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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

#201

Post by cucumber3732842 »

walthamstow wrote: post #176
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #148

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. 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…

Is -field really that common? I live in old England and many towns here are called -field, although granted not as many as -ton/-don.

Not as common as old England but vastly more common than the rest of the country because the charters had to be petitioned for and approved by several layers of intolerable assholes so unoffensive descriptive names like field were preferred over just about everything else. See also North/South/East/West. Kind of like how modern corporate safe culture bland-washes everything.

They mostly gave all the waterways colloquial names based on the Indians and of course that got copy-pasta'd onto all sorts of charts and maps so the government couldn't redefine those even if they wanted to.

Most of the rest of the country (including the mid Atlantic despite being settled at the same time) was far more deliberately surveyed and named.

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

#202

Post by forlorn_mammoth »

culi wrote: post #58
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.

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…

> I don't think a few years is enough to erase all trace of human intervention

Appreciate you stating your assumptions.

you might be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us

> The World Without Us is a 2007 non-fiction book about what would happen to the natural and built environment if humans suddenly disappeared... it outlines, for example, how cities and houses would deteriorate, how long man-made artifacts would last, and how remaining lifeforms would evolve. Weisman concludes that residential neighborhoods would become forests within 500 years

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

#203

Post by fellowniusmonk »

kvgr wrote: post #154
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #148

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. 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.

Brasil has tried building a highway to Manaus like twice and each time the interior has eaten it. That's with relatively modern tools.

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

#204

Post by suddenlybananas »

culi wrote: post #193
suddenlybananas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Iroquois had slaves, they weren't hyperegalitarian.

The Haudenosaunee are radically democratic, place a very strong focus on gender equality, and possess then-unmatched levels of horizontal power-sharing

They also had slaves.

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

#205

Post by WalterBright »

culi wrote: post #197
WalterBright wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mexico is considered central America.

(No it is not) https://www.google.com/search?q=is+mexico+central+america

The Britannica sez:

"No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact"

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

#206

Post by WalterBright »

culi wrote: post #198
WalterBright wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Aztecs were in Central America, not North America. Recall the quote from Britannica (your cite): "No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact" Clearly, North America was not including Central America.

Mexico is North America. And also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript

From the britannica:

"No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact"

Also, use of birch bark by the N.A. Indians wasn't until the 1800's.

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

#207

Post by desotus »

frmersdog wrote: post #167
curioadu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's mistaking correlation for causation. I don't have proof, but let's consider an alternative: that the climate change that made those areas newly-hospitable to humans made them inhospitable to megafauna. Can you falsify "all of the species were subject to the same environmental shift" before you jump to "arriving humans hunted them all to extinction"? (And I recognize the parallels to some unsavory arguments, an…

> That's mistaking correlation for causation. I made no such mistake. Though, I was not aware of there being competing theories regarding the significant number of extinct megafauna species around the gross time interval of the arrival of Aboriginals to Australia and Tasmania, my apologies. There are two competing set of theories, namely human-caused ones and natural-climate-caused ones, as far as I can tell. I was only aware of or could only remember the first type of theory.

For a clearer and possibly more settled and agreed upon example: From your or the other commenter's perspective, what caused the extinction of Moa after the arrival of Maori in New Zealand? Some claims that the Moa went extinct within 100 years of human settlement, and that it had a large population before that

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

#208

Post by desotus »

jcranmer wrote: post #159
curioadu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The Mali Empire was not far south of Egypt, it overlapped with the Sahara and was relatively late, 1235-1610, and is primarily known for its rich natural resources, namely gold, which cannot be said to be an achievement. It was significantly large and did last for centuries, at least. It had lots of contact with others, such as regarding the empire more or less adhering to Islam. There are some mosques there, but some of them are adobe buildings, and some of them were reconstructed in the 1900s. Apart from gold, which is not an achievement, what achievements did the Mali empire have that comes close to that of the Aztecs and other Amerindians? Manding languages did not have their own script as far as I can tell, only Arabic and Latin.

.

Great Zimbabwe's Great Enclosure is something, but it seems much less impressive than that of for instance Chichen Itza, despite being younger. And Great Zimbabwe must have had international trade, given artifacts from China was found there. On the other hand, archeologists and Europeans accidentally damaged it, and time wore it down, and thus it might have been more impressive than the current ruins indicate. The building approach with small, mortarless stones, and wooden lintel instead of arches or huge stones, despite the time period being 1100s to 1500s, might have limited what could be constructed, but perhaps the original edifices employed other techniques as well than wooden lintel. Though I do not understand how the wooden lintel survived that many centuries. Dry climate?

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

#209

Post by desotus »

graemep wrote: post #160
curioadu wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It more or less bordered or was really close to Egypt, and it was on the very coastal edge of the African continent, as close as is possible to the Arabian Peninsula, and even conquered territory outside Africa. And if the conquered parts are included, it was somewhat east as well at the very least. Did it only conquer in that direction? There are the Adwa mountains (and even the active stratovolcano Adwa), somewhat separating Axum from its south-western direction further into Africa. The capital Axum was at a very high elevation in the highlands, like more than 2000 meters above sea level, and relatively close to the other major cities. Deserts might also have separated stretches of the empire to its west. It also must have had a lot of foreign influence, as per the Greek writing on some of its coins. And the capital Axum itself was relatively close to the coast. And one description I found just mentioned coastal or near-coastal Axum cities, not cities much further inland. Adulis was coastal, and Matara like Axum was not far from the coast. I do not know if it had any other cities. One source mentions Ptolemais Theron as a coastal city. And then some writers describe the Aksum empire as highly cosmopolitan, like Adulis having a large Greek population.

If it had partial natural borders like deserts, mountains and an active volcano, somewhat separating it from the rest of Africa in its south-western and western direction, and sizable numbers of Greeks and other peoples, and located on the very edge of Africa as close as possible to the Arabian Peninsula, it doesn't really seem to me to be the best example, upon closer examination. I can sort of understand why you would mention it as an example, though

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

#210

Post by graemep »

frmersdog wrote: post #167
curioadu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's mistaking correlation for causation. I don't have proof, but let's consider an alternative: that the climate change that made those areas newly-hospitable to humans made them inhospitable to megafauna. Can you falsify "all of the species were subject to the same environmental shift" before you jump to "arriving humans hunted them all to extinction"? (And I recognize the parallels to some unsavory arguments, an…

I think if you consider that single instance it is mistaking correlation for causation.

However, it happens every time, with a lag. In different climates and environments. When humans expanded out of Africa, spread out over Eurasia, reached North America, South America, Australia, new Zealand extinction of megafauna always followed.

We know that there was large scale hunting and humans are highly effective hunters. Hunting megafauna is the easiest available food source for a pre-industrial society until they get to the point where there is too little megafauna left (and changes, eventually including farming follow). Unlike large carnivores we are not dependent on hunting megafauna so our human numbers do not drop when they are in short supply.

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