To pursue this thread further. First of all, Paul Martin's "Pleistocene
Overkill" hypothesis is rejected by the paleoethnozoologists I know --
who are quite competent in that area -- for a variety of theoretical and
empirical reasons that it would take quite a while to enumerate. Drastic
climatic shifts are generally conceded to have played the primary role.
This is not necessarily the case, however, when island faunas are
concerned, as has been shown for the Pacific. Flightless birds confined
to small or medium sized islands had no refuge when people arrived and
began clearing forest for agriculture, etc. Unless you want to turn back
the clock 10,000 years, agriculture is a fundamental characteristic of the
human ecological niche. On a continent, however, refugia are far more
readily available. That's one reason it is very hard for me to accept
Pleistocene Overkill. It requires that people expend extraordinary
efforts to kill many times as many animals as they could possibly have
used (which was not easy in those days) for the sake of killing.
Whatever your anecdotal personal evidence might suggest, indigenous
communities in the Arctic, sub-arctic, Amazon basin and elsewhere
prospered for thousands of years without progressively degrading their often
highly fragile environments. Read Richard King Nelson's ethnographic
studies of the Wainwright Eskimos (_Hunters of the Northern Ice_), the
Koyukon of nc Alaska (_Make Prayers to the Raven_), Robert Brightman's
clear eyed analysis of Rock Cree hunting in _Grateful Prey_, Harvey
Feit's studies of indigenous resource management ideology and practice of
the Waswanipi Cree of Quebec (?), R. E. Johannes's study of traditional
Palau fishing, knowledge and resource management practice (_Words of the
Lagoon_) and his discussion of how traditional common's management
practices were subverted by the intrusion of market oriented development
schemes bought by the younger, better educated generation. I can't speak
to Harriet's case. I'm sure there are such cases. However there are
dozens of carefully documented case studies that show that traditional
subsistence hunter-gatherers, fisherfolk, and farmers not only inherit a
profoundly sophisticated understanding of their natural environments but
are strongly motivated -- whether by religious scruples, practical
considerations, or native law -- to maintain the balance their lives so
obviously depend upon.

Population is the loose cannon on this deck. However, there are a number
of cases where it can be shown that population growth rates vary
dramatically among neighboring Native communities (as in the highlands of
Chiapas), with the highest rates of growth and the greatest
overpopulation directly attributable to the inadequacy of the land base
for subsistence and the relative importance of wage labor on large
capital intensive enterprises outside the local community. Once again,
the evidence in my judgment points clearly to the fact that the global
free market system, call it "capitalism" if you will, is the primary
driving force behind both the population explosion of the last century or
so and the environmental degradation we all deplore. It is not
population per se that is the killer, it is energy consumption. I have
seen estimates (1970 vintage) that the average citizen of the USA (that's
us) consumes 20x as much energy as the average Indian citizen (probably
true also for China). Thus 250,000,000 American cause 3x the
environmental degradation as 2,000,000,000 Chinese and Indians. So where
does the real problem (and thus the solutions) lie?

Sorry for this long burn.

Gene Hunn.

On Fri, 21 Apr 1995, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> Sorry, I changed the name of this thread--it's confusing to go back several
> iterations (I can imagine A: was B: was C: was D, etc.).
>
> I don't have much personal experience with hunting by native people except
> with those often called "Eskimos" in the Arctic. Two summers, one in
> Alaska, one in Canada, convinced me there was no environmental ethic
> present. I won't go into details with my many examples (summed up as
> killing for the fun of killing). This may well be a response to the
> problems of modern day, of which native people have many, but I was left
> with the distinct feeling that if there had been rifles available a
> thousand years ago, and a much larger population of Arctic natives, there
> would be no eiders, polar bears, gray whales, or muskoxen in the world
> today.
>
> The other area in which I have some experience is the Amazon basin. There,
> at every missionary base where Indians are encouraged to come out of the
> forest, all the larger birds and mammals quickly disappear as the density
> of forest hunting people increases at that place.
>
> Finally, I'd like to point out some informed speculation. The tremendous
> Pleistocene extinction of most of the large mammals of North America has
> been attributed by at least some scholars to the spread of "native" Homo
> sapiens from Siberia throughout this continent; at least the time frame is
> right. If a benign environmental ethic or a profound respect for one's
> fellow inhabitants is supposed to have the consequence of not extirpating
> them, this doesn't compute.
>
> Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
> Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
> University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
> Tacoma, WA 98416
>
>
>