A post by Blake in this thread in GQ got me thinking about an environmental policy course I took back in graduate school.
The prof in this course was absolutely convinced that native and prehistoric peoples (including hunter/gatherers) were in complete harmony with their environment, with no pollution or waste. He gave as an example the oft-repeated story of Native Americans using every part of a bison.
I strongly disagreed with him. My contention was (and still is) that the only reason native people had little impact on their environment was solely due to their relatively small numbers. A small non-industrialized society can dump its waste in the nearest body of running water and have little impact on it. This is certainly not the case with modern population densities.
I also disagreed with his idea that prehistoric peoples were inherently of a conservationistic nature. My first counterexample was the practice of driving a herd of animals off of a cliff. I also brought up the contention of many scientists that prehistoric humans were probably responsible for the extinction of most of the large mammals.
I found it interesting that the prof refused to even admit that my points might have merit. His point of view was apparently very important to him, and he actually refused to even discuss it.
Any comments?
BTW, here’s Blake’s original comment from the post linked above:
We use every part of the chicken, cow, and pig so I’m not to impressed that prehistoric man did the same with his animals. Though I’m certainly impressed with the ingenuity prehistoric man showed in utilizing the resources available to them. If you want to talk about waste you already brought up the practice of driving bison or deer off of cliffs by the dozens.
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I would tend to agree. Though there’s some who believe man had something to do with the extinction of the wooly mammoth.
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I imagine a Celt in Britian in 200 BC thought there was an endless supply of wood. I doubt he would have worried about saving anything other then sites that were sacred or needed to be preserved for his benefit. (farming, building materials, etc.)
At times prehistoric people had a fairly static effect on the environment since their rate of consumption was constant. When the population grows suddenly (as it is now) the equilibrium is disturbed.
So, I suppose it depends what you mean by ‘complete harmony’ - prehistoric people were just in a relatively stable part of a dynamic equilibrium between consumer and resource. At this point in time the absolute population and it rate of increase have a greater impact on the environment.
Abbotoirs today waste very little - wouldnt be surprised if the primative man wasted more.
OK first, I think we should clarify what we mean by ‘in complete harmony with their environment’. ‘The environment’ is not static, nor is it separate from humanity. Humans evolved on this planet and are as ‘in harmony’ as any other species. Sure we have spread a log way from where we evolved. Go back far enough and so has every other species. Sure we exterminate other species. The same is true of every other species. Sure we alter the environment. The same is true of every other species.
So saying that humans are in complete harmony with the environment is meaningless. It is impossible for humans not to be in complete harmony. We make up the environment as much as any other species does. Unless of course you mean the purely physical abiotic environment, in which case we are neither in harmony with nor out of harmony with it. We just exist within it. The expression itself is meaningless and a hangover from the old religious days when people were known to have been created separately to everything else.
Next point of clarification. We mean people operating with stone age technology, not prehistoric people, These people existed well into the 19th century at leat on every continent except Europe. They aren’ t prehistoric if my grandfather probably met some of them.
Saying that prehistoric peoples are ‘inherently of a conservationistic nature’ is of course a load of dingo’s kidneys. We have overwhelming evidence of the massive environmental changes these people caused in Australia, New Zealand, South America, North America and doubtless other parts of the world. Forests were destroyed and replaced with prairies and grasslands, species were driven to extinction, feral vermin were spread around the world which led to even more change.
Perhaps the best place to start t prove that these people weren’t big on conservation would be Easter Island. The environmental changes were so great on this piece of land that, every suitable tree having been cut down and burned, the people were trapped and unable to leave. The land was degraded to appoint that no food remained and the people were forced into cannibalism to survive. The population was in dramatic decline and would doubtless have vanished or sunk into a degraded state had they been left to their own devices. So much for conservation mindedness. The same story was true of New Zealand, although with more land and less time the situation hadn’t decayed quite as far.
By and large whenever stone age people moved into an area a wave of massive extinctions and landscape change resulted. After a thousand years or so the people’s customs usually adapted to the land, presumably through memetic evolution. But this doesn’t show conservation mindedness particularly. It shows that those groups that persisted wit customs that despoiled the land completely grew weaker ad were displaced by others with more workable social structures. I guess it’s arguably conservation mindedness, but in that case all humans are equally conservation minded.
Well put ** antechinus**. Primitive people’s lacked the ability to overcome as many controls on population as we have. From all the evidence I have seen they bred as fast as they could, consumed as many resources as they could and altered as much of the landscape to suit their needs as they could. After a thousand years of doing this all animal prone to extinction had gone and the human population went into decline and then settled out at the maximum level the altered environment could sustain.
If people existed at the current technology level for another millennium the same thing would happen. We would then be ‘at harmony with nature’ once more. This of course doesn’t mean that western society is particularly conservation minded. It just shows that we would have no option but reach an equilibrium. Fortunately technology is advancing at such a rate that we won’t need to do this.
Suspect that in reality current human societies are more conservation minded than stone age societies. The ability to read has enabled us to perceive and understand changes that stone age people simply could not have realised were occurring.
While this gentleman’s wording is phrased in such a way as to nigh-boil my blood, it does cover all the creatures and locations I was looking for. The Native American extinction of the Megafauna, the Maori extinction of the flightless birds…
Good lord, it repulses me. The only reason I include it is it names names, including a Dr. Paul Martin.
Here is a much more balanced view, offering the surprising hypothesis that disease took them out. I have doubts, simply because man to animal disease transmission is fairly rare. Yes, even including Monkeypox.
It’s usually animal to man, because of man eating said animal. The recent trackdown of AIDS suggests it was man eating chimpanzees that ate monkeys that did it… a somewhat lengthy chain.
Hmm,… prehistoric man in harmony with his environment…Well yes until he felt compelled to move on to greener pastures when his current environment could no longer sustain him in the manner to which he had become accustomed. That is why homo sapiens has proliferated all over the planet.(I recall reading somewhere that in the old days when it was time for a Plains Indian teepeewife to clean up inside the home, she merely took it down and moved it.)
Alas, considering our crowded planet today we no longer have that option. Gradually the voice for conservation is getting stronger and stronger. True, our general consumption still leads us on to a path of complete depletion of many resources including distinct species of life, but never has mankind involved himself in addressing this issue as today, and unavoidable circumstances will only ensure that we achieve complete harmony or destroy ourselves.