“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.
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.