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

science.org

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

#51

Post by culi »

WalterBright wrote: post #26
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…

> Precolombian north america actually had really sophisticated sanitation. I don't know what this means. Moving to another location is practical, but not sophisticated.

Well if your only definition of sanitation is urban ones, then they had that as well as I pointed out. I think the fact that they had sanitation practices in both urban and rural areas is quite remarkable. Clearly you don't and felt the need to share that opinion. Thanks.

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

#52

Post by culi »

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]

It's based on the fact that we don't know.

We've seen multiple times in archeology when we've originally thought of places as "failed state" or "collapsed" it's actually turned out to be a conscious rejection of that way of life. Most famously Cahokia. Which at one point was a larger city than any city in Europe. We now know that it didn't "collapse" so much as there was a political revolution and people decided to move towards different ways of life.

It's best not to assume failure when you have no evidence for it.

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

#53

Post by netbioserror »

khanhnguyen8386 wrote: post #39

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

That is definitely not what the Maya did. Or really any civilization with large permanent cities. The record of forest cutting once settlements reach a certain size is consistent and global. The Amazon simply experienced a full civilizational collapse and more than enough time untouched to recover.

It might suffice to say: The myth of sophisticated indigenous ecosystem engineers who harmonize with nature is a European trope.

Whenever any culture larger and more settled than hunter-gatherers has traditions of forest management and ecosystem balance, don't immediately attribute to them magical wisdom that Europeans somehow lack. Consider that those traditions are an ancient memory of one or more catastrophic ecosystem collapses and the practices of the people who survived them.

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

#54

Post by culi »

WalterBright wrote: post #30
paimapi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that's true. Mesoamerica had a very rich tradition of papermaking (Amatl) that predated paper in Europe (though probably not Chinese). Colonists severely repressed, criminalized, and even destroyed the paper and writing systems. Thousands of Maya codices were burned in 1562. Almost all pre-colombian libraries (amoxcalli) were destroyed

We've deciphered Nahuatl and Maya script but Zapotec, Olmec, Isthmian, Quipu, and other scripts are still not well understood

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

#55

Post by pibaker »

khanhnguyen8386 wrote: post #39

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

My understanding of why Europeans think the americas were pristine and barely touched by human existence is because smallpox was ahead of European explorers and by the time Europeans set foot on many places on the continent, they saw ecosystems that had recovered from human intervention after the local population had collapsed.

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

#56

Post by culi »

smallerfish wrote: post #46
uwagar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you dont destroy something, its usually close to an idea of pristine. the trouble is slash and burn agriculture and clearing for beef production.

Actually they did something like slash and burn agriculture, but they apparently rotated sites, allowing forest regeneration.

Which is extremely common in native traditions pretty much around the world. Aboriginals from Australia have a concept of "cool fires" and Californians famously had very careful "cultural burns". Fires were always carefully managed not to burn too hot and kill seeds

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

#57

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

uwagar wrote: post #40
khanhnguyen8386 wrote: post #39

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

if you dont destroy something, its usually close to an idea of pristine. the trouble is slash and burn agriculture and clearing for beef production.

> and clearing for beef production

I know the real point is that you'd prefer we eat the proverbial bugs, but there's akshually more grassland in the world than forest.

You don't need to cut down trees for beef production - it doesn't make any economic sense unless your logistics costs are deliberately screwed by perverse government incentives.

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

#58

Post by culi »

pibaker wrote: post #55
khanhnguyen8386 wrote: post #39

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

My understanding of why Europeans think the americas were pristine and barely touched by human existence is because smallpox was ahead of European explorers and by the time Europeans set foot on many places on the continent, they saw ecosystems that had recovered from human intervention after the local population had collapsed.

I've heard that explanation as well. But I don't know if "recovered from human intervention" is a fair characterization since they couldn't have been more than a decade behind the smallpox/diseases.

Estimates range from 5 to 10 million people in the Amazonian Basin by the time Colombus reached the Americas (though some go as high as 20 million).

I don't think a few years is enough to erase all trace of human intervention. I think it was just so alien a concept to Europeans who kept very tidy woodlands like dehesa in Spain or the coppiced woodlands of Central Europe. As much as 10% of the soil in Amazonia was man-made terrapreta. And they spread what could best be translated as complex polycultural "orchards" of brazilnuts, aqui, coco, and more. Botanists have been puzzled for years by the hyperdominance patterns of some of these trees until anthropologists realized the human connection.

Anyways I guess what I'm saying is that the Amazonian landscape management is so radically different from what Europeans know that they likely just didn't realize what was before their eyes.

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

#59

Post by WalterBright »

culi wrote: post #54
WalterBright wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that's true. Mesoamerica had a very rich tradition of papermaking (Amatl) that predated paper in Europe (though probably not Chinese). Colonists severely repressed, criminalized, and even destroyed the paper and writing systems. Thousands of Maya codices were burned in 1562. Almost all pre-colombian libraries ( amoxcalli ) were destroyed We've deciphered Nahuatl and Maya script but Zapotec, Olmec, Isthm…

Sorry, I was talking about North America.

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

#60

Post by WalterBright »

culi wrote: post #51
WalterBright wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Precolombian north america actually had really sophisticated sanitation. I don't know what this means. Moving to another location is practical, but not sophisticated.

Well if your only definition of sanitation is urban ones, then they had that as well as I pointed out. I think the fact that they had sanitation practices in both urban and rural areas is quite remarkable. Clearly you don't and felt the need to share that opinion. Thanks.

What were these remarkable sophisticated sanitation practices in North America?
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