Earlier quoted context omitted.
By local you mean over 5 thousand of miles? Because yes moving wood was always in competition with growing it locally. But pine forests in the far north were untouched because of the low quality of the lumber they produce not the distances involved. All of Africa Europe and Asia ran out of the most valuable natural lumber a fucking long time ago. > I think the natural world was nearly infinitely abundant is a reasona…
>By local you mean over 5 thousand of miles? maybe, "local" is a function of a lot of things, it is only fairly recently in human history that the "global" functions the way that "local" did centuries ago, meaning that it is cheap enough to source things from across the world that it does not need to be made in the next village. >> I think the natural world was nearly infinitely abundant is a reasonable description >…
They already had used up a large fraction of North America’s forests. Killing off over 90% of the population + 200 years of growth before Europeans showed up made people underestimate just how young most of NA’s forests were.
Similarly native agriculture was massively underestimated because large settlements were killed off first when the plagues hit. Ever wonder why if Corn and potatoes etc were as native crops, why native Americans are depicted as hunter gatherers? Hunter gatherers has slightly better protection from disease. They represented a small share of the population in 1492 but by the 1700’s they where the shattered remnants wandering through graveyards of dead civilizations.