Later Andean farmers adapted their mountainous environment for agriculture through terraced farming shown in this undated handout photo released on April 6, 2016 by Amy Goldberg.
Posted on 04/11/2016 8:23:37 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
When the first prehistoric people trekked into South America toward the end of the Ice Age, they found a wondrous, lush continent inhabited by all manner of strange creatures like giant ground sloths and car-sized armadillos.
But these hunter-gatherers proceeded to behave like an "invasive species," with their population surging then crashing as they relentlessly depleted natural resources. Only much later did people muster exponential population growth after forming fixed settlements with domesticated crops and animals...
The researchers identified two distinct colonization phases: the first unfolding about 14,000 to 5,500 years ago, with the human population hitting around 300,000; the second occurring about 5,500 to 2,000 years ago, with the population reaching about a million...
The first phase of colonization in South America coincided with the extinction of many large animals including elephant relatives, saber-toothed cats, big ground sloths, armadillos and huge flightless birds.
During this period, human populations underwent "boom-and-bust cycles" as people exhausted local plant and animal resources, Stanford anthropologist Amy Goldberg said.
Some people, particularly in certain Andes regions, began domesticating animals and growing crops including squash and peppers. But most remained nomadic.
About 5,000 years ago, people settled into stable societies, launching 3,000 years of exponential growth when the continent's population roughly tripled, Goldberg said.
"We find that it is the large settlements, not merely stable food sources, that allow humans to 'conquer' their environment and grow unbounded," Goldberg said.
"Most lived in modern Peru, Ecuador, and northern Chile, as well as a smaller but substantial population of hunter-gatherers in Patagonia."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Later Andean farmers adapted their mountainous environment for agriculture through terraced farming shown in this undated handout photo released on April 6, 2016 by Amy Goldberg.
Nah.
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Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
Was this invasive species White?
Trump needs to build that wall!!!
We’ve only been waiting 14,000 years!!!
Keep out the hordes!
....and still are................
This is just another revival of the "superhunter" model to try to handwave away the precipitous extinction of megafauna in the Americas.
;’)
What??
They depleted resources and ruined things?
Without petrochemicals, SUVs, and suberbs?
Without capitalism, and the nasty old USA?
Nope, gotta be a lie.
We are all such horrible "people".
“Invasive species.”
That’s nature for you. Stuff happens.
Evolution is goo except when humans do it.
Evolution is good except when humans do it.
An he would have made the Prehistoric people pay for it!
Historian Charles Mann hinted at this in his book “1491.”
Petrochemicals were definitely deadly for North American megafauna like dire wolves, sabre-tooth tigers, etc. For proof all you have to do is visit the nasty capitalistic La Brea Tar Pits and fossil museum in Los Angeles. I’m surprised savage, predatory human hunters left any of their prey alive and able to get trapped in the tar ooze. But a huge number was able to die without human “assistance.”
One million (or fewer) primitive people exhausted the natural resources of South America?
I find that difficult to believe, so I don’t.
Ahh....the Dirt-Firsters.....
People are vermin, to be banished and stricken from the earth....
Mankind was created to have dominion over the earth and these population control folks are simply elitist eugenicists.
Apparently the author of this piece forgot they are human.
Amazing!
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