It's fascinating that Dromornis were contemporary with Aborigines. Western science frequently discounts the stories (not to mention Histories) of indigenous peoples, almost as if there's an unwritten "people who never invented the toaster must be morons" rule or something. There are stories out of Africa and South America of huge animals familiar to existing peoples, and scientists, by and large, put it down to superstition and folk tales rather than acceptable empirical evidence of existing creatures. Silly white people.
Just for the sake of semantic accuracy, those geese may have been Canada geese, but that doesn't make them Canadian! They're supposed to spend half the year with you guys, you know. I thought we were sharing custody...
The other side of that same prejudice leads to white people thinking that natives lived in ecological harmony with the environment. We take the blame for the buffalo and don't ask who killed the mastodons.
Some First Nations peoples did live balanced lives - most, actually, but they're people like any people and people make mistakes. I think white people were responsible for the decline of the buffalo, because there weren't enough people around prior to contact (at least in concentration) to actually destroy such a vast population of animals.
As for the mastodons, tuberculosis coupled with hunting is thought to be the cause of their decline, but it occurred over a period of 2000 years, which isn't remotely comparable to the rapidity of extinctions occurring over the past 200 years. Assuming the first peoples were exclusively responsible for the mastodon's disappearance, perhaps lessons were learned from the experience - they had 11000 years to think about it.
I agree there's no simple answer to the extinction question. Usually there are multiple factors involved, like climate change plus over-hunting. Most species can survive one or the other, but not both together. Never the less, we must recognize that there are universal human behaviors that must be dealt with to prevent extinctions.
I agree, but at the same time these "universal" behaviours can and have been nonexistent at the individual and small-scale levels, so logically their opposites can be fostered on a global scale. I guess I mean that as long as a person can choose their own actions we really have no right to blame poor decisions on instinct, and these days we don't even have the ignorance excuse any more.
PS: I noticed your sneaky puns in the original post and giggled at them. Smooth writing! :-D
There are stories out of Africa and South America of huge animals familiar to existing peoples, and scientists, by and large, put it down to superstition and folk tales rather than acceptable empirical evidence of existing creatures. Silly white people.
Just for the sake of semantic accuracy, those geese may have been Canada geese, but that doesn't make them Canadian! They're supposed to spend half the year with you guys, you know. I thought we were sharing custody...
Reply
Reply
I think white people were responsible for the decline of the buffalo, because there weren't enough people around prior to contact (at least in concentration) to actually destroy such a vast population of animals.
As for the mastodons, tuberculosis coupled with hunting is thought to be the cause of their decline, but it occurred over a period of 2000 years, which isn't remotely comparable to the rapidity of extinctions occurring over the past 200 years.
Assuming the first peoples were exclusively responsible for the mastodon's disappearance, perhaps lessons were learned from the experience - they had 11000 years to think about it.
Reply
Reply
PS: I noticed your sneaky puns in the original post and giggled at them. Smooth writing! :-D
*Bah! Edited for clarity
Reply
Leave a comment