into socio-cultural practices as a necessary part of survival in their local ecology, while our modern human society mostly does not. Consider the Kucadikadi people of now-Mono Lake , whose autonym literally means "eaters of the brine fly pupae". That is how closely their society, culture, and language is related to their local ecology, which "evolved" (in the 2nd nature sense) out of thousands of years of human society development and survival in that place. Notably their society has not developed to threaten or extinquish the brine flies on which they depend.
modo_mario 2mo ago
Indigenous people in north america contributed to multiple extinctions. This is the noble savage trope you're putting on display
- tkel 2mo ago
  With regards to the Late Pleistocene extinction overkill hypothesis that you are referring to, your information is out of date, more recent evidence suggests that humans played only a minor or incidental role, with climate change (the end of an ice age), and habitat restructuring being the primary drivers. I don't think you understand what the noble savage trope is. I'm commenting on the development of indigenous human societies in the Americas. The vast majority of them were ecologically compatible. This is not a commentary on the morality of individuals. To take the Mexica empire as an example, they were not a moral civilization by our standards (neither were the Spanish colonizers), and they had an over-reliance on corn and obsidian, but other than that they survived in a way that did not stress or extinguish or destabilize the surrounding ecology.
  - curioadu 2mo ago
    I do not quite buy your arguments, and I am skeptical of several claims that you make. Without specific sources, it is more difficult for me to contest them, though I will not request sources. From your perspective, what caused the extinction of several megafauna/large species of animals after the arrival of Aboriginals in Australia?
    - frmersdog 2mo ago
      That's mistaking correlation for causation. I don't have proof, but let's consider an alternative: that the climate change that made those areas newly-hospitable to humans made them inhospitable to megafauna. Can you falsify "all of the species were subject to the same environmental shift" before you jump to "arriving humans hunted them all to extinction"? (And I recognize the parallels to some unsavory arguments, and would like to point out that the evidence regarding contemporary man-made climate change is strong and sound. But that's with industrialization and a couple orders of magnitude more people on the planet.)
edbaskerville 2mo ago
Unsurprisingly this one generated a lot of responses. My working hypothesis for this question involves colonization, technologically driven scales of time and space, and selection. The essence is totally obvious: either you develop sustainable practices or you go extinct. Consider a group of people colonizing an area previously uninhabited by humans. When they arrive, they will disrupt the local ecosystem to some extent. In some cases, the new combined system of ecosystem structure and human culture will settle into an attractor that can support humans for a long time (relative to frequency of colonization). In other cases, it will not, and the human population will die out. (Externally driven parameter changes can also turn a sustainable system into an unsustainable one.) With a low enough colonization rate, most active communities will be operating sustainably. Over time, technology increases the rate of spread of humanity. Cultures with more advanced technology increasingly spread into existing settlements as well as taking over existing land. But the basic process continues: some systems last; some do not. The ones that last longer are the ones with sustainable practices. This process is now operating at a global scale. Either we get sustainable, or things get bad. Some people have concluded that the easier path is to colonize other planets.

dev_l1x_be 2mo ago

> left no ecological footprint Well not in a sense you might think. There are few odd things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untouched-amazonian-rainforest-was-actually-shaped-humans-180962378/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untou...