[MtnClimber]

Will the leftists make us cut down all of the beneficial trees?

[Ken H]

Amazon rainforest was shaped by an ancient hunger for fruits and nuts

If you're looking for fruits and nuts, California is the place you ought to be.

[married21]

Not surprised. People participate with God in creation. He gives us a bunch of little jobs to keep us busy. Like, for example, I read awhile back that the reason there are trees in the Everglades is that the native Americans had trash heaps. The trees got established on the little islands of soil that resulted from the decaying trash.

Also, the reason Yosemite Valley looks so nice, with space to walk between the trees, is that the native Americans did controlled burns to clear out the brush. Muir gets there and thinks it looks naturally “park-like”. It’s natural only in the sense that humans did what they naturally thought best. They deserve some credit for the fine result.

[arthurus]

1491

About 1491-

Mann discusses the growing evidence against the perception that Indians were not active in transforming their lands. Most Indians shaped their environment with fire, employing slash-and-burn techniques to create grasslands for cultivation and to encourage the abundance of game animals. Indians domesticated fewer animals and cultivated plant life differently from their European counterparts, but did so quite intensively. The author suggests that limited and often racist views about the indigenous people, in addition to lack of a common language among the indigenous people, often led to a failure to recognize these dynamics, and has historically found expression in conclusions like the "law of environmental limitation of culture" (Betty J. Meggers) — whatever Indians did before slash and burn, the logic goes, had to have worked thanks to the vast expanses of healthy forest seen before Europeans arrived.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

1491...

[PLMerite]

"Amazon rainforest was shaped by an ancient hunger for fruits and nuts"