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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

#151

Post by tkel »

RugnirViking wrote: post #147
tempfile wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 y…

Everything is nature , but clearly human society is also distinct. Both can be true. Some anthropologist philosophers have referred to this as "first nature" and "second nature", second nature being human society which is also part of first nature but distinct from it.

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

#152

Post by uwagar »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #114
ithkuil wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So some countries have more forest than grassland?

a) There's way more grassland in the world than forests. (On all continents.) b) Cows walk as they graze, the meat even delivers itself. You just need a herder. Shrimple as. The scheme worked for millennia with zero problems. Nobody had a problem with beef production until tariffs and other fuckery was invented. But apparently we need to switch to eating bugs instead of fixing the root of the problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

eat your bugs bro. dont fix them.

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

#153

Post by suddenlybananas »

tkel wrote: post #151
RugnirViking wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 y…

Everything is nature , but clearly human society is also distinct. Both can be true. Some anthropologist philosophers have referred to this as "first nature" and "second nature", second nature being human society which is also part of first nature but distinct from it.

But you're making out that indigenous people are part of this "first nature" rather than the "second nature", while industrial civilisation is strictly "second nature" which is frankly racist.

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

#154

Post by kvgr »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #148
ywvcbk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

Amazon is different beast, humidity, insect fast growing plants. It is nasure on hyperdrive. I wouldn't be surprised if things took 5-10 times faster than england. Or any more dry european places.

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

#156

Post by tempfile »

RugnirViking wrote: post #147
tempfile wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 y…

Of course there isn't a physical distinction. This is a bit like saying there isn't a difference between a novel and a poem, because they're just words on a page. The distinction is nonphysical, but it is also obviously not rhetorical either. I said "intuitive" distinction, I'm not sure why you didn't criticise that directly since it admits that the distinction is not completely precise.

What exactly are you doubting? Is the word "harmony" meaningless gibberish in your opinion? Are there any nonphysical words you admit are meaningful?

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

#157

Post by cucumber3732842 »

modo_mario wrote: post #123
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 in north america contributed to multiple extinctions. This is the noble savage trope you're putting on display

This has nothing to do with "noble savage" or whatever other ideologically loaded words you want to surgically introduce to manipulate people's opinions.

Humans are the apex predator. They have a huge influence on whatever the downstream ecological equilibrium winds up being.

This is hardest to deny in formerly glaciated regions because humans were there exerting pressure on the ecosystem the day after the glacier left (well not quite, but close enough). So if you take for example somewhere like pre-colombian Wisconsin, the development eventually pine forest and then hardwood forest all that happened with humans around eating things. The number of wolves you get depends on the number of deer you have which depends on how many the humans eat. And of course the deer eat things too so they affect the plant balance, which affects the other wildlife. And so on and so on. It's a complex web.

In places like the Amazon it's less cut and clear because humans showed up around/just before the last serious change in climate (end of ice age) but once again they've been there for the entire development of the "modern" ecosystem so whatever your balance of plants and animals is that balance is reflective of the pressures put on it by human activity.

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

#158

Post by hamper653 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #148
ywvcbk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

[dead]

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

#159

Post by jcranmer »

curioadu wrote: post #95
culi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The destruction during the Spanish conquests of the Aztecs and others was terrible. It was also rather disorganized initially, especially due to the huge delays regarding communication between the Americas and Europe. In regards to paper, while the Aztecs had impressive achievements, especially considering the almost complete isolation of the Americas from the rest of the world (is there any civilization close to the…

> is there any civilization close to the achievements of the Aztecs and other Amerindians in Africa south of Egypt?

Mali? Great Zimbabwe?

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

#160

Post by graemep »

curioadu wrote: post #140
graemep wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is there any civilization close to the achievements of the Aztecs and other Amerindians in Africa south of Egypt? Aksum for a start.

Aksum was more east of Egypt than south, right? And part of it lay in the Arabian Peninsula.

More south than east.

It conquered part of the Arabian peninsula.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksumite_Empire

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