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 ...
Their peak population was never more than about 40,000 for a territory so vast. Just for contrast, the epicenter of their civilization, the 125 square mile city of Lubbock, Texas, now supports a population of over four times that size.
A more recent example was the island of Guam which, during the 31 months of Japanese occupation, supported a population of more than three times the pre-war levels PLUS was a major exporter of rice to Japan.
They’re still an invasive species; and now they’re heading North and invading the USA.
I thought your first, incorrect, post had more, I dunno, verve to it.
But... but... Liberals keep hammering us with tales of the gentle pre-industrial people living in perfect harmony with nature as they lived on sunshine and fairy dust while spending their days sitting in circles and telling tales of grace, wonder, and peaceful coexistence. I’m so confused.
I find that difficult to believe, so I don’t."
But but but, they were Superhunters!
The beginning of global warming?
It’s the drums, I tell ye! The drums! The incessant beating of the drums, day and night! Beating time with the beating heart, like a narcotic: lub-dub-THUD; lub-dub-THUD; lub-dub-THUD...
AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MUST ESCAPE DRUMS! MUST GO KILL MEGAFAUNA!
I agree, perhaps the author needs to have a little talk with Randall Carlson to get up to speed on exactly how the last Ice Age ended and the catastrophic wiping clean of the Americas of all large megafauna by massive (and when I say massive I mean massive) floods.
Tripling in 3,000 years (120-150 generations) is “exponential growth”? Sounds like a mighty small exponent, though technically true. 1.015 doubles every 50 years, so the use of “exponential growth” seems more for effect, than elucidation.
And, thankfully, they didn’t have an Endangered Species Act to worry about, otherwise the tree huggers would be whining about “saving, protecting, and reintroducing” sabre tooth cats and cave bears all over the place.
That book was so politically correct I had to quit reading it.
“Actually, not. A hunter-gatherer culture needs far more land area to survive than an agricultural culture. A more recent case in point was the Comanchee, who reigned supreme over what is now the western 2/3rds of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, the eastern third of Colorado and New Mexico and vast swaths of northern Mexico from 1668-1868.
Their peak population was never more than about 40,000 for a territory so vast. Just for contrast, the epicenter of their civilization, the 125 square mile city of Lubbock, Texas, now supports a population of over four times that size.
A more recent example was the island of Guam which, during the 31 months of Japanese occupation, supported a population of more than three times the pre-war levels PLUS was a major exporter of rice to Japan.”
Respectfully you have NOT convinced me, that the claim in the article for fewer than 1 million people, to have devastated the entire continent of South America, was possible.
“But but but, they were Superhunters! “
With really big appetites, too.
So possible, yes. Probable, maybe not.
For all the Hippie nostalgia about ancient aboriginal cultures and their harmony with nature, I can give you scores of examples about how they were notoriously inefficient and wasteful.
Two more examples with suffice.
First: If you are familiar with the winter count histories of the Lakota (Sioux) tribe which I studied in a former life with a grizzled old Sioux, you will know that the tribal elders were often ignored when the young bucks went on a buffalo hunt. If the herd was deemed surplus, the young warriors would often drive far more than necessary over a cliff, harvest what they needed for the winter and leave the rest of the carcasses to rot.
Second example: Before about 1250, the Aztec were content to enslave their prisoners of war and conquered tribes to maintain their lavish cities, building projects and lifestyles. Once they perceived their population to be surplus, they sacrificed them in ever more bloody and gruesome ceremonies because they came to so enjoy the orgy of violence. At the half week dedication of their rebuilt Templor Mayor in 1487, some 1,000 captives per DAY were cut open to the extent that the steps of that great pyramid were stained with blood and the moat surrounding it could not even contain it all. Within a generation, they were so short of laborers and defenders that a relative handful of Spanish soldiers organized the few survivors of the descendants of slaves and human sacrifices to utterly destroy their great city with only token opposition.
The LORD allowed for primitive beasts to become food for the survival of dispersed mankind.
Interesting stuff. My grandfather lived most of his life in Dakota Terr., then Montana and Wyoming.
Worked in Cody’s Wild West Show. Wore a copper bracelet given to him by an Indian friend. Did not marry until age. 40.
My father, his younger son, taught us to catch or shoot only what you could eat.
That was the respectful way of the frontier in America.
That was a long time before the environmental movement in this country. Back in the day it was called conservation, a relative of conservatism.
He went to the grave deeply regretting the role he played in greatly reducing the buffalo herds. The government, railroads and other commercial interests paid young bucks like him to wantonly slaughter buffalo in the belief that loss of those herds which sustained the Sioux and other Plains Tribes would drive them to the reservations sooner.
Not a few of those young bucks were of Indian stock. What went on in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana was just a fraction of the total.
The worst carnage was in Comanche Territory, especially the Texas panhandle, where the army not only wantonly killed buffalo, but also Comanche horses to break them.
Much of that area has since reverted to dryland farming, marginal ranching and the like whereas it used to be grassland plains which sustained millions of buffalo and 40,000 odd Comanche.
A couple years ago it was in vogue to “research” the various ways that agriculture — the foundation of all civilization, btw — was the root cause of large numbers of serious common illnesses. So, no hunting, no gathering, no farming, no nothin’.
I’ve got a single mating pair of ancestors who lived over 500 years ago and appear to be the ancestors of most of the people in the United States. In short, yeah, that seems like a mighty low exponent.
Climate change rocked cradles of civilisation [9/07/2006]The early civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, South Asia, China and northern South America were founded between 6000 and 4000 years ago when global climate changes, driven by natural fluctuations in the Earth's orbit, caused a weakening of monsoon systems resulting in increasingly arid conditions. These first large urban, state-level societies emerged because diminishing resources forced previously transient people into close proximity in areas where water, pasture and productive land was still available.
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