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

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

#141

Post by tempfile »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #102
tkel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson is more that indigenous people were (+ are) part of the ecology, not separate from it or above it. With cultural, social, technological, and spiritual practices that were formed dialectically and hyper-locally with the ecology, as a result of it, and as part of it. Often considered a keystone species in these ecologies.

Indigenous people aren't any more or less of the ecology than anyone else, unless you believe in blood and soil. Humans are part of the ecology, being indigenous has nothing to do with it.

> unless you believe in blood and soil

Not true, there are obviously other ways. There is an intuitive distinction between living in harmony with natural systems and simply dominating them with technology. That is all you have to believe, it doesn't have to be grounded in ethnonationalism.

Humans are unquestionably part of the environment, and everything humans do bends the environment to their will, but it would clearly be at odds with how we use words to argue that say a nuclear power station is just as much "part of the ecology" as cultivation of soil.

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

#142

Post by gaigalas »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #133
gaigalas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our earliest record is the Rigveda (a written down oral tradition, we don't know exactly how far back it goes). I suggest you try to read it at least once. It's almost incomprehensible.

No. And it's not even close. Rigveda would be around 1500Bce. Even Sumerian cuneiform would be far older at 3000 bce. If you want oldest oral records, some Australian aboriginal stories would be the ones at 8000 bce

The Rigveda is the the earliest unbroken kept record.

The Sumerian tablets are likely older, but they were forgotten and then re-deciphered. The transliterations still carry educated choices made by a scholar (there's only so much you can do when the record breaks for a long time).

Meanwhile, we know exactly how people spoke those early vedas because there is a tradition that keeps chanting it, without stopping, since before it was written down. That chanting has error correction mechanisms, redundancy and other impressive features that further place the Rigveda in a unique place among earlier works.

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

#143

Post by jeltz »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #72
pibaker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Europeans often failed to recognize Indigenous land management because it did not resemble European cities or farms

No, what they failed to recognize was indigenous land management that had been abandoned for many decades. In remote areas smallpox moved quite far ahead of European settlers.

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

#144

Post by gaigalas »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #134
rishav_sharan wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. And it's not even close. Rigveda would be around 1500Bce. Even Sumerian cuneiform would be far older at 3000 bce. If you want oldest oral records, some Australian aboriginal stories would be the ones at 8000 bce

Oh and some researchers are putting down the story of "seven sisters"/pleiades to around 100k years ago, back when the 7th star in the constellation was visible

The recovery of a possible oral tradition regarding this is likely drawn from comparative mythology techniques, which is super interesting (I'm fascinated by it, personally), but in another category.

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

#145

Post by curioadu »

tkel wrote: post #132
modo_mario wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indigenous people in north america contributed to multiple extinctions. This is the noble savage trope you're putting on display

With regards to the Late Pleistocene extinction overkill hypothesis that you are referring to, your information is out of date, more recent evidence suggests that humans played only a minor or incidental role, with climate change (the end of an ice age), and habitat restructuring being the primary drivers. I don't think you understand what the noble savage trope is. I'm commenting on the development of indigenous hum…

I do not quite buy your arguments, and I am skeptical of several claims that you make. Without specific sources, it is more difficult for me to contest them, though I will not request sources.

From your perspective, what caused the extinction of several megafauna/large species of animals after the arrival of Aboriginals in Australia?

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

#146

Post by suddenlybananas »

I-M-S wrote: post #135
suddenlybananas wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did those people have the right to leave or do what they wanted? https://www.jstor.org/stable/482790?seq=1 Read this paper and the contemporary accounts and tell me that's not slavery. >To modern Westerners, the use of such a kinship metaphor suggests and is believed to reflect genuine nurturing and closeness; however, in Africa and elsewhere it conveys an entirely different meaning: authority and subordination. >Vil…

I put much more credence into lived experiences than into academic journals. There's plethora of examples in which children/teens of the settlers taken by First Nations would refuse to go back (especially females, which had little rights in the American society back then). Conversely, First Nations children/teens that were taken by the settlers would almost without exception risk life and limb to escape their newfoun…

The personal accounts which are the data for this article are in fact lived experiences. You can read them in their own words.

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

#147

Post by RugnirViking »

tempfile wrote: post #141
suddenlybananas wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indigenous people aren't any more or less of the ecology than anyone else, unless you believe in blood and soil. Humans are part of the ecology, being indigenous has nothing to do with it.

> unless you believe in blood and soil Not true, there are obviously other ways. There is an intuitive distinction between living in harmony with natural systems and simply dominating them with technology. That is all you have to believe, it doesn't have to be grounded in ethnonationalism. Humans are unquestionably part of the environment, and everything humans do bends the environment to their will, but it would cle…

> distinction between natural systems and simply dominating them with technology

No? There's a rhetorical distinction, there isn't a physical distinction. It's like holistic medicine vs modern medicine, or wellness vs health, or human-centered design vs regular design, or chemical-free food vs regular food

Any given thing is one or the other of these soley based on your perspective of it. Im sending this message to you right now by performing a ritual on a object made of rocks some guy found in the ground

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

#148

Post by cucumber3732842 »

ywvcbk wrote: post #108
culi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 interven…

Europeans didn't really get to most of the more isolated inland areas in the Americas until the 1600s or well after that, though.

>Europeans didn't really get to most of the more isolated inland areas in the Americas until the 1600s or well after that, though.

It takes more than a few decades for things to regrow. There's a reason that half of all towns in New England have the name "field" in them. The impenetrable thicket that characterizes unmaintained New England land would have been foreign to literally every human to ever set foot there prior to the mid 1700s (decades of re-growth after the natives had been mostly driven off but not long enough for complete cultivation by europeans).

Now, obviously that's not that far inland, but by the time you're talking about the french surveying the continental interior native populations had stabilized. The worst disease epidemics were very much at 1500s and early 1600s thing.

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

#149

Post by cucumber3732842 »

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.

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