Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 219 posts

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#21

Post by BurningFrog »

dyauspitr wrote: post #14
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a strange and horrific metaphor, analogy, and parable about the effects of isolation - made all the more distressing because it wasn't intentional. It was just our broader ancestors going about their business as normal people.

Yeah, for the most part, I mean there are tales about small pox ridden blankets being intentionally given to the Native Americans, but I don’t know if those are apocryphally or not. Either way it’s not like we had vaccines and immunization back then it would’ve happened anyways.

Most of this happened centuries before the germ theory of disease.

No one on either side had any real clue what was going on, and most probably thought it was a cruel punishment from the God(s).

Often the disease travelled faster than people, and when Europeans arrived, the natives were long since gone.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#22

Post by applicative »

dyauspitr wrote: post #3

It’s so crazy that they all just… died because of the old world diseases before anyone really got a chance to meet them as a civilization.

Spain and Portugal were under Umayyad colonization when this civilization died.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#23

Post by InTheArena »

culi wrote: post #20
InTheArena wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is commonly repeated, but if you go look at actual record keeping - at the history of early North American and Caribbean/Bahamas colonization through the period where there stopped being as much cross-cultural contact - we see epidemic after epidemic wipe our colonials as much as any. The mortality rate is staggering - even places that should have shown this the most - Haiti for example, the documented evidence…

Well regardless, we know North American natives had extensive sanitation practices and epidemics were quite rare. Syphilis, tuberculosis, intestinal parasites, and Chagas disease were all present but rarely turned into mass outbreaks. Mass graves are almost completely absent and life tables show steady and predictable mortality curves over centuries https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024802118 https://pmc.ncbi.nl…

I didn;t say that it didn't - in fact, the reality was mass casulty events where common in a way that is unthinkable. We do _ in fact_ have plenty of mass graves for colonists. The lack of evidence of the same on the American Indian side makes me skeptical of the whole narrative.

i think it's quite likely that the casualties where in similar scope across two different civilizations, but that the colonialists advantage (if you can call it such) of excess population and higher density of settlers, meant that the colonialists simply outlasted a far smaller population group.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#24

Post by BurningFrog »

InTheArena wrote: post #19
culi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lack of resistance and no sanitation Precolombian north america actually had really sophisticated sanitation. In urban areas they pretty advanced waste management. In other areas, a lot of their seasonal mobility was possibly driven by sanitation needs. And they have really in depth practices around the ways they treat waterways and waste placement. The problem was actually the exact opposite. Compared to Europea…

This is commonly repeated, but if you go look at actual record keeping - at the history of early North American and Caribbean/Bahamas colonization through the period where there stopped being as much cross-cultural contact - we see epidemic after epidemic wipe our colonials as much as any. The mortality rate is staggering - even places that should have shown this the most - Haiti for example, the documented evidence…

One story I've heard is that European colonists in the Caribbean only survived a few years before dying of Malaria. The natives didn't do any better.

So the sugar industry started importing African slaves, who actually had some malaria immunity.

This worked pretty well, and the transatlantic slave trade went on for centuries.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#25

Post by NuclearPM »

culi wrote: post #9
dyauspitr wrote: post #3

It’s so crazy that they all just… died because of the old world diseases before anyone really got a chance to meet them as a civilization.

The Aquiry civilization (that this paper is about) actually ceased (either due to collapse or people changing their mind about that way of life, who knows) between 850 and 1000 CE. And WDYM "anyone"? Obviously plenty of people met them and plenty of civilizations derived from them. By the time Europeans got there, the Amazon Basin was home to 5-10 million people (some models push it up to 20 million). I'm sure traces…

[flagged]

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#26

Post by WalterBright »

culi wrote: post #17
TimedToasts wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing was that _any_ outside contact was going to be doom for North America. A lack of resistance and no sanitation equaled a tinder box just waiting for the right plague.

> A lack of resistance and no sanitation Precolombian north america actually had really sophisticated sanitation. In urban areas they pretty advanced waste management. In other areas, a lot of their seasonal mobility was possibly driven by sanitation needs. And they have really in depth practices around the ways they treat waterways and waste placement. The problem was actually the exact opposite. Compared to Europea…

> Precolombian north america actually had really sophisticated sanitation.

I don't know what this means. Moving to another location is practical, but not sophisticated.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#27

Post by _heimdall »

marojejian wrote: post #2

Originally heard about this via Nature podcast's interview with the researcher: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02367-x This is a continuation of many findings in this direction. It's wonderful to imagine the many societies humans have created, and sad that we'll be able to learn so little about them.

I've always been confused by the idea that we know all civilisation that has happened on earth, human or otherwise. Written record doesn't go back very far at all, and even archeological evidence is lacking.

Its believed that homo sapiens have been around for at least 300,000 years and yet we think almost all of that was entirely without civilization.

We find fossil records of dinosaurs but we have little to no evidence of what would have been before them, presumably there was an extinction event prior to them as well.

It seems foolish to think we are the latest incarnation of the only chain of civilization that had ever happened on Earth.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#28

Post by esseph »

NuclearPM wrote: post #25
culi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Aquiry civilization (that this paper is about) actually ceased (either due to collapse or people changing their mind about that way of life, who knows) between 850 and 1000 CE. And WDYM "anyone"? Obviously plenty of people met them and plenty of civilizations derived from them. By the time Europeans got there, the Amazon Basin was home to 5-10 million people (some models push it up to 20 million). I'm sure traces…

[flagged]

Name fits.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#29

Post by shimman »

_heimdall wrote: post #27
marojejian wrote: post #2

Originally heard about this via Nature podcast's interview with the researcher: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02367-x This is a continuation of many findings in this direction. It's wonderful to imagine the many societies humans have created, and sad that we'll be able to learn so little about them.

I've always been confused by the idea that we know all civilisation that has happened on earth, human or otherwise. Written record doesn't go back very far at all, and even archeological evidence is lacking. Its believed that homo sapiens have been around for at least 300,000 years and yet we think almost all of that was entirely without civilization. We find fossil records of dinosaurs but we have little to no evide…

You would like the book "Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber.

It does a lot to talk about modern anthropological studies that corrected a lot of misconceptions about early humans. Really fascinating book, basically postulates that humans have always been imaginative social creatures that were routinely well travelled; and the idea that early humans weren't also politically or culturally advance is wrong. In fact some societies were purposely designed to ensure things like hierarchy wouldn't exist for example; these societies persisted for thousands of years.

Really interesting book.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#30

Post by WalterBright »

paimapi wrote: post #16
dyauspitr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for the most part, I mean there are tales about small pox ridden blankets being intentionally given to the Native Americans, but I don’t know if those are apocryphally or not. Either way it’s not like we had vaccines and immunization back then it would’ve happened anyways.

there are recorded incidents: https://project1492.org/small-pox-blankets/ the controversy is mostly around whether or not it was a systemic, pervasive form of biological warfare. the evidence base is fairly small but needs to be considered in context of Native American cultural habits around durable recordkeeping (eg trade ledgers) vs colonial, and if colonists would record such an act there was also active ethnic cl…

From your reference: "it is the colonizers who get to write the history"

There's a simple explanation for this. The colonists were literate, and would keep diaries and write letters about their experiences. Churches would log births, deaths, and marriages. Printers would print newspapers. Later, these materials were fodder for academics who converted them into historical narratives.

The Indians were not literate and so did not write letters and keep diaries.

Even things like the number of Indians cannot be pinned down with any precision.

Post reply on HN